Did you know that there is a Swiss
political party dedicated to opposing the use of PowerPoint? That some people
believe Avril Lavigne died in 2003 and was replaced by a look-alike? Or that
there’s a stone in a museum in Taiwan that uncannily resembles a slab of meat?
اضافة اعلان
Probably not — unless, that is, you are one of the
hundreds of thousands of people who follow
@depthsofwikipedia. The Instagram
account shares bizarre and surprising snippets from the vast, crowdsourced
online encyclopedia, including amusing images (a chicken literally crossing a
road) and minor moments in history (Mitt Romney driving several hours with his
dog atop his car). Some posts are wholesome — such as Hatsuyume, the Japanese
word for one’s first dream of the year — while others are not safe for work.
Annie Rauwerda, 22, started the account early in the
pandemic, when others were baking sourdough bread and learning how to knit.
“Everyone was starting projects, and this was my project,” she said.
At the time, she was a sophomore at the
University of Michigan. Students are often discouraged from using Wikipedia as a source in
academic work, because most of its pages can be edited by anyone and may
contain inaccurate information. But for Rauwerda, the site was always more
about entertainment: spending hours clicking on one link after another, getting
lost in rabbit holes.
“Wikipedia is the best thing on the internet,”
Rauwerda said in a phone interview. “It’s what the internet was supposed to be.
It has this hacker ethos of working together and making something.”
At first, only her friends were following the
account. But it received a wave of attention when Rauwerda posted about
influencer Caroline Calloway, who was upset that the post featured an old
version of her Wikipedia page that said her occupation was “nothing.” Rauwerda
apologized, and Calloway later boosted the account on her Instagram.
Rauwerda has since expanded @depthsofwikipedia to
Twitter and
TikTok. She sells merchandise and has hosted a live show in
Manhattan, featuring trivia and stand-up.
Her followers often pitch her Wikipedia pages to
feature, but these days it’s hard to find an entry that will impress Rauwerda.
“If it’s a fun fact that’s been on the Reddit homepage, I’m definitely not
going to repost it,” she said. “For example, there are only 25 blimps in the
world. I’ve known about that for a long time, and it went around Twitter a
couple days ago. I was shocked. I was like, ‘Everyone knows this.’”
She is choosy in large part because many of her
followers rely on @depthsofwikipedia for unearthing the hidden gems of the
internet.
“I just love to learn stuff, especially these strange
photos and things I could never find on my own,” said Gabe Hockett, 15, a high
school student in Minneapolis. He said his favorite posts from the account
include “The Most Unwanted Song” and the “Dave Matthews Band Chicago River
incident.”
Jen Fox, 22, said that trading posts from the
account with her boyfriend is “a special, nerdy love language.” It’s also been
a litmus test for friendships. When Fox, a copywriter, moved to
San Francisco
in February, she would mention the account to new people she met. If they were
familiar with it, she said, “we would start DM’ing each other and sharing our
favorite posts, which felt like we were really solidifying a concrete
friendship.” Fox even attended a @depthsofwikipedia meetup at a local brewery.
“There’s such a community behind it,” she said.
It’s not new for lovers of Wikipedia to rally around
their passion for the platform. A Facebook group called Cool Freaks’ Wikipedia
Club, founded eight years ago, has nearly 50,000 members who actively trade
links.
Rauwerda’s account “makes the internet feel
smaller,” said Heather Woods, an assistant professor of rhetoric and technology
at Kansas State University. “It shortcuts the rabbit-hole phenomenon by
offering attractive — or sometimes hilariously unattractive — entry points to
internet culture.”
Zachary McCune, brand director for the Wikimedia
Foundation, which operates Wikipedia, said that @depthsofwikipedia is an
extension of the site’s participatory ethos. “It’s a place where Wikipedia
comes to life, like an after-hours tour of the best of Wikipedia,” McCune said.
And because Wikipedia has more than 55 million articles,
having a guide like Rauwerda is helpful. She hopes that visitors to her page
walk away with new shared knowledge. “I want you to see something that makes
you pause and go, ‘Hmm, that’s interesting,’” Rauwerda said. “Something that
makes you rethink the world a little bit.”
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