GDC Timeline

This is a Timeline of Events for the Great Debate Community.

The timing of all entries should be considered approximate unless specific dates are given.

1997:

• The Atheist Experience public access show airs its first episode on October 19th.

2002:

• Kent Hovind is sent to prison for 10 years and 3 years probation after that due to tax evasion.

2005:

• YouTube is launched on February 14th.

2006:

• Brett Keane creates his first YouTube channel, which would become one of the most popular atheist channels during the early days of YouTube.
• Matt Dillahunty becomes host of The Atheist Experience.
• Google buys YouTube in November for $1.65 billion.
• The Rational Response Squad is founded.
• The Amazing Atheist channel is created by TJ Kirk on November 20th. TJ's channel was the first atheist YouTube channel to gain a significant following (and maintain that following into the present).

2007:

• The beginnings of what would eventually become known as the Great Debate Community emerges from the chaos of online discussions between Young Earth Creationists and skeptics/ science defenders, and many well-known players join YouTube doing this year. However, the term "GDC" isn't coined until at least until 2013 and the Google Plus community isn't created until 2016.
• Thunderf00t uploads the first installment of his Why Do People Laugh At Creationists? series to YouTube in September, the first episodes of which focus primarily on debunking the creationist arguments of VenomFangX and Kent Hovind.
• AronRa uploads the first part of his Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism series in November, which dispelled many of the central tenets of the creationism movement and provided a comprehensive overview of the evidence for evolution, rather than focusing on any single person.

2008:

• Many additional YouTube atheists launch channels and/or series debunking the claims of creationist apologists.
• AndromedasWake uploads the first installment of his series Creation Astronomy Propaganda Debunked (exact date unknown, as his channel has been scrubbed).
• Potholer54 hosts the first annual Golden Crocoduck Award.

2009:

• The League of Reason forum is created by AndromedasWake.

2010:

• The first episode of The Magic Sandwich Show (hosted by dprjones) is uploaded to YouTube in November, though it had been running on BlogTV for some time prior to this.

2011:

• Google+ is launched on June 28th.
• The Fundamentally Flawed podcast is launched by Alex Botten, Jim Gardner, and Dr. Mat Hunt.

2012:

• The Reason Rally is held on March 24th in Washington DC. Many well known YouTube skeptics attend.
• The Atheism+ movement is created in August by feminist and skeptic blogger Jen McCreight. A schism in the broader community soon follows.
• Strife launches The Lying Ghost Show, which runs until late 2013.

2013:

• Google Hangouts is launched on May 15th, providing a fertile ground for interaction between members of the YouTube Great Debate Community. (Previously, audio/video chats in the community were conducted through platforms such as Skype, BlogTV, and Stickam.)

• The Presuppositional Apologetic of Sye Ten Bruggencate takes the community by storm as many people had never heard of it and didn't know how to address it. Many videos and hangouts regarding "presupp" are produced by the more philosophically minded members of the community, and the tactic is considered defeated (and subjected to endless mockery), though it would continue to be a hotly discussed topic for years to come.
• Sye Ten Atheist uploads his first video, satirizing Bruggencate-style presuppositionalism.
• The fifth and final Golden Crocoduck Award is held by Potholer54 (after six years--no award was given in 2011).
• The community of the people on the internet who debate Theology, Philosophy and the age of the Earth is unofficially named the Great Debate Community. (AgentofDoubt is thought to be one of the first to coin this term.)

2014:

• 13Heathens begins running Insomnia Shuffle hangouts on an irregular but frequent basis.
• The Drunken Peasants podcast is launched in January by The Amazing Atheist (TJ Kirk) and several others. G Man and Brett Keane are first invited to the DP as guests in March.
• JD Kain begins running weekly hangouts, which would eventually become Talking Shit Tuesday.
• In April, Redline files a DMCA claim against a video of his that TrueEmpiricism mirrored without permission or attribution, and a short but intense flagging war erupts (partially spurred on by Brett Keane).

• Alex Botten's Fundmentally Flawed podcast is ended in February.
• Nadia Chambers begins running open discussion hangouts on a near constant basis early in the year.

• Around late fall, the community surrounding Fundamentally Flawed splits apart amid internal drama and general distrust regarding its multiple private Facebook groups.
• Matt Slick begins appearing on the Bible Thumping Wingnut show.
• The first annual Dumbfuck of the Year Awards is held by Redline in December.

2015:

• For reasons that are still not entirely clear, interest and belief in a Flat Earth spikes around this time. It quickly becomes a common topic of discussion within the GDC, with several fundies adopting flat Earth beliefs, and several skeptics shifting the focus of their videos and hangouts to debunking flat Earth arguments.
• Kent Hovind is released from prison (and all felt a great disturbance in the force). He immediately resumes making videos attacking science and promoting conspiracy theories.

2016:

• The GDC Google+ community page is created by Steve McRae.

• The infamous Hangout Sniping exploit is made possible by an update to Hangouts on July 14th.
• Kevin Buchik creates the Dumbfuck of the Year scoreboard for use in the December contest.

2017:

• The GDC Wiki (you know, the site you're currently reading) is created in June by Callzter.
• The GDC website and dedicated YouTube channel are created.

• The GDC Discord server is created on December 1st.