Teams of five to 15 (previously nine to 15 before 2022) competitors earned points for submitting photos and videos of themselves completing prompts from a list they received at the beginning of the week.

[2] The competition began informally in 2010 when Holly Ollis, a publicist for Warner Bros., asked Collins to engage his audience to help Supernatural move from second place to first in the People's Choice Awards voting.

When Supernatural won the competition, Collins, partially inspired by his time at the University of Chicago as an undergraduate during which he participated in the school's annual scavenger hunt,[4] asked his followers to send him self-addressed stamped envelopes into which he put scavenger hunt prompts written on the backs of jigsaw puzzle pieces from a puzzle depicting a rhino.

[3] According to Collins, the primary reason for developing the competition was that he "loved the idea of thousands of people from all over the world connecting to create incredible things".

[8] The contest broke two additional world records in 2013: the longest safety pin chain, measuring 1,901.8 metres (6,239.5 ft), and the largest online photo album of hugs, totaling 108,121 images.

[9] On November 19, 2022, Misha Collins announced that he was officially putting GISH events on hold for the time being, saying he needed to focus his energy elsewhere.

As a result, the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility and Fermilab received numerous emails from GISHWHES participants and set up special tours for the visitors.

Emily VanDerWerff wrote for Vox that, "Quite a few of the items basically invite participants to pester—or even harass—the famous and semi-famous on Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook.

"[33] A 2014 challenge asked hunters to convince published science fiction authors to write a 140-character story for them and some, such as John Scalzi and Lauren DeStefano, complained that the task encouraged participants to harass them on social networks.

"[23] Citing participants' independent efforts to coordinate teams using a variety of online platforms, Stein suggested that "GISHWHES may lack the overt language of industrial reconfiguration found in the Divine Kickstarter Project [a webseries that Collins engaged his fans to help fund].

But through its satire and dadaist play, it more fully models the potential for a congregation of authors, both official and unofficial, to direct fannish and creative investment into digital participation.