/b/ hacks

Every so often, 4chan's /b/ is CSS hacked by the mods, adding background music, weird graphics, or worse.

2005

November 2, 2005

A camwhore named Xenon, who most likely appeared after a select fanbase started (re)posting his "art" to /f/, was challenged by moot. /b/'s theme was colored mainly pink and contained the Power Puff Girls theme music. With the title of /b/ re-named to "All Hail Xenon", moot proclaimed that this date would "be henceforth known as: The Day Of The Xenon."

November 3, 2005

Rednex cover of Cotton Eye Joe, released in 1995, was set to play on /b/ the day after 'The Day of Xenon'. "Cotton-Eye Joe" is country slang for moonshine, alluding to the potential damage it can cause to one's eyes. /b/'s background was set to flash yellow and white, while its title was re-named "ON A STEEL HORSE I RIDE.", a Bon Jovi reference. As with many other hacks, a thread was stickied at the top of /b/ for /b/tards to comment on the decorum, this particular one adorned with a multicolored flashing "5"; the thread featured well over a hundred different animated .gifs of anime characters dancing to the background music. Subsequently Kebinu, an /a/ tripcode fag, created a Flash-loop "tribute" to the day featuring around three dozen dancing .gifs crammed into a 1024 x 768 window with Cotton-Eye Joe playing in the background and the caption "11/3/05 NEVAR 4GET". The loop's file size prevented the full version from being posted on /f/, and the scaled-down versions subsequently submitted to /f/ were rightfully derided as lame; /f/ tripcode fag Amuro also pilloried the Flash loop for leaving out a particular Pretty Cure .gif that was generally acknowledged by /b/ to best fit the music. Some /b/tards still regard 11/3/05 as the greatest single day in the history of /b/.

November 4, 2005

At midnight the theme of /b/ changed once again, this time shifting to a pink background littered with McDonald's restaurant logos, moving Javascript Golden Arches pop-ups, and the background music changed to an insipid McDonald's TV jingle from the late 1980s ("Big Mac, Filet 'O Fish, Quarter Pounder, French Fries/ Icy Coke, Thick Shake, Sundaes, Apple Pies!") in a "corporate sellout" hack. Pleas to bring back Cotton-Eye Joe went unheeded, and the three-day continuous hack concluded with a whimper rather than a bang. Likely inspired by IGN's McDonald's-themed layout.

Christmas weekend 2005

/b/ goes Jewish just in time for Hanukkah, with "The Magic Dreidel" wallpaper, JavaScript falling dreidels, and "Dreidel Dreidel Dreidel" as the background music.

2006

March 15, 2006

Tiny Tim theme containing music from the show as well as a background of falling flowers, possibly a reference to the assassination of Julius Caesar, which occurred on the same day.

March 18, 2006

A rave theme containing the music "DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS" (taken from Microsoft exec Steve Ballmer's infamous conference warm-up chant from a few years back) with a black and white flashing background. Almost all words were filtered to "DEVELOPERS."

April 1, 2006

tanasinn. Page given this style with a voice repeating "Don't think. Feel and you'll be tanasinn" over and over. Letters randomly replaced with that 3 dot triangle. It was a very enjoyable hack. Page count went up to 32 at 1AM EST, possibly higher later on. People enjoyed it.

April 25, 2006

/b/ is renamed Workbench 1.3 (for the Amiga computer), and adopts that theme visually. Music is mod files.

May 1, 2006

/b/'s background and text colors were changed to red and yellow, respectively, in observation of May Day, a popular holiday among communist regimes. Hymns from the communist Russian Red Army played as background music, and an image of the 4chan leaves with the hammer and sickle were made into a tiled background for a while. Lasted only for May Day. A thread containing Azumanga Daioh hentai was stickied, due to the popularity of associating communists (and, ironically, Nazis) with Osaka.

May 17, 2006

The song "key motion - automatic love (disco dance mix)" autoplayed on repeat for (about 8 hours or so?) on /b/, and /b/'s normal title had the phrase "See me, feel me, hear me, love me, touch me" (from the song) added to it's title at the top of the page during this time.

June 21, 2006

The popular song "Take On Me" by A-Ha is played in the background of a stickied thread featuring two embedded inline pictures; the left picture was a hentai picture of Mai and Shiho from My HiME giving a handjob, and the right picture was an edited .gif of Tsuruya from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya flinging her own head off. The music was heard in the thread reply page only and not on the main /b/ page. Similar to Cotton-Eye Joe, several dancing .gifs were posted in the thread, including the infamous Family Guy scene in which Chris gets pulled into the music video for the song.

June 22, 2006

For the most part a reprise of the earlier May Day hack, except that the background was merely a darker shade of red.

July 4, 2006

Again similar to the Mayday hack.

July 10, 2006

The theme to "Bill Nye the Science Guy" plays in the background.

July 15, 2006

A sticky with the theme song to "2001: A Space Odyssey" plays in the background, accompanied by a picture of "Contacts-Dad" (a man with dilated eyes) post-hacked by a mod. Two people were "banned" for telling the mod's "secret."

July, 2006

A sticky comprising the entire front page of /b/ playing the Inspector Gadget theme was played for a few hours. Many response threads were posted later on, and for the rest of the day.

December 25, 2006

In obvious celebration of Christmas day, the background was changed to green while post backgrounds were changed to red. Animated snowflakes fell from the top of the page and drifted to the bottom, as an NES/techno style version of "Silent Night" played in the background. The "Email" and "Comment" windows were colored red and white, much like a candy cane. In addition, /b/'s title was changed to "A Christmas Story." Santa hats also sat atop the original pictures of all the threads.

2007

January 10-11, 2007

All text disappeared. Users were forced to communicate through the E-mail field or posting pictures. There was an instant skyrocket in the number of threads that won. Some celebrated this as an "evolution of /b/" where there wouldn't be copypasta or ASCII spamming, and the 12-year old fags would emigrate to 7chan. Text was restored just a few hours later.

March 26, 2007

Flashing yellow and white background with red text boxes becomes the standard for /b/, as the Rednex song "Cotton Eye Joe" plays in the background. The hack accompanied moot's apology for letting /b/ turn to shit, and the end of forced anon. The changes match those of November 3, 2005, symbolizing the supposed return of /b/'s old ways.

March 27, 2007

Background was changed to grey with red names and tripcodes. Either many people took advantage of this or the moot had planned this; as many moderators, including W.T. Snacks showed up.

March 29, 2007

Flashing rainbow background, with some incredibly obnoxious music. Many posts also included images of the number 5 inserted by the mods.

May 13, 2007

One of moot's better hacks, the CSS was changed to make everything blend with the background (except for checkboxes and fortunes), making /b/ unreadable. The title of the page was changed to "go away", with a subtitle of "seriously. i'm not kidding!", though like the rest of the text this was not readable unless highlighted or read via the source code. In addition, thumbnails (also hidden by the CSS hack) did not link to the full images. It was rumored that this hack could be disabled by entering colors#normal in the e-mail field, or by disabling CSS (differs in most browsers). This hack lasted for one week, and at least temporarily rid /b/ of furfags, gaiafags, and myspace bosnians. It also had the debatably unfortunate effect of rendering /b/ somewhat unusable to everybody, and thus caused some spillover of /b/tard trolling other boards (especially the "worksafe" ones).

July 26, 2007

/b/ was changed to say:

"CHOCOLATE RAIN History quickly crashing through your veins, CHOCOLATE RAIN Using you to fall back down again, CHOCOLATE RAIN." instead of the typical "/b/ - Random" text. Also, an obnoxious "Chocolate Rain" remix was added to the background. YouTube was also spammed, changing all the "Featured Videos" to Chocolate Rain videos.

August 1, 2007

Due to G4's Attack of the Show! announcing that they would cover Anonymous on their show, all posts had the name of a co-host of AotS! and a fake tripcode added. However, failure reeked from the scene as AotS! decided to hold off the /b/ coverage until the next day.

December 25, 2007

Similar to the previous year with the exception of the background music being a remix of "Santa Clause is Coming to Town."

2008

June 18, 2008

/b/ was changed to 'old /b/' in reference to the recently-released "Metal Gear Solid 4", and the background music was accordingly changed to the iconic track 'Love Theme' from the MGS4 soundtrack and the trailers. Under the heading was written a paraphrase of Old Snake's opening speech:

"/b/ has changed.

it's no longer about original content, epic GETs, and win

it's an endless series of reposts, perpetuated by newfags and trolls

fail - and its consumption of /b/, has become an unstoppable cancer.

/b/ has changed."

Beneath the post entry dialog was the phrase, 'this is our final mission'.

To complete the effect, on the 19th, old /b/ was briefly closed in order to cause an appropriate death scare - all threads were hidden for a short while.

2012

August 6, 2012

To commemorate the Mars landing, /b/ was given a new title and the America fuck yeah-team america video was embedded, and hidden, to play music automatically.