It's funny to me seeing people talk about how they got peaked in like 2020. I think maybe some people who weren't around pre -OVID aren't entirely familiar with how the event used to be, and how it is the ur-example of tranny imperialism.
I think I discovered it back in 2014. I had no idea what speedrunning was, but what I witnessed then was a bunch of autists ripping apart classic games in crazy ways just to complete them as fast as possible. All the technical explanations, the warm, cringy undercurrent, and a real sincerity added to a great atmosphere. I told my buddy about it, and that summer he spent the night at my house like every week and we just stayed up all night surfing speedruns. The memes were different, everybody was donating from Germany, there was this strange hobbit like man named Blueglass that appeared in every video and laughed like a dolphin, the biggest donation goal was to save or leave the animals at the end of Super Metroid, and Cosmo was still a dude.
I think it was around 2017, around the time esteemed cow Protomagicalgirl was at the height of his power, something about that old atmosphere changed. I remember the year before there was some black runner that did a run of some Sonic game, I was hoping he was going to be back this year. Instead, it was a dude in a wig with a painfully masculine voice tittering about the joys of Sonic speedrunning. Okay, interesting, but this person was a shitty host and I got the feeling he got the spot because of his trannyness. Okay, maybe it's a one time thing.
It wasn't a one time thing. Genuinely, without exaggeration, every new event had more trans people and less genuinely entertaining autists. Much like the Orkoid gestalt field, as more came, their collective power grew, and reality shifted to make the event about them, and apparently, it always had been.
By the time 2020 rolled around it had already gotten to the point that it felt less like a speedrunning event and more like a trans rally. Donations from Germans diminished and were replaced by LGBT nonsense. The demographics shifted, many of those old autists now trannies themselves. Any attempt of light criticism was shouted down. They had now coupled themselves to the event, and criticism of GDQ was tantamount to actual transphobia.
This is the GDQ of 2026. An awkward, ideologically confusing cringe event that used to be about the kinds of people that hang out in this forum getting together and playing games really fast. Why did it ever need to become more than that? I miss the old GDQ.
