Wikipedia in culture
With increased usage and awareness, there has been a mounting number of references to Wikipedia in pop culture.
Some parody Wikipedia's openness, emphasizing unreliability and the ability for articles to be vandalized. For example, The Onion ran a front page article in July 2006, "Wikipedia Celebrates 750 Years of American Independence", alluding to the frequent inaccuracies in a publicly editable publication.[1] Others feature characters using the references as a source, or positively comparing a character's intelligence to the knowledge contained in Wikipedia.
Early references
Early pop culture references to Wikipedia tended to emphasize that ability to vandalize the site. The May 7, 2005, FoxTrot comic strip showed one character appending pictures of his older sister to unflattering Wikipedia articles. In a similar joke, the web comic Penny Arcade also satirized Wikipedia with a comic strip depicting Skeletor vandalizing the He-Man article.[2]
The Colbert Report
Wikipedia has been referenced several times on the television show The Colbert Report and these mentions have ultimately had an impact on Wikipedia.
Host Stephen Colbert refers to Wikipedia as his source of information for research on Sigmund Freud, on the 9 May 2006 episode of The Colbert Report. With his normal sarcastic and deadpan delivery, Colbert's segment "The Wørd" mocked Wikipedia's sometimes-questionable information with the screen posting "Even the accurate parts."[3]
Truthiness
In a March 2006 episode of The Colbert Report, Arianna Huffington challenged Stephen Colbert on his claim that he had invented the word "truthiness." She cited Wikipedia, claiming that he had merely "popularized" the term. Regarding her source, Colbert, in character, responded: "Fuck them."[4]
Wikiality
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In a July 2006 episode of The Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert announced the neologism "wikiality" (a portmanteau of the words "Wikipedia" and "reality") for his segment "The Wørd". During the segment, Colbert joked "I love Wikipedia... any site that's got a longer entry on Truthiness than on Lutherans has its priorities straight." (This was true at the time of the broadcast, and that is still the case with the trutiness article being about 40% longer.) Colbert then suggested that adding a fact to Wikipedia makes it true if enough people are convinced of it, thus creating a "wikiality" in which consensus of opinion trumps factual information. He suggested that viewers change the elephant page to state that the number of African elephants has tripled in the last six months, although the addition of false information to Wikipedia is considered vandalism. The episode resulted in a number of people adding the fallacy to the page and Wikipedia administrators restricted edits to the page by anonymous and newly created users. Colbert also suggested that George Washington did not have slaves and that Oregon is Idaho's Portugal. According to him, together "we can all create a reality that we all can agree on; the reality that we just agreed on."
Global Language Monitor, which tracks trends in languages, named "wikiality" and "truthiness" the top T.V. buzzwords for 2006.[5][6]
Parody sites
Wikipedia is parodied at several websites, including Uncyclopedia and Encyclopaedia Dramatica.
In the July 2006 issue of Mad Magazine, there was a short joke with a mock picture of Wikipedia called "WonkyPedia" in the Fundalini pages section. WonkyPedia featured its own logo, in which the letters on the puzzle globe were replaced with MAD characters and the letters M A D. The article shown was on Lincoln's assassination. The URL followed the appropriate pattern: "http://en.wonkypedia.org/wonky/". The same parody returned in the next issue as "Wakipedia". The phrase it advertised was "The Free Encyclopedia (you get what you pay for!)".
Self aware Wikipedia
On the video game review television show X-Play, Morgan Webb looked at the Wikipedia article of Point Blank DS, and then looked at the article on their show. After reading it, the logo in the top left corner of the page spoke to Morgan in typical X-Play fashion. It also pointed out that since the show's inception, they have made 337 fart jokes. When asked why it could talk the logo stated that Wikipedia had become self aware in 2004 due to the massive amounts of information provided by the public.
The Now Show
Steve Punt made a short reference to Wikipedia on the August 4, 2006, edition of The Now Show. Discussing GCSE students stealing coursework off the internet, he claimed some assignments can be proven as being taken from the web as they are signed From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia and all the nouns are blue.
Sounds Like Canada
On the August 9, 2006 broadcast of the national radio program Sounds Like Canada, during an interview with Cory Doctorow, host Jian Ghomeshi said that whenever he looks himself up in Wikipedia, he finds inaccuracies. Doctorow responded that Ghomeshi should make the corrections himself. Ghomeshi said "Is that allowed?" and Doctorow said that in his opinion it was.
Richard Roeper
Richard Roeper's February 9, 2006 column mentioned that his birthday as given on his Wikipedia biography was incorrect, listing August 1, 1960 instead of October 17, 1960. It had been listed as August 1 since the article's creation on December 31, 2003, and was corrected on the date of his column. (This correction has since been reverted due to lack of third-party sources.) On his TV show the weekend of August 12, 2006, Roeper mentioned to guest movie critic Kevin Smith that he had looked up his own biography on Wikipedia and that it falsely stated Killer Klowns from Outer Space was one of his all-time favorite movies. The article did in fact state this from June 28 until the show's airing on August 12, due to vandalism.
Marketplace
Wikipedia was mentioned on the August 30, 2006, broadcast of the radio program Marketplace during a feature on Wikia.
Weird Al
In the song White and Nerdy, by Weird Al Yankovic, the subject says that "editing Wikipedia" is one of his nerdy activities.
References and footnotes
- ^ http://www.theonion.com/content/node/50902
- ^ Penny Arcade comic
- ^ The Colbert Report, "Superegomaniac", Comedy Central, May 9, 2006.
- ^ The Colbert Report, "Faith", Comedy Central, March 1, 2006.
- ^ ""Truthiness," "Wikiality" named TV words of year". Reuters. August 27, 2006. Retrieved 2006-08-28.
- ^ "'Truthiness' and 'Wikiality' Named Top Television Buzzwords of 2006 Followed by 'Katrina', 'Katie,' and 'Dr. McDreamy'". Global Language Monitor. August 27, 2006. Retrieved 2006-08-28.
External links
- Fred the Notable Monkey on Newgrounds — a cartoon short in which Clydex the Platypus gets a Wikipedia entry and Fred's entry is threatened to be deleted
- Wikiality — Stephen Colbert comments on Wikipedia
- Global Language Monitor on Top Television Buzzwords
- Angered Wiki-User — Stephen Colbert receives an angered call from someone who uses Wikipedia