GDC Timeline

This is a timeline of events for the great debate community.

1953:

• Kent Hovind is born

1954:

• Heavy Hauler is born

1970:

• Steve McRae is born

1978:

• JD Kain is born

2002:

• Callzter is born

• 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.
• Google buys YouTube in November for $1.65 billion.
• 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 "GDC" term isn't used until at least until 2013 and the Google Plus community isn't created until 2016.

2008:

• YouTube atheists and skeptics upload the first episodes of many now well-known YouTube series attacking Young Earth Creationism and religious pseudoscience. Examples include AronRa (Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism), Thunderf00t (Why Do People Laugh At Creationists), and AndromedasWake (Creation Astronomy Propaganda Debunked).

2009:

• The League of Reason forum is created by AndromedasWake.

• Potholer54 hosts the first annual Golden Crocoduck Award.

2011:

• Google+ is launched on June 28th.

2012:

• The Reason Rally is held on March 24th in Washington DC. Many well known YouTube skeptics attend.

2013:

• Google Hangouts is launched on May 15th, providing a fertile ground for interaction between members of the YouTube Great Debate community.

• 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.
• The fifth and final Golden Crocoduck Award is held by Potholer54.

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 and several others. G Man and Brett Keane are first invited to the DP as guests in March.

• 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.

• 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.)
• 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.

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.

2017:

• The GDC Discord server is created in December.