Keep in mind I'm one anon with a fallible memory, so forgive me if I give a representation that's only partial because its literally impossible, 8chan was like its own country, no man can really understand what was truly going on with it completely.
I'll probably stick mostly with /v/, GG, /pol/, and the activity as it pertained to several boards and the general popularity of it at the start, as well as any history surrounding some notable figures.
>the beginnings
8chan was technically made in around 2013, but nobody besides a few random retards or autists gave a shit. It was made by a wizardchan fag named Hotwheels (Frederick Brennan, aka the cripple, later becoming the cripplecuck, who >we all thought was based at the start), but nobody gave a shit at this point about this site
>the REAL beginnings
in August 2014 and onwards, Gamergate was starting up. This shit became massive, not because some slut apparently fucked journos like nobody's business (though that was pretty bad when the scope was revealed), but because of how much censorship happened across all sites. Anons thought 4chan was impregnable from this shit, but it turned out not to be so as the topic of Gamergate was totally censored from /v/, only allowed to be discussed on /pol/. Through some digging, it was revealed Moot was an actual literal cuck who sold the site out, hired SJW mods, and was basically a thirsty traitor, and people needed a site they knew was free from this bullshit. 8chan was found where people could make their own boards and control their own shit, and choose their own freedom (part of the reason it was called infinitechan) and a large months-long migration of anons, called the first exodus began with people shilling the board on cuckchan for months on end.
What a lot of people nowadays might not be aware of was just how huge this, and later the second exodus, were.
8chan went from a literal wasteland, to having a /v/ board which made 5 million posts in under a year and this was despite the imageboard being under consistant DDoS attacks, going down frequently and having major problems like CP and doxxing/harrassment false flag attacks, journo smear campaigns, all manner of bullshit basically.
There were numerous boards on 8chan that were actually alive and thriving.
Most of the quality anons from cuckchan had either left or were crossposting (and people likely noticed a drastic decrease in posting quality), and 8chan became the second biggest imageboard on the internet.
It was still small compared to halfchan, but it was no slouch
As the board was growing, anons realized the need to create their own culture.
It was in the midst of GG that Vivian James was created, as basically a response to feminists bitching about female characters in games, and Vivian James (Vidya Games, with her /v/-inspired shit of being a NEET with a green and purple hoodie, a ginger which is a minority for whites, and so on) was an anti-thesis to that. it was also a time when board tans were getting more and more popular, each large board eventually created or used their own -tans, and had their own artists and places, often but not always overlapping, and created OC that contributed to the "culture" of 8chan. Red anon was also created by a Jap-anon's idea, and people started taking pride in using 8chan, partially because a lot of people (not everyone though ofc but enough) left out of principles though. A large portion of /pol/ left with GG, /v/ and other anons, and /v/ and /pol/ were basically aligned for the GG issue more or less, both of which were the first and second biggest boards on the site, but the site was truly free, even shit like /leftypol/ commies and furfags and all manner of degenerates were using the site.
For a brief period of time, despite numerous major problems, anons could feasibly call this a paradise compared to 4chan and the way things were going because of how many good things came of it, but damage was building thanks to all the attacks, and people were slowly dropping off over time.
>the tough times, and the administration changes, but still there was life
People loved the times under Hotwheels generally, despite his occasional faggotry, but he couldn't handle dealing with the site, and there were various things going on at the time, like the attempt to make a better imageboard that could better accommodate the anons that ended up being a scam with Josh Moon (kiwifarms owner) taking 15K from anons and doing nothing on it and fucking off. The site was being routinely fucked, and despite things like domain changes and whatnot, Hotwheels couldn't handle the pressure, and eventually sold the site to Jim Watkins, someone who glowed like a nigger in the dark, but anons were reluctant to leave on mere suspicion alone after all that was established and all the difficulties and problems endured, and Watkins made some... questionable changes that went somewhat unnoticed by a lot of anons at the start, but were slowly chipping away at the site.
he purged certain BOs for no good reason, and pretty much fucked certain boards completely like /sp/, but the site was functional and could handle attacks so people weren't really aware when the larger "problems" seemed fixed, at least from what I gathered, but then the Trump elections happened and things got more and more complicated.
The site was routinely getting raided, especially /pol/, by obvious shills during the election campaign, which led to some... poor moderation decisions and some necessary survival tactics, on top of the new BO being a turkroach maddowposting avatarfag freak who banned people, and even later banned a global (Ron Watkins, Jim's son) who posted a warning on their board.
I believe /pol/'s board ownership was switched out during Hotwheels time by some fag he liked, which slowly caused damage to the board that eventually got pretty fucking critical.
Eventually /pol/ was more or less killed off, and shit got fucked.
Anyways, despite a slow bleeding of users, the site was at least "okay" during this period of time, unless you were a fag who liked to use the boards that got fucked over, in which case, unfortunately, yeah, you were fucked, and Jim deserves to burn for what he did.
>site death and zombification
The site was mostly going on as usual, minus some major events here and there, such as /hwndu/ being a massive board for the time that they fucked over Shia Lebouf, Neogaf dying and us having a massive celebration thread and a good time, etc
Life was generally good, but there were serious problems that were going on under the surface that were killing the imageboard, unbeknownst to a lot of anons, but despite these issues, the majority of anons were still there, using the 2 major boards, /v/ and /pol/.
Eventually, things come to a head, with... I can't remember at this point, I think it was the El Paso Shooting, but it could also have been the Christchurch shooting, where Jim shuts down the site for an entire year, and anons have to survive out in bunkers.
this is what killed the site most of all, in that period of time, we lost anywhere from 70-90% of the users during that time while >we were on the bunkers because the site was literally completely gone for many months. It eventually came back as 8kunt, which the remaining anons tried to work, but it was just unworkable as a site
>(small scale) revival
This is the period of time since 2020 and now, with the remaining userbase split, somewhat overlapping, across the webring, with site drama and bullshit keeping a lot of us separate, but now things are... relatively stable I suppose, compared to the more chaotic times of the past 3 years. Hotwheels turned into a leftist furry fag, Jim
This is a very broad summary, its not nearly enough to cover most events on 8chan I'm aware, so ask questions and I'll do my best to answer what I can.
Already hitting the text limit on this post so I'll sto