There have been many “worthy” retelling of the #GamerGate tag from multiple press avenues all telling us who we are, what we feel, and what we believe. Please find one. Search the article for the word “misogyny.” Did you find it?

Then you are not reading a worthy retelling of the history of the #GamerGate tag. You are reading someone’s opinion as they believe the events are misogynistic in nature. This post will seek to provide a factual retelling of the events of the formation of #GamerGate from someone who has spent a time within the group as well as a refutation of some assertions that both tags were/are 4chan ploys.

#GamerGate as an issue, not a tag, started originally as a post on WordPress from a former boyfriend of independent developer Zoe Quinn as you can read, in full, here.

These posts began on August 16, 2014. The first comment to the post was posted at 8:07 AM Unknown Time Zone, but 4chan discussed this hours before the comment. There are some facts in this post:

The ex-boyfriend, Eron Gjoni, wrote about events that transpired, in private, between him and the developer Zoe Quinn. In the events, Eron states that he intended the tale to be of deception, hypocrisy, and pain. It is my personal opinion that love is involved. In the events, Eron names multiple men that Zoe confirmed she had sex with. The three that were named are Kotaku’s writer Nathan Greyson, her boss Joshua Boggs, and developer and friend Robin Arnott.

The original point of dissemination for the blog, originally written by antinegationism on Tumblr, is SomethingAwful and Penny Arcade. Both threads were deleted. This means that 4chan was not the original point of dissemination.

4chan posted the events on /v/ at 3:25 AM Pacific on 8/16/2014 almost 6 hours after the events. with the first post asking, “Why are you supporting SJWs and Kotaku again, despite them being horrible human beings?” The initial reaction appears mixed including some crude language of sexual actions, some dismissals of the event being true, and others noting that the event was “not gaming related.”

The second post asks, “Can anyone find any articles Grayson may have written about her or the game that show a blatant conflict of interest?” This one was at 4:27 AM Pacific, an hour after the initial post. In this post, many people insult Nathan Grayson, doubt the authenticity of the story, and saught information to prove Grayson had a conflict of interest.

(Note: 4chan’s archive is presented in Central time for me. Servers are located in California, but the time recorded as “4chan time” is in Eastern time. You can find the 4chan server time by mousing over the date. I’ve converted the times here as appropriate).