This is what I remember from the earliest days. Back and forth between their own posts using multiple accounts to give the impression of active engagement and a growing community. Reposting things from Digg, Fark, etc and grabbing memes like Rickrolls, goatse, to draw eyeballs and clicks to their single page scrolling interface.

Dodging bullshit posts was a game of waiting for comments to post so you could see which actually had real content and not some nasty meme from somewhere else.

Deciding that they needed a coat of arms and figuring out what should go on it, the alien, narwhals, etc.