My new favorite thing is @herpderpedia on twitter, who is retweeting all of the completely moronic things people are saying because of the Wikipedia blackout. It’s simultaneously hilarious and soul crushing. There seem to be some common themes, like:
- Why is Wikipedia down?! (If you could read, you would know…)
- How am I supposed to do my homework without plagiarizing Wikipedia?!
- Wikipedia is never coming back!
- Why did Obama shut down Wikipedia?!
- Wikipedia is gay!
- Why did soap/a sofa shut down Wikipedia?!
Except with way more caps lock, swearing, and race/gender based insults.
Oddly, this fills the reddit shaped hole in my day.
25 comments
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SeanK
January 18, 2012 at 4:01 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
And if they weren’t so stupid, they’d have realized all you needed to do was turn off javascript in your browser and the site would work just fine.
Ze Madmax
January 18, 2012 at 4:12 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Sounds like these people would be better off with http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page (which is not under blackout!).
evilDoug
January 18, 2012 at 4:18 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
I am amazed that people that thick would actually even try to use Wikipedia.
This one really got me:
DannyMaxwell
If Wikipedia is gone forever I’m dropping Research writing.
5 hours ago
I would recommend he drop the conditional clause in his sentence, then act accordingly.
ambassadorfromverdammt
January 18, 2012 at 4:19 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
“Oddly, this fills the reddit shaped hole in my day.”
Hilarious. I was having a shitty day, and reading this made it all right. Thank you.
Azkyroth
January 18, 2012 at 4:20 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
I was going to comment that Wikipedia really should have pulled this stunt in early December, where final essays would ensure the maximum impact.
Wazza
January 18, 2012 at 4:37 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
someone asked for an explanation – in writing – because she didn’t want to read.
gworroll
January 18, 2012 at 4:42 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Shortly after midnight, I was browsing the Spanish wikipedia and using Chromes translation feature.
Some odd phrasings, and missed words, but it was usable.
The Irish version worked too, but Chrome didn’t pop up an offer to translate. Irish(and other Celtic languages) have some odd features that tend to frustrate machine translation, I suppose that’s why Chrome didn’t ask(though Google translate does offer the option).
As far as I know, only the main English language site was blacked out.
Trebuchet
January 18, 2012 at 4:55 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
I have to believe a lot of those tweets are Poes. At least I hope they are.
Killing two replies with one stone, Pixel is gorgeous! I haven’t seen eyes that blue since…five seconds ago, when I glanced over at the cat on the other chair!
Drakk
January 18, 2012 at 5:33 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Isn’t it because they’re that thick that they use wikipedia for research writing? I understand doing so is a bad idea.
Azkyroth
January 18, 2012 at 6:05 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Well-sourced articles are actually really useful as aggregators of relevant literature. Given that most of the alternatives tend to be subject to Some Motherfucker With Its Hand Out, that’s an extremely useful function.
gworroll
January 18, 2012 at 6:39 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
The Isaac Asimov article was a huge help in my lit class. Would have preferred it to be less help, though, I had to force myself to conclude on page 12 so that I could complete it in time(there was an expected length of 4-5 pages, though no formal minimum or maximum as long as the content was solid)
Didn’t cite it, but it did give me ideas on where to take the paper, and good sources to use. Wikipedia shouldn’t be your main source(unless the project is about wikipedia itself maybe), but it is a very powerful tool for getting started.
evilDoug
January 18, 2012 at 7:07 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
I agree, I frequently find Wikipedia quite useful, and use it regularly.
My point, with regard to DannyMaxwell, is that if he could not figure out what was happening with Wikipedia, perhaps his future in any sort of reaseach is doubtful.
The Artful Nudger
January 18, 2012 at 9:33 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
It’s not even “if they weren’t so stupid”. If they weren’t too lazy to read the page linked from the page Wikipedia threw up for the blackout, it includes “How to continue using Wikipedia during the blackout”.
*sigh*
Azkyroth
January 18, 2012 at 9:54 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Much like Godwin’s Law I’m starting to wish Poe’s Law had never been articulated, insofar as it allows sloppy thinkers to A) lazily dismiss any and all idiocy, even when its proponents are blatantly serious-as-a-lynch-mob or even actually-in-the-process-of-becoming-a-lynch-mob, as “probably a joke,” and B) childishly derail any discussion or dissection of idiocy with the inane suggestion, apropos of nothing, that the idiocy in question might be a joke.
And as has been eloquently argued elsewhere, it’s not like it’d matter if it were.
So maybe we can take the idiocy seriously for once? Because it’s kinda growing all over everything.
crissakentavr
January 18, 2012 at 11:42 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
That didn’t work for me, but I can live a day without wikipedia. I did wonder why the page loaded first then the splash, tho…
crissakentavr
January 18, 2012 at 11:45 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
I liken it to a nice research librarian.
Sili
January 19, 2012 at 2:06 AM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
As I teacher I love it when kids steal stuff off the Internet. It’s so much easier to detect, than when they’re borrowing off their siblings.
Kahomono
January 19, 2012 at 2:25 AM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
There’s a bell curve. You live on the tail to the right.
Twitter trending topics is a view of the top.
It’s good, sometimes, to be reminded of that.
Brian
January 19, 2012 at 2:29 AM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
To argue (somewhat lamely) that there is still hope for humanity: A lot of those tweets are people complaining about not being able to do homework. From this I theorize that much of the stupidest sentiments are from high-school and college students. Everyone is required to publicly proclaim at least three face-palmingly asinine opinions before the age of 25.
Kahomono
January 19, 2012 at 2:33 AM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
I was sitting here, Brian, wondering if I had fulfilled that requirement. And then I remembered: oh yeah, I was religious.
Done and done.
Mark
January 19, 2012 at 5:10 AM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
The irony is that these people are the ones who need Wikipedia the most, ie the ones who rely on it for the most basic information. I’d like to think the people who read this blog are smart enough to regard Wiki as a merely a starting point for their informed information. Anyway, if you hit escape before the page finishes loading you got to see the lot without the blackout message. (Even knowing this I decided to use the powers for good not evil and refrained from using Wikipedia during the 24 hour period).
Just Jane
January 19, 2012 at 9:08 AM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
While I agree the tweets were pathetic, at least they were asking the question and were angry about it. Even if they didn’t know what or who to be angry with, they were inconvenienced enough to, for once, pay attention to the world outside themselves. I find that just a little (but only a little) encouraging.
GeekGirlsRule
January 19, 2012 at 12:06 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
I’ve been dealing with the whining of an acquaintance who just knows that this blackout was WAY MORE inconvenient that anything that might happen because of SOPA or PIPA! And he couldn’t get to websites and his day was RUINED! Any attempt to explain that he’s either naive or extremely stupid is met with “FREE MARKET LIBERTARIANISM!!!” Which I don’t get, because those bills sound about as far from free market libertarianism as you can get and still be speaking the same language.
Granted, the blackout did coincide with being snowed in, in Seattle, a fairly rare occurrence.
Albertha Marchiori
March 25, 2012 at 6:09 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
CHARITY ZONE DONATES 95% OF ALL AMAZON COMMISSIONS TO CHARITY
slut
May 1, 2012 at 8:12 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
I wonder if some of this content could have been plagiarized, it’s found everywhere on the web and other peoples websites, unless you’re the content’s maker?. Thanks