What was 4chan like in 2003/2004? Is there anyone still here who was around on this site back then? Was the site back then any different than it is now?
>>24490109
It was a lot calmer. NO threads were constantly spammed and no generals existed. People just wanted to hang out and chat.
>Rei free weekend
Dunno, glad I wasn't there to experience that hell
You want to know what it was like go to any other shitty small chan.
>>24490136
this
pick one that still uses frames and it's pretty much the same experience
>>24490109
It was sorta likeDESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU DESU
>>24490109
There weren't newfag reddit fucks so there was that. and /b/ actually triforced until funnyjunk ruined that joke, like they do everything.
>>24490128
This. Very slow.
It was a lot less bitter and cynical too, mostly because trolling wasn't a thing people did on a regular basis.
It was like a lounge.
>>24490194
>triforce
>2004
newfag pretending to be oldfag detected
I missed when raids happened.
It was like an 'event'. A tidal wave of posters might flood onto another board while a spam blew over. It was manic and unpredictable. It had a 'wild-west' feeling. Since moot cooperated with the feds the whole site seems like its constantly under scrutiny. Anonymity used to be upheld because of how unknown the site was, now that 4chan is a well known, high-traffic website the idea of anonymity seems like it only exists in name only. Even corporations hire people to advertise their products here.
It was like how 6+2chan is now. Today there's so many newfags spamming and replying to bullshit threads just for attention. Things were much better back then, but still shit. At least newfags don't know enough to visit bestchan.
I miss Caturday. it seems like 4chan was less hostile (or, at least, whatever hostility was justified a lot of the time), and like most folks were OK w/ being HHKV spergs/weirdos, fun-bitter instead of sad-/truly-angry-bitter. this may just be because I was 13 at that time and was having fun myself. (I wasn't allowed to cross the street until 1 year later, so I got thoroughly hooked pretty fast, as if my parents wanted me to become damaged.)
>>24490269
9-1chan isn't comparable at all.
It isn't even comparable to the 7chan exodus. The sheer volume of people is incomparable.
>>24490305
True. I'm just glad newfags can't /onion/
It was way more mysterious and slow. A thread on /b/ could last up for days. It was literally a fourm with slow replies. People were still stupid.
>>24490158
>>24490136
you man child porn chans on tor?
>You will never participate in Ghost Raids
>You will never storm Habbo hotel again
>you will never raid other boards again(even though it was cancerous and cannibalistic, it was fun)
>You will never sit through tom green raids
>Tfw didn't discover 4chan until 2008
>Tfw you'll never go back to the relatively calm and innocent pre-2007 4chan that you've heard so much about>Tfw you won't even go back to the relatively calm pre-2012 4chan that you loved
Just make it stop.
Please god make it stop.
>Jessi Slaughter was 5 years ago
>Chris-Chan's discovery was 8 years ago
>599 US DOLLARS was 9 years ago
>>24490617
RIDGE RACER
I'm from 2007 so I'm an eternal newfag.
Nevermind the fact that I've been on 4chan for over 2/3rds of its life. I'm still a newfag.
>>24490109
There was very little activity
>>24490617
>2008 was 7 years ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNWoUTtwhhI
>>24490128
honestly I think generals are the worst cancer to come to 4chan and the creation of /vg/ just ruined things. people get stuck in their own little circlejerks and nobody goes out and shares ideas or jokes or anything anymore.
just go to >>>/f/ tbhwa it's pretty much a sampling of classic 4chan. just completely random stupid shit for the sake of making yourself laugh, jerk off or relax.
>>24490939
i disagree. Having spent time in generals, a majority of OC is created there. I didn't like it on /v/ (because who wanted to see 20 pokemon and LoL threads), but im glad it has its own board. its nice to actually go and have a discussion about a game civilly. Can't have discussions on /v/.
>>24490989
oc is created there now because we don't have a choice. it's generals or nothing. go back to like mid-2011 and it'd be a different story.
/v/ was always shit anyway.
ZOMG ITS TEH REI
desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu
>>24490366
Ghost is back an a ten year anniversary Habbo raid is planned for next year.
There's still something.
>>24490109
Hello OP. I was actually using 4chan during this "beginning" period while in college, and I've never really stopped except for one period, so I feel qualified to sperg out.
The /really/ early days, which I don't remember as clearly, were very sporadic. I was just figuring out how to use IRC, and I was looking for various exotic 2D porn (yuri and furry) at the time, and so the chatter around these genres led directly to the site. Based on my own memories, the OP image seems to me to be a legit representation of the early days.
The site went down (and the various infrastructure/post counters reset I think) like 3-4 times before stability in early-mid 2004 (fact-check me). History on this is also available in the 4chan news archives, just check it out.
Moot was not known to be the qt that he is, and he was instead "meximoot" for a bit - I was slightly skeptical, given the subject matter of the site (who would want their face associated with this crap?), but I took it at face value. I myself was trolled. W.T. Snacks was also a mod back then and posted reguarly on /b/ and other places. Like many newfags, I cut my own teeth on /b/, with occasional visits to other boards.
A feature of the early site that I don't think many current users known about is "frames" ; this is simply another way of listing the boards in explicit form at the LEFT of the screen, which is a "classic" holdover from the early days. I am happy that the mods still pretty much update it with new boards, so they haven't forgotten about it. It was suppressed at one point, but I recommend it to anons. try it out here! https://www.4chan.org/frames
Some tripfag named "soviet russia" repeatedly posted gore, very early on. This scandalized me but I sorta caught on that it was legal and nobody gave a fuck. Associated with this, there is some crypto/phantom-board /z/ which I may have visited once or twice at the time.
>>24491007
>>24490939
Generals are just the logical solution to boards speeding up, and most of the time when people start posting shit outside of an establish general it sticks out as something that doesn't look like it deserved it's own thread. It sorta depends on the board you're talking about and I don't know what /v/ or /vg/ is like but the Syria general on /pol/ or /heem/ on /sp/ to me are examples of good generals.
>>24490269
I browse that chan, and it really wasn't like it, at all.
I came here 3 years ago.
Seeing what it had become and hearing about the golden days.I remember most people were still fond of 2008 and didn't care for 2003.And then it just kinda slowly went to shit,people were afraid to innovate and 30% of the user base killed themselves ayy lmao, also there's too many normies and salty people with better things to do .
The true enemy has yet reveal themselves in the next year we will see the first mass exodus and a severe dip in populations on the site.the normies and fembots will be everywhere expect tumble 2.0 .Just like how the new type newfags disguise themselves now eventually all the humor on the site will be so convoluted and silly in a bad way that we will finally understand that which once we called cancer.
>>24490617
>You will never wait with baited breath to see Ian Brandon Anderson's response to Liquid Chris' latest video.
tbqhfam my best memories on 4chins were combos and combo breakers on /b/ and audiosurf stickies on /v/.
>>24491114
cont.
"April Fur's day happened April 1 2005 IIRC. I took the bait, posted some furry porn in the joke board and got banned briefly (I remember posting a very nice "strype" picture, the same artist whose picture got 100 million get IIRC).
/b/ was so much slower, and more like r9k is today but with more memes and much less angst. You could actually watch the board's threads over several minutes and keep track of things. You could actually get a nice conversation going about philosophy or the meaning of life or something, before /b/ started moving too fast.
There's also the old text boards, which still exist (defunct), archived. IIRC I wrote the very last post on News for VIP before it was shuttered.
>>24491454
MY NAME IS NOT
IAN
BRANDON
ANDERSON
I used to use /b/ for imagehosting on my IRC. I also was an avid poster in /gun/ threads.
>>24490305
Lol, have you every even Been to 2^3chan recently?
>>24490617
599?
i wish i was around for old memes
>>24490109
it was a lot less hostile but practically everyone was pretty good at trolling
everyone would just individually troll/raid other sites and bring back the evidence so we could all laugh together. our memes were like secret signals so if you were trolling a forum and someone said O RLY or so i herd u liek mudkips, then you would start tagteaming and raising hell
>>24491114
Speaking of Soviet Russia and /z/, he was actually in charge of /z/ for a bit since there was some weird user mod thing for /z/ going on.
Apparently moot created /z/ as a Something Awful forums thing
The board however ended up turning into a /b/2.0 board instead, calling themselves /z/tards
Soviet Russia eventually lost his power and after different people going trough power Moot and Snacks decided the board was a failure and "killed" it
how does 4chan compare with Math.sqrt(64)chan? i've never fully indulged
>>24491672
its 4chan with reddit influence. You can make your own boards. Don't expect any traffic though.
unsurprisingly, polfags, furries, and pedos are the majority there and the top boards reflect that.
>>24491624
it's just an old /v/ meme, like 8.8
>>24490109
Christ i was only 13 and I remeber coming here and seeing my first boobs
>>24490109
It was so much better back then .t.b.h. oni-f.a.m. At least we didn't have newfags trying to out epeen eachother on who was oldest like now. Remember since there are no usernames newfags can get btfo multiple times by oldfags but they remember what oldfags were saying so now they just copy that and pretend to be old in subsequent threads.
>>24490109
If you want to see what it was like just go on any of the thousands of other chans there are
If you don't know any of them don't try to find one and ruin them with your cancer
>>24491825
i was watching rape porn at 10 years old, you low test faggot
>>24490109
Slow and fun.
In 05 /b/ picked up speed and by 07 the golden age died.
>>24490109
>>24491875
this is how you spot the bullshitters OP. /b/ has never had a golden age.
>>24491849
Which variation of cancer are you? senpai
>>24491896
>/b/ was never good
Newfags keep biting that hook.
>>24491926
i was around before the word Cancer was being used.
>>24491933
/b/ was good for a week after you first discovered it.
After that, it became the internet embodiment of Same Shit, Different Day.
>>24492003
2003 get confirms
Fuck bot7763
>>24490442
sorry friend, i came in 2012, to /b/, moved to /pol/ during the gaza war, and hit /r9k/ when i realized what it was about here. hope i didn't wreck this place too much for you
>>24490109
Holy shit. I didn't know that banner was so old
My earliest memory of 4chan was the Habbo Raid, back in 2006. I can't believe it's almost been 10 years - it's rather depressing. I've spent so much time on this site, I really think that if 4chan went down I would be a huge loss. I mean, it's a very specific style of humour which is hard to find anywhere else. Only one real life friend knows anything about 4chan AFAIK, and knows that I regularly visit it. So if the site just went dead (as I have been scared it would, a couple of times) I would have noone to commiserate with, and imagine trying to tell a normie what made this website good, or explain any of the jokes. When I think of 4chan closing down, I actually get this sad, empty, horrible feeling in my stomach, like a fear that I could lose it and no one I knew would even understand I lost anything. That's pretty pathetic to type but there you go.
>>24490617
>tfw even 2011 4chan seems way different than it is now
>>24492114
Newshit please
I feel like I missed so much by coming to this site so late in my life. I first heard about it in 2005 but I didn't start to use it frequently until 2012. Sigh...
>>24492204
yes, idiot, try clicking the link in the post you just replied to.
>>24492240
Try to not reply to a post that's already deleted next time.
>>24492240
kek. for context:
>the now-deleted post replied to my above post pointing out that "frames still work" >>24491114
>then I autist'd
>the guy to his credit immediately recognized his mistake and promptly deleted his post in the midst of all this
>but my sperging remains
>>24491068
this takes me back actually. I also didn't mention cockmongler and happy negro.
Slower, but /b/ was still quick. Just like now, it was people pissing into a sea of piss.
>>24492284
I have to wait a minute to delete my post and it was deleted before your post was submitted. You wrote an explanation for what? You think other people will even care?
i missed so many memes
I don't remember what year I started coming but I remember doing the habbo raids and posting in the 'misfire' get on /b/. My 14 year old self made a shitty sandwich guy edit that got reposted and I have never felt more proud of anything I've done in my life than that moment.
>>24490109
Been here since 2006. There were no generals, there was a lot of spam with early internet culture, and we all hated George W Bush. It was a more innocent time.
/b/ has surprisingly stayed much the same with the gore and jailbait threads.
>>24493506
Well, talking of jailbait, mods became fucking quick banning cp/jailbait posters. Makes awhile since i haven't seen one. (Not complaining honestly)
I started lurking in 2009 i think for about 2 years before my first post on b. Was b everyones first board? I remember actually buying into the newfag shit and thought people would catch on. 6 years later and I long for the time i could be called a newfag again...
Time has seem to gone exceedingly fast since coming on 4chan
>>24490109
Everything was so much nicer with only a few boards.
>>24495156
>Was b everyones first board?
Nope. Mine was /a/. I only lurk /b/ sometimes, but it isn't that fun of a board.
I fucking hate what generals did to the site
>>24495216
Made it better?
I remember 700k get. We were waiting for it, then out of the blue fucking moot makes a thread at 699.99k and resets the entire post count and posted something like "only 699k back boys".
I miss those days.
actual conversations on /b/
>>24495181
I feel like i outgrew b. Id say its essential in getting a taste of how degenerate and gay 4chan can be and familiarizes you with the site culture and memes. I tried a at some point but was never a big anime watcher until 4chan so i was always insulted and never got straight answers so i just kinda stopped. Then i went to v for a bit but it was nintendo central 24/7 and i dont fit in at all since i'm mostly a playstation and pc guy. Then i got redpilled on the truth of the world and happenings on pol, but started getting scared at all the happening threads and thinking a ww3 could happen any day from now. Then i came here and this has been my board. I tried to dabble into other boards like jp and cooking to expand my interests.
But at heart im a retarded scared uncultured neet. So it makes sense that im permenantly stuck here.
It was a bit like 7chan is now
There was a higher concentration of relaxed, funny people
>>24495300
Does moot still own 7chan?
it was slower. that's about it.
>>24491799
NO GAEMS
>>24491624
PS3 launch price
>>24490617
>599 US DOLLARS was 9 years ago
I've been here far too long. Please find attached the first thread I ever made which actually got replies.
>>24491624
>>24495360
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IH2w2l1JTs4
Lel can't believe there are people on here now who are too young to remember this shit.
I guess 18 year olds were 9 when this happened. I loved E3 that year.
I still don't.
>>24495405
Holy fucking shit I remember that thread.
>>24495430
Actually nevermind. The thread I remember with that image devolved into the faceplate. At least that's how I remember it.
Here's a nostalgia nuke.
Notice the department of propaganda existed even back then, take note reddit.
I think my first year was 2006. I remember a fuck load of spam on /b/
>>24490109
was a lot nicer to be honest with you. Wasnt a bunch of young faggots acting like assholes.
>>24490781
Underage and b&
>>24495426
played that shit on kong when it came out, I was a walljumping pioneer senpai.
for real though, opening day was insane, the shaman controls were terrible and nothing worked
>31 years old
>been on 4chan since my teens
>4chan has changed
>I haven't changed
>please kill me
>tfw the wild west feeling of early to mid 00's internet is over
Been her since near the beginning, or as late as January 2004. I spent most of my time on /d/
>/b/ was posting dank photoshops and /h/ from animes of the time like Tenchi Muyo and shit
>there was 1/1000th the spam, if not less
>things were good
I really hate how the Autistic shitposting thing took off. Most boards are clogged with Autism, /d/ threads have a lot of photoshopping and reposts.
The days of rapidshare/megaupload are long since over. It was sad to see them go. These days kids spam their secret club hentai links and gobble that shit up. I definitely prefer the people who distribute and upload pornography to actually care, for it to be a thing where if a thread drops off the board, someone doesn't just repost 100 links, but instead actually cares for what a thread is about and can refer to explicit sets
>>24495646
>been on 4chan since teens
>that's not possible
>wait
>4chan was 12 years ago
sobbing_frog-man_with_blurry_clock.jpg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4taIpALfAo
>>24490109
Yeah.
It was a little bit more nerdy, but still just as retarded.
>>24495181
who is this semon demon
>>24495156
/co/ was my first
reddit in its prime was much better than 4chan in its prime, deal w it
