Wikipedia is 25 years old today, and to out myself as a huge dorkus malorkus, I just want to inform you all that I love Wikipedia. Permit me, like Old Faithful or my butt after eating McDonald’s, to gush a bit.
In the late 1990s, the internet was being integrated into schools, workplaces, and homes en masse. The new millennium was approaching. The Cold War had been won and Pax Americana had begun. We were even rubbing Russia’s nose in it. Mikhail Gorbachev was in a fucking Pizza Hut commercial for god’s sake. The End of History. With one global superpower ushering in an era of economic prosperity and peace, cruising along on the Information Superhighway.
It was thought, in those naive pre-9/11 days, that the world wide web would be a boon to humanity. It would revolutionize the way we communicated and would become the digital Library of Alexandria. A repository of the collective knowledge of humanity, able to be accessed by anyone from anywhere in the world. This sort of happened. Sort of. The boon kinda turned into a curse, like the blessing of a capricious god in olde timey fables.
But Wikipedia has been and still is fulfilling the old, optimistic view of the internet’s potential.
It’s a community curated repository of factual, unbiased information. Anyone can contribute to the articles, so sometimes a falsity or politically charged bit of horseshit will crop up on a given page, but the diligence of thousands of autistic people makes sure that it doesn’t stay up for very long. The collaborative aspect of many people from all around the world, who do it absent the profit motive, is inspiring to me. For real. Many other sites on the internet have been bought up by megalomaniacal shitheads and turned into a vast morass of misinformation and trash. Some will even create dubious technology that is purported to be a tool for answers and information, but in actuality is little more than a masturbatory tool for thin-skinned, micropenised losers. But not Wikipedia.
Wikipedia has no ads. It doesn’t vulgarly pop up with a flashing banner asking you to gamble on sports between every paragraph.
Wikipedia doesn’t require a subscription. It doesn’t let you read the first part of an article and then hide everything useful behind a paywall.
How many websites of this size and reputation even exist anymore?
Plus, there’s a lot of fun stuff on there. Is a Diet of Worms a new health craze? Is Kumbum Monastery a famous gay bar? Did a fucking Martian write the article on Humans? Or something you never even thought about.
So I donated some money to Wikipedia today. I think I am on that website for one reason or another literally every day. Whether just killing time at work or desiring info from a credible source, Wikipedia is “lit 100% fire”, as the kids say. So if you find yourself on this lovely website often, donate too, you ungrateful FUCK.
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