5 Terrifying Bastardizations of the Wikipedia Model
The fact that Wikipedia lets anybody edit just isn't enough for some people. Some demand their own Wiki, damn it!
What kind of people feel the need to set up an entirely separate reference? Why, that would be the ones who live on the fringes of society, who need a place where their people can go to be shielded from the whole "outside world" thing.
Reading these inbred cousins of Wikipedia is like stepping into a terrifying parallel universe.
Conservapedia
Even if you're the most conservative damned person you know, I'm betting you'll still be plenty creeped out by Conservapedia, which bills itself as a "much-needed alternative to Wikipedia, which is increasingly anti-Christian and anti-American."
It's tough to argue against that last part, as there are rumors that some of the authors at Wikipedia are not very good Christians, and that others are not even from America at all. It's no wonder Wikipedia's entry for "United States" is nothing but a Photoshopped image of a cow shitting America.
Luckily, Conservapedia blows the lid off its rival, in its entry on ...
"Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia founded by entrepreneur and atheist Jimmy Wales and philosophy professor Larry Sanger...Despite its official "neutrality policy", Wikipedia has a strong liberal bias. In his article entitled 'Wikipedia lies, slander continue' journalist Joseph Farah stated Wikipedia 'is not only a provider of inaccuracy and bias. It is wholesale purveyor of lies and slander unlike any other the world has ever known.'"
Yes, not even Hitler's own propaganda machine can stand against the pure torrent of evil lies that ushers forth from Wikipedia. Fortunately, these guys are here to restore some balance to this thing. Let's check out Conservapedia's even-handed treatment of, say, liberals:
"A liberal is someone who rejects logical and biblical standards, often for self-centered reasons. There are no coherent liberal standards; often a liberal is merely someone who craves attention, and who uses many words to say nothing."
Everything you need to understand about life inside the hardcore conservative bubble is right there in that paragraph. "People with other points of view aren't actually disagreeing with conservatives. They're just pretending to, probably because they're gay little babies!"
Actually, "bubble" probably isn't the right word. The folks at Conservapedia are trying to build something more like a bunker, surrounded by six feet of concrete that no opposing ideas can pierce. If you're wondering how the conservative movement got to DEFCON crazy, I've prepared a helpful timeline:
If it sounds like I'm being critical, some of the entries make valid points. For instance, I defy you to construct an argument against this:
"Vic Eliason of Crosstalk America rightly points out that if all Americans turned homosexual it would only take a few generations for the United States to lose most of the population of the country through lack of procreation. This would make the US more vulnerable to attack by our enemies."
That is in fact what would happen to an entirely gay country. Checkmate, Harvey Milk. Let's look up Hitler:
"...consciously sought to make the practices of Germany conform to the theory of evolution."
At this point you may be calling bullshit, figuring it's some snarky Stephen Colbert-esque mockery of the right. Not so. Conservapedia is the work of Andrew Schlafly, a lawyer and school teacher (let that second one sink in for a moment) and son of famous conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly (these days you can find her complaining about how George Bush wasn't conservative enough).
Where it Really Gets Weird...
The Conservapedia Bible Translation Project:
Upset that the Bible doesn't warn us about the dangers of Socialism, welfare and Hollywood? Rewrite that shit!
For further research, see...
Liberapedia, the grossly sarcastic liberal answer to Conservapedia. Their most-visited entry? Conservapedia.
Wikifur
To prove we're impartial here, we swing to the other side of the political spectrum, which is where you'll find the animal/human sex fetishists (source: Conservapedia).
So let's pull up the furry Wiki at Wikifur. We saw the "Hitler believed in evolution" entry at Conservapedia, so let's see what these guys have to say. Searching for Hitler on Wikifur lead me to...
"Nazi Furs is a furry community who harbor an interest in WWII era Germany for historical, militaristic, strategic, living history, reenactment, or fetish reasons."
Below, according to that page, is an example of a Nazi furry, and the Nazi Fur flag:
Yeah, so that's probably the end of civilization right there.
After taking a break for a couple of days, I worked up the courage to search for "sex." Hmmm... it seems to redirect us to "Yiff." The first thing I see at the top of the page is this warning:
OK, somebody has written something on the subject of furry sex that doesn't conform to furry standards. I have to say that scrolling further down that page took more bravery on my part than all of history's war heroes combined.
"Various sources mention it could be named after the noise foxes make while mating. ('It's the sound you get when you rub two foxes together.')".
No, Wikifur, keep that goddamned citation to yourself. Let's go the other direction and search for the least sexy word we can ...
Their entry for "Denmark" is a link to the "Furry Map of Denmark".
Now members of the Denmark furry community can find each other and do furry... Civil War reenactments or whatever they do. But it seems like they should have avoided using a style that's surely going to remind people of those sites that map out the sex offenders in your neighborhood.
FurryWarningSystem.com
Where it Really Gets Weird...
"Animal symbolism is common throughout the religion itself, Jesus himself being compared in the Bible to both a lion and a lamb. Christian furry artists, such as XianJaguar and Holly Ann, depict images of Jesus as an anthropomorphic lion. Some Christian furs even refer to this lion form of Jesus as Aslan."
When I finally build my time machine, I'm going to go back and find a pre-Chronicles of Narnia CS Lewis and show him this, and see if he doesn't abandon animal imagery, writing and Christianity in one fell swoop.
For further research, see...
Memory Alpha, the world as seen through the eyes of another deep corner of Internet fandom. Specifically, Trekkies. Look up Hitler and find how how he won World War II in an alternate time line where Dr. McCoy inadvertently intervened on his behalf.
Encyclopedia Dramatica
So a bunch of 4chan guys got together and wrote a Wikipedia clone. Most of you know it exists already and, yeah, it chronicles all of the Anonymous memes and raids and so on. So you look up a popular meme like "Scientology" and you get:
"Appropriately, finally bit the big green burrito of death from gobbling down too much Vistaril. This was confirmed when Scientologist fagslaves tried to take his corpse to burn it, but were pwned by the Coroner, who got there first."
It's about what you'd expect. You'll see lots of "epic" and "lulz." But try something for me. Go to Google. Type "encyclopedia" into the box and let it suggest a search for you.
That's right. Dramatica is at the top of the list. Above Britannica, Americana; even fucking Encyclopedia Brown.
Now go to their list of articles. There are fucking tens of thousands.
Yeah, this is pretty much a fully functional Wiki through the warped lens of 4chan. And, according to Google, it's the most popular encyclopedia on the Web. Pick a subject. Any subject.
"In the beginning, America was butthurt by three things that the British trolls were doing: restricting American citizens from buying queer shit from France, Shanghai-ing of U.S. citizens into the British Navy, and giving Native Americans firewater and guns."
The Roman Empire:"Over 9000 years ago, there was a land that every /b/tard would have been proud to call home. It was a realm made up of awesomeness and win. It was a place full of loli slaves, orgies, neurotic dictators, Jew killing, and shameless wars against the lesser races. This place was called the Roman Empire."
From the original page
"Despite the misleading name, Pol Pot is not Polish pot; rather, it is the monicker of a committed environmentalist, hippie and highly successful comedian, Pol Pot did everything for the lulz."
"The original mad scientist. Nik is best known for being an attention whore, an uber-1337 h4x0r...Nik went on to build his own laboratory atop a volcano, before starring in 'The Prestige' as David Bowie."
"If you do encounter someone who actually does have agoraphobia try the following fun things to do with him/her/it:
Drop them off in the middle of the woods.
Burn down their house.
Kick them in the face until they die."
And of course...
"He was a vegetarian. Not out of principles but because he had horrible IBS and gastritis and his stomach couldn't handle meat (though his colon and lower intestine seemed to handle it just fine)."
And on and on. There are entries on Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and Aaron Burr and The American Psychiatric Association.
Somewhere, right now, there's a high school kid writing a term paper using Encyclopedia Dramatica as his source.
Where it Really Gets Weird...
To get an idea of the deranged efficiency with which Encyclopedia Dramatica functions, they had an entry on the Swine Flu outbreak up only about 48 hours after Wikipedia. If you're curious:
Swine Flu:Swine flu (a.k.a. pig AIDS, burrito blight, or enchiladapocalypse) is permabanning everyone from IRL, just like bird flu was doing from 2004 to 2008, SARS did in 2003, and swine flu 1.0 did in the 1970s. Many current media reports are saying that the US Government did it for the lulz.
For further research, see...
The much less coherent Wooo!pedia, whose Hitler entry is only 18 words long.
Pagan Wiki
We managed to bring up Christianity in the first two entries, so to deflect the forthcoming accusations of anti-Christian bias from Conservapedia, let's target Paganism as that seems to be the faith that files the fewest lawsuits. I don't know much about Paganism, other than that Christianity "borrowed" from its holidays and remixed them P. Diddy-style, so I should learn something from the PaganWiki.
I'm finding "Hitler" seems to be a pretty good baseline for these, so let's try that. A search for Hitler leads you to an "On This Day..." feature:
"1940 Date of fables meeting of British Witches to raise cone of power to stop Hitler's invasion of England."
Whoa, holy shit! They raised a magic shield that thwarted fucking Hitler! Is there a picture of that happening?
There is now
So Paganism is clearly the most awesome religion on the planet, and I converted in the course of typing that sentence. My first step was obviously to find some spells. I wasn't so naive as to think I could jump right in to cones of power, so remembering my D&D days, I went for what should be a beginner-level spell: "Magic Missile."
No results found? Hell, even Wikipedia has a page on Magic Missile, though I don't see the specific instructions for casting it I was hoping for. Probably only open to Premium users.
Fine, how about some plain old "Black Magic"?
"A racist, sexist, creedist and classist term used to refer to magick being done for 'evil' purposes or by people of whom the user of the term disapproves. Magick is neither good nor evil, positive or negative. It is the use of the power that determines the path that it will take."Alright, alright. I get it. Paganism is in fact simply another religious faith with dignified ceremonies and a rich history, and doesn't actually have a list of witch "spells" that you can cast like Harry Potter or...
Oh, wait. Here it is.
Oh, hells yes. Take a look at the list and you'll know which one I went for:
"War Water is essentially iron-infused water made by leaving iron nails in water to rust, then straining. ...Formulas for hexing War Water may also call for water collected from a thunderstorm and/or the inclusion of the spellcaster's urine (Illes 1048).
... A more pragmatic "foot track" hex suggests shaking up an unstrained bottle of War Water and 'hurl it at the doorstep of your enemy, where it should break, leaving a rusty, dangerously sharp mess for him or her to step in' (ibid.)"
So... the idea is to piss in a glass jar of filthy, rusty water, then throw it at your enemy's door in hopes he'll step in piss and broken glass the next day? Why is this not the dominant world religion again?
Where it Really Gets Weird...
"Essence of Bend Over is an herbal formula used to command and dominate others, and is sometimes used in sex magick... Common uses of Bend Over include turning the tables on an employer, controlling a desired lover, breaking hexes, and turning back evil spirits."
Yes, we'll use it to "turn the tables" on our employer, all right. Nod nod, wink wink. We'll turn the tables on him good.
For further research, see...
Metapedia
Hmmm, what's this? Metapedia? "The Alternative Encyclopedia." Got to be some kind of new-age hippie bullshit. Metaphysical truth or whatever. Well, let's see what they have to say about the Fuhrer.
"For a brief period Europe was united under Hitler and the Soviet Union was held in check. However in the end, Hitler's Germany was defeated by forces outside of Europe: namely the military might of the United States and Asiatic nationalities within the Soviet Union. Adolf Hitler remains one of the preeminent individuals of the Twentieth Century.
Huh. That seems... oddly positive. But, neutrality is what online encyclopedias are supposed to be about right? And you know you're unbiased if you can be neutral about Hitler. Though I am disappointed they omitted the part where his invasion of England was thwarted by a cone of magic.
Wait, there seems to be another omission. Looks like the writer forgot to write about the Holocaust, and in fact the word doesn't appear in the Hitler entry at all. Let's do a search for it...
"Over the years the Holocaust story has been challenged by brave individuals who have risked ridicule, loss of position, and imprisonment in their defense of the truth."
Huh. Well... they must have included a reference for that. Let's see... yeah, the source appears to be a website called Jew Watch.
Waaaaaaait a second. Guys, I think Metapedia might be Nazis.
Let's look around. "Sports" takes you to...
"The University will not release 'academic records' of black athletes - many allege a conspiracy of coaches, teachers, administrators, alumni and the media to recruit illiterate below-average intelligence blacks solely for the promotion of the 'Black Sports Cult' that has become a 'religion' in American with millions of majority Americans 'brainwashed' with their obsessed voyeuristic fixation on watching the scholastically retarded sports heroes jump up and down, bump into each other, perform ritualistic homosexual acts, do strange primitive 'victory dances' on the field and ritualistically follow the cabalistic magical numerics of the 'scores' of the games...
An odd theory on why people like watching sports. Maybe some context would help. I see at the bottom this falls under the category "Negroids," with a cluster of related links.
OK, I couldn't leave without clicking on "Wiggers."
"Wiggers (Whiggers or Whiggas) are degenerate Europeans who dress, speak, act, and use the customs of Afro-american slum dwellers, especially in relation to Hip Hop culture."
They've even included a photo for illustration purposes...
Where it Really Gets Weird...
Like a lot of these Wiki clones, Metapedia fills out their archive by simply copying and pasting pages from Wikipedia (which Wikipedia allows). Hilariously, the Wikipedia-borrowed stubs are stamped with this huge warning:
So for instance, you need to filter the Wikipedia entries that still use the prejudicial term "homosexual" instead of the modern and accepted term "Sodomite."
But here's the best part. Let's say you are a 13-year-old middle school student trying to write a paper on, let's say, Armenia. So you Google and stumble across Metapedia, where you find a concise, straightforward little summary without even a hint of bigotry. Then you follow the link to Armenian Genocide, and skim right over the passing reference to "Negress Condaleeza Rice."
You paste that passage right into Microsoft Word and declare your homework finished. Meetings with school officials ensue. Social workers show up at your house. Dad is shouting, Mom is crying. Thanks, Internet Nazis!
For further research, see...
Christopedia, the Christian encyclopedia that "the saved can edit." They edit it to say that President Barack Obama is "...the first mulatto and first person having ties to a known terrorist ... to be elected President of the United States."
At the bottom of the entry, their "External Links" include The Assassination of Barack Obama, an art exhibit featuring walls painted with nooses and giant black dongs. I'm not kidding.
If you like having your mind blown by Mr. Wong, he has a horror novel coming in the fall that is currently outlawed in 74 countries. Also check out his look at 5 Things You Think Will Make You Happy (But Won't), or just browse through his entire article archive.
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