Varies from hobby to hobby I'd say. As far as gaming goes, I think the infection really got going around the time of the Great Recession. Among other things Sark started up Feminist Frequency in 2009 and Tropes vs. Women in 2011, Bioware's last non-totally-pozzed games were from that time period (DAO - 2009 and ME2 - 2010), and the purge of known conservatives from gaming picked up steam not long after IIRC (ex. Martin O'Donnell, the original composer for Halo and an outspoken conservative, was drummed out around 2013-14).

Can't remember where exactly (it may have been KF) but I read a theory that Sarkeesian might've been the tip of the spear for Larry Fink et al. to sink the claws of ESG into vidya around the time of the Recession and try to puppeteer it into just another vector for prog agitprop. Knowing the results and how Feminist Frequency persisted for so long despite struggling to gain even 1k views on most of their videos for ages before finally shuttering for good only very recently (perhaps the ESG bux finally ran dry?), I'd believe it now.

I would imagine the rot must've set in much earlier with movies & comic books, if only because they were already mainstream entertainment mediums well before gaming really broke into the mainstream.

Buffy was the first overtly gurl power series for nerds. It was also one of the first IP centered about "subverting" expectations in an in-your-face way. Get it? Because blondes are dumb and useless in horror series but this one is strong and quipy. It also spawned the blight that's TV Tropes.

As for the troubled softboy nerd, The OC was one of the first series for teenage girls with one

Pretty sure it's been a rolling issue for thousands of years.

One of the biggest sources of "modern feminism" as a movement has been the field of Psychology. Its popularization is what helped them convince people to accept a lot of things as "problems" for all of the Civil Rights movements. The most famous being the god awful Two Doll Experiment for black/white relations but that's a different topic. They'd create a story that painted an awful picture, let the media write a dozen bleeding heart stories about it, and then legislation would follow.

But given that, Karen Horney would absolutely be not just the Patient Zero but also the very model they would strive to emulate. From introducing the idea "womb envy" to treating all men as defective women to introducing "mommydom" as a way to control men, all stemming from her. One of the students of Freud himself, making her influence felt in the crib for the budding field, and she existed entirely to tear down his work and push her radical agenda.

Heck even the idea of using a contract to trap men in an abusive cycle to break them down, analogous to alimony and child support now, came from her forcing any client she was doing therapy on to sign a contract forcing them to see her for at least a year no matter what or face a steep penalty. During which time she would break down their psyche until she became their new "mom" and could then delve into their minds from there for her own purposes (under the guise of "helping them").

And from there, feminism itself would fractalize into every facet of society and from there hobbies. Including not talking about her much beyond a footnote novelty because of how bad she makes them all look.

In Hollywood it goes back to the 1970s. 1979 film Norma Rae has Sally Field, a Strong Single Mother™, who unionizes her textile factory over intense opposition. 1980 saw the film 9 to 5 about 3 women secretaries (Jane Fonda, Lilly Tomlin, and Dolly Parton) getting the best of their ass hole boss.

We all like to think that this woke stuff suddenly exploded into existence during the Obama administration, but the groundwork for it was being laid for many decades before that. The people who were all pushing woke ideology in the early 2010s were all college graduates in the early 2000s, who had professors in their classes who were all graduates in the 1990s, who in turn were taught by the the 1960s/1970s communist radicals who went into academia when their violent communist uprising fizzled out in the 1970s.

We are now seeing the results of a decades long infiltration movement that can be traced directly back to the Soviet Union in the 1920s.

I can't tell you Patient Zero, but I can tell you its COVID-equivalent "Hug A Chinese Person Day", when the problem existed, but suddenly went wild:

Big Bang Theory.

Worst thing to happen to nerds and introverts: It made them popular. Hired some male prostitutes, dressed them up in the skinsuit of geekdom. And it coincided with cellular phones becoming internet-accessible. A disease and a spread vector.

"Eternal September" has been happening for a long, long time, and that time varies depending on the medium, but September 2007 is a rough one indeed.

Subreddits like men drawing women and feminists in general need to be kicked out of all hobbies. " You can't draw sexy women that is objectification!" Lol suck my dick. Funny how feminists have literal years of discourse of how nerds are sexist and evil for liking fake boobs, and that said fake boobs in fucking video games is a factor that causes sexual assault and women being objectified irl, meanwhile Chad ( whose knowledge of gaming amounts to Fifa and cod) is the one who is actually treating real women like pieces of meat left and right. Trust me, the type of guys that actually do assault and hurt real women aren't the type of guys to play guilty Gear and Senran kagura. I honestly will never take these cunts seriously as long as they defend women sexualizing themselves immensely on social media and onlyfans, but sexy women in video games are degrading and cause objectification of women because they're drawn and designed by men to appeal to other men. And yes, that is a real argument they make as to why Cardi b is "empowering" but tits in a game is a literal hate crime against women ("real women choose to be sexy but fictional women can't consent so it's just made by men for other men!"). Basically, sexualization ( which I thought was inherently degrading to women and gives men a bad societal image of women) is okay once a woman is doing it and commercializing off it.

Women driving then women voting.

Everything has been going downhill for a long time. Gaming, I'd say mid 2000s was when it got obvious.

Tabletop gaming is in the last 7 or 8 years.

TV? Probably 20+ years.

Started with the 19th amendment.

Funny also how they post shitty "Hawkeye initiative" edits of men in women's outfits in video games ( for example, they will make a shitty edit of a man wearing cammys leotard for example) to show " how do you boys like it if you were sexualized in media!", as if anyone told them they couldn't make their own shitty fujo bait yoai games with men dressed as gay strippers in them, while they're the ones demanding that people they can't draw sexy women because of ideological and moral faggorty reasons ( men seeing chun lis ass will contribute to them objectifying women irl!).

the existence of liberalism

I dare say, I think Felicia Day was almost certainly one of the harbingers.

Not that I hold a lot against her personally, but the level of fandom and worship the woman got was foretelling of what was to come. And the more popular she got, the more we saw a lot of the woke-wannabe crowd jumping in too. Will Wheaton, as just one notable example.

This was also the key timeframe when gaming and nerd related fandoms started going mega mainstream. Investors saw those dollar signs and everyone was trying to jump on the bandwagon, no matter how little they knew about the subject matter.

I'll also say that in some respects, that last season (especially the last episode) of Buffy was one of the most cringetastic and totally unsubtle early examples of modern feminist propaganda that I ever saw.

Granted, I only recognized how godawful this was after I started to notice that the very same tone, theme, etc. was being repeated over and over throughout almost every piece of feminist-pushing woke media.

You mix a lot of different industry together in the query, they would all have different dates and entrypoints,but they all would hail from the culture which has its start in academic and government, first infection would likely be the film industry since it had the large production requirement and the ability for government to easily interfere and ensure that approved messaged get into it. Comic books would have been in a similar vein. Gaming itself only grown large and infected enough around 2008.

But patient zero was always red xD.

Patient zero didn't lead to the epidemic. The centralisation of social media with the advent of Facebook/twitter and their feed based algorithm is what I'd consider the beginning of the end. Let me explain:

These platforms are setup to reward cheap emotionally reactive content. The sheer volume of shock posts also drowns out other subjects. So the result is that you got a population that's hooked up on the same system, seeing the same thing and these things are mostly reactionary bullshit. Who thrives in an environment like this? The loudest crybabies. Slowly, everyone gets "woken" up to their laments and call to actions are made. If you oppose said resolutions, you easily get publicly shamed because, after all, that itself is good content.

Meanwhile, businesses start using tools to analyze the platforms' data. There's never been a better way to sample public opinion at this scale in human history. Whether accurately or not, they start thinking that the trendier topics are what people care about and want. Again, the platform rewards shock so what comes on top are the laments of the crybabies and their call to action... So this leads businesses to adapt their strategy consequently. The statistics tell them that they should pander to cause XYZ and so they do.

Entertainment is the first industry to fall because their products live and die on trends more than they do out of their own artistic merit. They are the first to tune in to the feed and adapt to what they see there. What do they see? Cries of discrimination. What do they do? Adopt the "solutions" proposed by the loud ideologues.

And this my friend, is how it started.

So honestly who is patient zero or who is to blame?

The women themselves, which is why I don't care about their sports being invaded, reap what you sow. Your average woman might not be a raging feminist, but I've noticed it time and time again that if prompted, an average woman will mostly agree with a feminist talking/viewpoint, I've come to a realization that while Imp does take it too far sometimes, at the core of the issue, he is right about them.

I would say it started with disney star wars and ghostbusters really. Before that we had the resident evil movies and underworld series with op female stars aswell but they didnt shy away from casting hot actresses and show them in sexy outfits back then. Since that is gone there isnt much left to these type of movies. We still maybe get something like Atomic Blonde or Peppermint with a relativ op women but they also casted good looking women for that which can also get hurt sometimes even if some of the melee fighting looks ridiculous when they throw guys arround twice their size. Now its just bad writing/casting and no fanservice and weak/stupid men.

Smoking, and we have Freud’s cousin Bernays to thank for it:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s

That's a pretty tough one to be fair, the infiltration even though the foot soldiers are complete retards was well organised and simultaneous. I'm sure any one of fans could point to something happening in the industry. Hell I would go even earlier than GamerGate as you have old school MRAs who saw this shit happening to one degree or another.

Male only spaces in general have been under attack for decades. It's not just the hobbyist groups and entertainment industries that have been getting it. You simply weren't allowed anymore to create male only spaces period otherwise you were being exclusionary so think things like clubs or frat houses etc. at the most basic level. I think the infiltration of men's spaces and hobbies by women was so much more noticeable when it started hitting everything else because most of us were into that sort of thing rather than the other stuff.

Think even earlier perhaps, I could argue that feminist women especially successfully infiltrated the courts and really this is where it all started. No, fuck you men you're not allowed to have your rights, we're going to take half your shit through divorce and there's nothing you can do about it. Oh and by the way, due process is out the window thanks to the duluth model and we can accuse you of rape whenever we feel like it and it's going to be down to you to prove your innocence.

This is why I'm so bitchy about the whole trans thing even by this site's standards and women thinking they can expect me to defend them after they just stood back and let all this happen. Also as for the claims about abuse. It's been proven time and time again those surveys and research are completely full of shit and have been grossly exaggerated for the sake of rage and click-baiting. Most feminist ideology can be traced back to these kinds of bullshit studies and this is where their mantra of 'yes all men' comes from. It's also how the campus rape hysteria got started.

Education was patient zero. When schools were comixed together and no longer segregated between men and women. This marked the beginning of the downfall.

In modern times, gaming + STEM/tech was patient zero though. I feel like as soon as gaming was breached, everything else was child's play given how male-only gaming was seen as by everyone.

Without going into the pre history and communist infiltration of academia...

Elevatorgate. Before gamergate in 2014, there was 2011's elevatorgate in the new-atheist community.

"But that's not a hobby"

Yes it was. It was a nerdy group of internet atheists on message boards and forums and youtubers. It was as much a hobby as a non-hobby can be. One that had uniquely set itself up as opposed to God and so had left itself uniquely vulnerable to ideological takeover. It was also very male, very nerdy, very cliquey.

This was the first domino, the first attack, the first effort that the new-feminists made on internet hobbies.

It wasn't the first infiltration, they'd been worming themselves in for decades prior of course. But it was the first conflict and attempted immune response as the host finally realised there was a viral infection.

Aliens 4 turned Ripley into a super mutant bad ass hero type.

You're little sister.

Seriously, when has this not happened?