Editing An Anecdotal History of Cirno Posting

==Disclaimer==
The following is a short, anecdotal essay about the history of Cirno and Cirno posters on 4chan, as written by an anonymous /bant/ user on June 24th of 2017 and split up into multiple posts in response to another user's questions, and annotated by me.<ref>[https://archived.moe/bant/thread/1165551 The posts in question.]</ref> This page will detail the exchange that occurred between them as well as display the images that were attached to each post, each image corresponding to the post below it. While the general information given is correct, some of the more subjective details can be contested. No claims are made as for this essay's exact accuracy.

==A History of Cirnoposters==
[[File:cirno1.jpg|center|220px|thumb]]
 '''Anonymous''' ID:9K6Rartb Sat 24 Jun 2017 13:44:46 No.1165551 
 Can someone explain this Cirno shit to me?
 Is this some sort of /bant/ meme or is it something that weebs brought here?

[[File:Cirno2.png|center|220px|thumb]]
 '''Anonymous''' ID:X36eGtXZ Sat 24 Jun 2017 13:59:52 No.1165646
 >>1165551 (OP)
 Most people will tell you weebs, but they are mistaken, as only 25% of Cirnoposters have been certified to be actual weebs.<ref>A steryotype, take it with a grain of salt.</ref> The real answer is that the King of Games himself decided he would make this place the chosen land of the getposters and so he as well as a random German made dank gets including one that had mod recognition, causing all the getposters to flood here because this was someplace they could gather their digits without being banned (you can't do that on weeb boards),<ref>Not anymore, anyways.</ref> while /bant/'s international nature meant that normally seperate communities with their own Cirnoposters in them colested together into some kind of weirdo family reunion. Kick back and enjoy the show or ignore it.

 '''Anonymous''' ID:9K6Rartb Sat 24 Jun 2017 14:08:10 No.1165681
 >>1165646
 >the King of Games
 What?
 >getposters
 What is that?
 >only 25% of Cirnoposters have been certified to be actual weebs
 Why are they doing this then?

[[File:Cirno3.png|center|220px|thumb]]
 '''Anonymous''' ID:X36eGtXZ Sat 24 Jun 2017 16:36:41 No.1166443
 >>1165681
 https://youtu.be/D4xy49B4aGY
 The King of Games<ref>[[King_of_GETs_(KoG)KoG's]] proper nickname is "King of GETs", which is a play on the "king of games" title from yugioh.</ref> is this poster who started a bit of a tradition way back in 2007ish on /a/,<ref>November 24th of 2007, to be exact.</ref> informing some proto-/m/fag that if his post ended in 5, his sister would die, and the post did indeed end in a 5, causing an uproar on the board. From there, he grew in power, changing from predicting 5s (which has since become a party trick for getposters) to predicting dubs, then trips, and then quads, and so on, to the point that he searched for larger numbers on boards outside of /a/, popping in and out of boards on a whim just to snatch those digits, something which he did for years. In order to mix things up a bit however, KoG posted images that were semi-relevant to the board which he got the gets, one of which was Cirno, which he started using either during the very start of /jp/ or just before its inception depending on who you ask. Cirno steadily became his most common image used, more so than the actual King of Games, so those who didn't have any idea as to what was happening would see a Cirno image in a board where she otherwise wouldn't appear next to a major get and associate her with digits, some emulating him, creating the first Cirnoposters. For 10 years KoG has labored, and the Cirnoposters both try to claim gets on the behalf of Cirno or else record the endeavors of KoG and their fellow posters, so that they gets might not be lost in 4chan's poorly-made archival system There was a dark age in between the period of 2010, in which GETs such as dubs and trips were disabled using the infamous "XXX" system across the board, hampering many would be getposters, but this was minor, for the major numbers, the ones the KoG cared about, the ones the Cirnoposters cared about, were still attainable and were collected at a reduced rate, and those really anal about it could install a script so they could see what the XXXs actually were.

 [[File:Cirno4.png|center|220px|thumb]]
 '''Anonymous ID:X36eGtXZ''' Sat 24 Jun 2017 16:38:06 No.1166452
 >>1166443
 The Cirnoposters were originally hardly discernible from the Cirnofags (people who just like Cirno, read most "weeb" modern Cirnopsters) and initially shared heavy overlap, and both would group together in /jp/ and exchange conversation, Cirno threads notorious for veering on at the time tolerated non-otaku related discussions because damn it man you can only talk about the mechanisms behind Cirno's freezing for so many times before it's been said and done. The Cirnofags, while very different in constitution, had their own type of charm. They were the artists, the artisans, the movers and shakers who inspired the getposters to continue their crusades in spite of criticism, and they made OC, both for themselves, as well as for the Getposters, as well as snuck traces of Cirno into whatever they touched. This would lead to Cirno getting a full range of reaction images, allowing her to be used in a similar fashion to conventional memes like trollface and what would later become Pepe the Frog. 2012 was the year that GETposting reached its apex, and for a while everything seemed pretty sweet. A prolific artist known as the Ambassador of Gensokyo had gotten a banner with Cirno on it featured after hosting a series of Cirno AMAs, and Cirno had even gotten a games where she was a playable character such as GFW and Hisoutensoku (see: /v/ Hisoutensoku threads, which contained the Cirnofag Atai who was the only one among their number confirmed to actually know how to play the game she came from). Things were looking up, and the year afterward /jp/ was noted by Moot himself as the model example of how a board should be ran, the Cirnoposters happy to be part of the show. It was thought it would be that way for the discernible future, but Moot, or one of his subordinates had other ideas.

 '''Anonymous''' ID:X36eGtXZ Sat 24 Jun 2017 16:38:54 No.1166457
 >>1166452
 Though many of /bant/'s Cirnoposters aren't weebs, weebs obviously made the core generations of posters, and though predating /jp/ Cirno was a 2hu and of course as major a part of its identity as the rest of them, but there was friction. Cirno's relatively simplistic personalty meant she was one of the few characters who found herself accurately depicted in doujin "secondary" type works, leading her to be a fan-favorite among the shallower members of the Touhou fandom, the dreaded secondary who only liked the series for the characters and not the games. Cirno was considered a secondary magnet, and those who frequently posted here were often ridiculed as fools like their waifu/subject of interest/favorite char, not helped by the fact that it seemed like only one of them actually played the games. This did little to discourage them on their own, but a change in moderation policy post-2012 would challenge their existence as a group. 
 Things that weren't strictly Japanese culture such as Touhou and Onaholes were cracked down on with brutal efficiency. This was first welcomed as it meant those shitty /soc/ crossposter threads would be slammed down on, but among the topics caught in the crossfire was a tightened enforcement of rule #3. This new rigidness prevented Cirnoposters from receiving gets in their actual homeboard (having been long kicked out of /a/ for being 2hu related), and was likewise the cause for a stagnation which led to the eventual generalization that plagues /jp/ to this day. Cirno threads became constricted, their composure now reduced to image posting and simple conversation as anything that went too much "off script" risked deletion from what was branded by those who opposed it "Nazi Mod". KoG continued his duties snatching gets from other boards, but there was little way for his fellow posters to show support and those that tried to emulate him often got a b& for doing it wrong, baka.

 '''Anonymous''' ID:X36eGtXZ Sat 24 Jun 2017 16:40:06 No.1166464
 >>1166457
 For years they would have to endure this, causing them to sink back into the URmass of the 2hu fandom and lose much of what made their identity unique from the other 2hu fags as artists became discouraged or were silenced by Nazi Mod, some say including the Ambassador of Gensokyo. Around this point many decided to get a life and learn a marketable skill, be it in programming, or 3DCG, or music composition, or animation, leading to a bunch of Cirnofags learning how to actually do shit at the expense of no longer having the time to shitpost on 4chan (See: YandreDev, though some might argue they did not actually learn how to do shit.) In spite of OC quality increasing, production was in the red, and aside from KoG appearing once and a while as an anomaly things were in dire straits. It would not be until Moot's leave and the creation of /qa/ that the next chapter would begin...
 /qa/ was made by moot during 2015 in order to signal his farewell. Why he left is best left to /v/ and /pol/ to explain,<ref>The implication here being that gamergate and /pol/ calling moot a cuck were the main reasons for his leave, though a strong case can be made that the fappening was a bigger reason.</ref> but many questions were asked to him. "Why are you a faggot?" "Is Cirno the strongest?" With Cactuar on hand, he answered those questions and informed 4chan that he needed to go now, for Googles botnet needed him, and so he left his creation behind, as well as the pedestal that was /qa/ which he ascended from. A while or so later hiro came and has his own AMA, in which he answered that Cirno was his favorite 2hu.

[[File:Cirno 5.jpg|220px|thumb|center]]
 '''Anonymous''' ID:X36eGtXZ Sat 24 Jun 2017 16:41:02 No.1166470
 >>1166464
 To the Cirnoposters, this was seen as a sign. /qa/ was conspicuously left intact even after the AMA sessions, and unlike the police state of /jp/, was virtually unmoderated. It was a haven for the /jp/ posters of old who wanted to leave the general infested stagnation that /jp/ had become, and so they set up shop parroting old memes like it was 2012 again, and from their number came the Cirnoposters who started to record their gets again. At last a happy place where they could do as they please had been found, and though they could not emulate the heights of 2012 again, they could at least do their jobs and converse with fellow weeb anons as well as cheer on KoG and the non-weeb getposters who nevertheless fought in Cirno's name. This would be their happy place for a while, and everything was right and jollly other than that one bastard who kept asking for /pol/ to be deleted<ref> "delete /pol/" was mostly a joke on /qa/, referencing the days when r/shitredditsays would spam /q/ with demands for the board to be deleted (only for the mods and moot to tell them to fuck off), though obviously some posters were saying it unironically.</ref> and that idiot that wouldn't stop using /qa/ like it was /r9k/.

[[File:Cirno6.jpg|220px|thumb|center]]
 '''Anonymous''' ID:X36eGtXZ Sat 24 Jun 2017 16:42:04 No.1166474
 >>1166470
 Meanwhile, on the other side of 4chan, what would become Pepe the Frog had gained much more traction among /pol/ and had become something of a symbol. A symbol of change, a symbol of the robot, the NEET, the anon who was angry at society for rejecting him and locking him away in a basement for his views, and this was a sentiment shared with many not just across 4chan, but across the entire internet. Redditor and /pol/tard were united in their desire to change the real world through any means required, and the 2016 Elections in the US were coming up, and one of the men running was just what they needed to demolish the society which they felt had taken everything from them, and so they lent him their efforts. What they lacked in coordination or money they made up with in autism, persistence, and the ability to really get under peoples' skins, and they waged what is known as the Great Meme War in which multi-billion dollar organizations wasted millions trying to attack a stupid cartoon frog and labeled him a hate symbol because they made them butthurt. How much a contribution /pol/ and /r/TheDonald had made was debatable, but what wasn't debatable was that their guy won and the opposition looked like manchildren in the process of trying to fight them. /pol/ grew from the laughing stock<ref>probably the most contestable line in the essay, /pol/ certainly wasn't nearly as big prior to 2015/2016 though calling it a laughing stock is, in my opinion, an exaggeration of people's attitudes towards to board.</ref> of the site into a capable force which now had major dictation in 4chan's culture as a surge of new members arrived from their shores, interested to see the might of the "Hacker Known as 4 Chan."

[[File:Cirno7.png|220px|thumb|center]]
 '''Anonymous''' ID:X36eGtXZ Sat 24 Jun 2017 16:43:11 No.1166480
 >>1166474
 /pol/ had payed its own price for this maneuver, and too many newfags came in for it to be able to deal with them all,<ref>[https://iili.io/lmf75P.png A graph showcasing /pol/'s posts per day from early 2014 to early 2022.]</ref> leading to a rapid change in culture. Much like /jp/ before it, any /pol/ oldfags no longer felt like they belonged, and the redditors they negotiated with in order to secure power were annoying to deal with and turning their board inside out with bots, shills, and general faggotry. The Cult of Kekistan was created, and has been agreed to be most cringey by all but newfags and idiots who actually invested in it. These /pol/tards needed something in order to get rid of the cancer, yet they were at a loss to how. It would be through chance that on April 1st, 2017, /pol/ would merge with /mlp/ to create /mlpol/, which was seen as a righteous punishment to /pol/ for its faggotry. At first, there was rage followed by the "acceptance of death" routine, but this slowly faded as the /pol/tards realized something... /mlpol/ was free of redditors, who were freaked out by bronies, as well as bots who weren't configured to run on the board. For the first in a long time, the oldfags of /pol/ could converse with each other without cancer, and the horses were seen as the kimo. For a whole day, there was must rejoicing as two seemingly unrelated groups of people embraced each other, with the rest of 4chan agape at what Hiro had created.

[[File:Cirno8.jpg|220px|thumb|center]]
 '''Anonymous''' ID:X36eGtXZ Sat 24 Jun 2017 16:48:10 No.1166506
 >>1166480
 People begged for the merged boards to remain as their own entities, but fuck you it was never meant to be permanent and you know it faggot, and some time around April 2 the boards were frozen, and much anger and rage was had as /pol/ was forced to crawl back to the abomination it had made. Determined to preserve its new home, /pol/ and /mlp/ decided to take the battle to the moderation (or so they thought), and reached /qa/ in a conflict that would come to be known as the /qa/ Wars. It was here the various 2d/random denizens that tended to /qa/ in between Hiro's sporadic returns resided, the Cirnofags among the number, and it would be them, not the moderation team (who did not give a damn either way) who bore the effects of this invasion force. Clips were clopped, 2d/r threads found themselves dealing in horse pussy, and nobody knew what the fug was happening as a few frantic posters tried to inform the invading force that the best way to contact the mods was through the IRC chatroom on Rizon. The Cirnoposters in particular had a novel idea: they saw in /mlpol/ perhaps a fate similar to what they themselves had fared and were sympathetic on their cause to some level, reacting with concern instead of outright hostility like it was right and proper to show to a horsefucker. Perhaps they hoped to convert some among their number into more Cirnofags, or perhaps they genuinely felt bad for what happened, or perhaps they thought treating them kindly would get them to stop, but whatever point they were trying to make /mlpol/ shat up all other threads while leaving their own largely undamaged, even making scarce bits of OC with them in order to legitimize their presence. Not all of /qa/ was amused.

[[File:Cirno9.png|220px|thumb|center]]
 '''Anonymous''' ID:X36eGtXZ Sat 24 Jun 2017 16:48:52 No.1166512
 >>1166506
 Come April fortnight, and the inevitable happened as /mlpol/ was physically deleted from the server after agreements with the mods failed. The occupation of /qa/ became an attempted annexation as 2d/r, Cirnoposters included fought back shitpost to shitpost in a battle which raged with so much intensity<ref>[https://iili.io/lbyTf1.png A graph showcasing /qa/'s posts per day in March and April of 2017]</ref> that /qa/ was frozen for the majority of April.<ref>/qa/ was frozen on April 7th, and unfrozen on April 22nd, though it's possible it was unfrozen earlier and people simply hadn't noticed yet.</ref> This was taken to mean that /qa/ would too be deleted, and there was much sadness as the Cirnoposters had lost their home. Many attempted to return to /jp/ only to be rejected as Nazi Mod culled them for their insubordination, while others tried a hand at /[s4s]/ along with other /qa/ refugees, and still others tried to revive Soku threads on /v/ but failed because none of them actually played the game. Bitter tears were had until the tail end of April, where many things happened to change the mood.

[[File:Cirno10.png|220px|thumb|center]]
 '''Anonymous''' ID:X36eGtXZ Sat 24 Jun 2017 16:53:02 No.1166535
 >>1166512
 /qa/ was unfrozen and after a hard-fought war the home team was victorious, a bit having to deal with an insurgency for many weeks following which is said to continue to this day. Hidden Star in Four Seasons was announced, where Cirno would be a playable protagonist in the style of a main character, leading to a glut of new OC making. Finally, the creation of a new board to divert the cancer that was coming from /pol/ was announced, what would become /bant/.<ref>[https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/chunk/123131940/#123131940 according to the sticky posted on /pol/ by rapeape/the manager,] /bant/ purpose was to serve as a board with a similar format to /pol/ (flags, IDs, NSFW) but which will allow all the off topic stuff that had infested /pol/ for a while by than.</ref> /qa/'s OC makers were exhausted fighting an insurgency, and for getposters the board simply moved too slow to be of use for actual digits claiming. Dozens of Cirnoposters were showing up after years of silence to rally under a single banner, and upon the hour that /bant/ became public an offensive was mounted from that board. The mission: Collect as many nines as possible. This led to the securing of >>99999 and their reemergence into the eye of the public simultaneously, leading us to today, more or less. Important but unsorted footnotes include the Rise and Fall of iichan in which Cirnoposters of a different stripe came and would mingle with 4chan's Cirnoposters on /bant/, the Creation and Death of Blepe as part of the ongoing War on Frogs, and KoG's securing of >>1111111. It is now considered to be the Silver Age: a time of turmoil and strife, but also hope and new OC as the Nine Ballers explore new frontiers and once again makes OC in a climate very different from 2012, some anticipating the release of HSiFS.
 I might have omitted various important details, but this is a rough outline of how we got here, I think.

[[File:Cirno11.jpg|220px|thumb|center]]
 '''Anonymous''' ID:V86h78Ki Sun 25 Jun 2017 14:41:30 No.1177777
 >>1165551
 Let me show you why she is so popular!

==Annotations==