Wikipedia in culture
References to Wikipedia in popular culture have been widespread. Many parody Wikipedia's openness, with individuals vandalizing or modifying articles in nonconstructive ways. Others feature individuals using Wikipedia as a reference work, or positively comparing their intelligence to Wikipedia. In some cases, Wikipedia is not used as an encyclopedia at all, but instead serves more as a character trait or even as a game, such as Wikiracing. Wikipedia has also become culturally significant with many individuals seeing the presence of their own Wikipedia entry as a status symbol. References to Wikipedia. Wikiality. In a July 2006 episode  of the satirical comedy "The Colbert Report", Stephen Colbert announced the neologism "wikiality", a portmanteau of the words "Wiki" and "reality", for his segment "The Wørd". Colbert defined wikiality as "truth by consensus" (rather than fact), modeled after the approval-by-consensus format of Wikipedia. He ironically praised Wikipedia for following his philosophy of truthiness in which intuition and consensus is a better reflection of reality than fact: You see, any user can change any entry, and if enough other users agree with them, it becomes true. ... If only the entire body of human knowledge worked this way. And it  can, thanks to tonight's word: Wikiality. Now, folks, I'm no fan of reality, and I'm no fan of encyclopedias. I've said it before. Who is Britannica to tell me that George Washington had slaves? If I want to say he didn't, that's my right. And now, thanks to Wikipedia, it's also a fact. We should apply these principles to all information. All we need to do is convince a majority of people that some factoid is true. ... What we're doing is bringing democracy to knowledge. According to Stephen Colbert, together "we can  all create a reality that we all can agree on; the reality that we just agreed on". During the segment, he joked: "I love Wikipedia... any site that's got a longer entry on truthiness than on Lutherans has its priorities straight." Colbert also used the segment to satirize the more general issue of whether the repetition of statements in the media leads people to believe they are true. The piece was introduced with the tagline "The Revolution Will Not Be Verified", a play on the song title "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" referencing the lack of objective verification  seen in some articles. Colbert suggested that viewers change the elephant page to state that the number of African elephants has tripled in the last six months. The suggestion resulted in numerous incorrect changes to Wikipedia articles related to elephants and Africa. Wikipedia administrators subsequently to the pages by anonymous and newly created user accounts. Colbert went on to type on a laptop facing away from the camera, claiming to be making the edits to the pages himself. Because initial edits to Wikipedia corresponding to these claimed "facts" were made by a user named "Stephencolbert," many believe Colbert himself vandalized  several Wikipedia pages at the time he was encouraging other users to do the same. The account, whether it was Stephen Colbert himself or someone posing as him, has been blocked from Wikipedia indefinitely. Wikipedia blocked the account for violating (which state that using the names of celebrities as login names without permission is inappropriate), not for the vandalism, as believed. Other instances. In literature. "Missing Links and Secret Histories: A Selection of Wikipedia Entries from Across the Known Multiverse" (2013), edited by L. Timmel Duchamp, is a collection of speculative fiction short stories in the form of fictitious Wikipedia  entries. The protagonist of "Glass" by Alex Christofi teaches himself about the world using Wikipedia, and the author claims in the acknowledgements that Wikipedia is 'the best answer we can give to profiteering, naysaying, ignorance, Ludditism and the cult of the individual'. In "The Hidden Oracle" by Rick Riordan, the first book in "The Trials of Apollo" series, Emperor Nero, when discussing humans' knowledge of him, announces that he is "immortal on Wikipedia." The titular character, Apollo, then claims that his referencing Wikipedia is a sure sign of insanity, and that Wikipedia is always getting stuff wrong about him. In  John Green's "Paper Towns", Marcus "Radar" Lincoln, one of the main character's best friends, is a dedicated editor of "Omnictionary", a clear stand in for Wikipedia. A key plot point revolves around noticing the username of someone who recently edited a specific page. Matt Ruff's 2012 novel "The Mirage" features excerpts from "The Library of Alexandra", another stand in for Wikipedia, as a means to elaborate on aspects of the setting, including places, people, terms and history. Timur Vermes published in 2012 the German bestseller "Look Who's Back", a satirical novel about Adolf Hitler mysteriously returning  to modern-day Germany. This fictional Hitler, introduced to the Internet, is fascinated by Wikipedia. Its name, he analyses, reflects the "ingenuity of the Aryans", as it combines the -pedia from "encyclopedia" with the explorer blood of the "Wikinger". The books were later made into a movie adaptation. The 24th section of "Flights", which was published in 2017 in Polish and in the English translation, by Olga Tokarczuk, the winner of the 2018 Nobel Prize for Literature, is titled "Wikipedia". It is described positively, on the one hand, as a "wonder of the world," but the narrator also muses upon  what an encyclopedia cannot do. In music. English singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran's first studio album + (pronounced plus) had its second single released in 2011, called "You Need Me, I Don't Need You," he references Wikipedia, rapping: Ukrainian composer Andriy Bondarenko wrote a musical piece, "Anthem of Wikipedia", which was performed in a concert devoted to the 15th anniversary of Wikipedia in Kyiv. Israeli singer-songwriter Hanan Ben-Ari released a 2017 single named "Wikipedia". The Welsh rap song Newport (Ymerodraeth State of Mind), a parody of Empire State of Mind includes the lyrics 'Josie D'Arbys from  Newport, yes its strange we didn't know either, thank you Wikipedia.' On their 2017 album Goths, The Mountain Goats reference Wikipedia within one of the final stanzas of the song "Abandoned Flesh": In PewDiePie's 2019 song "Congratulations", he references T-Series' Wikipedia page: In Big Sean's 2020 song "Deep Reverence" from album "Detroit 2", the rapper states: In postal items. On January 14, 2011, Israel Postal Company chose to commemorate Wikipedia's 10th anniversary by issuing a special postmark and a souvenir leaf. These were the first Wikipedia-related postal items. As is customary on Wikipedia, the  souvenir leaf, the postmark, and the text on the back of the souvenir leaf were created by a collaboration of volunteers. The design of the postmark was based on the work of "MT0", a Wikipedia editor. Contexts. Wikipedia is not always referenced in the same way. The ways described below are some of the ways it has been mentioned. Criticism. The comedy website Something Awful once featured Wikipedia's article on Knuckles the Echidna as an ALOD (Awful Link of the Day), satirizing the amount of detail that sometimes goes into seemingly irrelevant topics. The link description adds that the  article is longer than each of the articles about Echidnas, the Internet, the internal combustion engine, William Shakespeare and Western culture. The topic was also satirized in the front page, which featured a fake Wikipedia style article about Albert "Al" Calavicci from the TV series "Quantum Leap" written by Something Awful contributor David Thorpe. Thorpe elsewhere linked the existence of such articles to Asperger syndrome, stating "Don't make fun of Aspergers. If it weren't for Aspergers, we wouldn't have 20-page Wikipedia articles about Knuckles the Echidna." Wikipedia was also mocked in a December 4, 2006 update  on Something Awful. The update detailed the life of a talk page on Wikipedia, and mocked the neutrality, copyright, naming, quality, and personal disputes that the pages are beholden to. The update also linked Wikipedia usage to Asperger syndrome once more, with one fictional editor claiming to have a case of the syndrome twice as powerful as that of another fictional editor. In a 2007 Awful Link of the Day, a Wikipedia article was featured again, this time on the villains of "". Once again, it calls out the detail put onto seemingly irrelevant topics, citing a discussion in said article 's talk page about the subjectiveness of the speed of certain characters. Something Awful founder Richard Kyanka then mockingly offered to write up a speed comparison of the "KND" characters Big Badolescent and Cheese Shogun Roquefort, citing a fake episode called "episode 35, 'I Am a 38-Year Old Man With Several Obese Cats and an Empty Life I Futilely Try to Fill With Childrens' Cartoons'". Claims of negative impact of Wikipedia on culture. Andrew Keen's 2007 book "" asserted the proliferation of user-generated content on Wikipedia obscured and devalued traditional, higher-quality information outlets.