Encyclopedia Dramatica
Encyclopedia
Encyclopædia Dramatica (often abbreviated ED) was a satirical
open wiki
that used MediaWiki
software. Launched on December 10, 2004, it lampooned
both encyclopedic topics and current events, especially those related or relevant to contemporary internet culture. It was frequently utilized by a socially fluid and dynamic internet subculture
known as Anonymous
. The not safe for work site celebrated a subversive
"trolling
culture
", and documented internet memes, culture
, and events, such as mass organized pranks, trolling events, "raids", large scale failures of internet security, and criticism of conservative internet communities which were accused of self-censorship
in order to garner prestige or positive coverage from traditional and established media outlets
. The magazine Wired
described the site as "where the vast parallel universe of Anonymous in-jokes, catchphrases, and obsessions is lovingly annotated, and you will discover an elaborate trolling culture: Flamingly racist and misogynist content lurks throughout, all of it calculated to offend". Ninemsn
described Encyclopædia Dramatica as: "Wikipedia
's evil twin. It’s a site where almost every article is biased, offensive, unsourced, and without the faintest trace of political correctness
. A search through its archives will reveal animated images of people committing suicide, articles glorifying extreme racism and sexism, and a seemingly endless supply of twisted, shocking views on just about every major human tragedy in history."
On April 14, 2011, the original URL of the site was redirected to a new website that bore little resemblance with Encyclopedia Dramatica named Oh Internet. Parts of the ED community harshly criticized the changes. On the night of the Encyclopedia Dramatica shutdown, regular ED visitors bombarded the 'Oh Internet' Facebook wall with hate messages. Several mirrors of the original site have since started up, including one located at encyclopediadramatica.ch which is generally regarded as its replacement.
She became involved in the LJdrama community, which covered stories on LiveJournal gossip. When the community was banned from LiveJournal, they created their own website. In 2002, two LiveJournal users, Joshua Williams (aka mediacrat) and Andrewpants, became intimately involved with each other. After they broke off their relationship, LJdrama decided to document the resulting drama. Unflattering photographs of Williams were spread on the web, and Williams considered this to be harassment. He threatened legal action, traveled to Portland, Oregon, in order to speak to LiveJournal's abuse team, and reported the alleged harassment to a local TV news station. DeGrippo created Encyclopedia Dramatica in order to "house some information from livejournal and some drama about hackers Theo DeRaadt
and Darren Reed."
Encyclopedia Dramatica characterized itself as being "in the spirit of Ambrose Bierce
's The Devil's Dictionary
". The New York Times Magazine
recognized the wiki as "an online compendium of troll humor and troll lore" that it labeled a "troll archive". C't
, a European magazine for IT
professionals, noted the site's role in introducing newcomers to the culture of 4chan's /b/, a notorious Internet imageboard. Encyclopædia Dramatica defined trolling in terms of doing things "for the lulz" (for laughs), a phrase that it qualifies as "a catchall explanation for any trolling you do."
The targets of this trolling came from "every pocket of the Web", to include not only the non-corporeal
aspects of Internet phenomena, (e.g. online catchphrases, fan pages, forums, and viral phenomena
), but also real people (e.g. amateur celebrities, identifiable internet drama participants and even Encyclopædia Dramatica's own forum members). These were derided in a manner described variously as "coarse", "offensive", "obscene", "irreverent, obtuse, politically incorrect
", "crude but hilarious", and "crude and abusive". The material was presented to appear comprehensive, with extensive use of shock-value
prose, drawings, photographs, and the like. The emotional responses were then added to the articles, often in similarly derogatory or inflammatory manner, with the purpose of provoking further emotional response. Adherents of the practice asserted that visitors to the website "shouldn't take anything said on Dramatica seriously."
Articles at Encyclopædia Dramatica were notably critical of MySpace
as well as users on YouTube
, LiveJournal, DeviantART
, and Wikipedia. In The New York Times Magazine, journalist Jonathan Dee described it as a "snarky Wikipedia anti-fansite". Shaun Davies of Australia's Nine Network
called it "Wikipedia's bastard child, a compendium of internet trends and culture which lampoons every subject it touches." The site "[was] run like Wikipedia, but its style is the opposite; most of its information is biased and opinionated, not to mention racist, homophobic, and spiteful, but on the upside its snide attitude makes it spot-on about most Internet memes it covers." This coverage of Internet jargon and memes had been acknowledged in the New Statesman
, on Language Log
, in C't
magazine, and in Wired magazine.
According to Sherrod DeGrippo,
On December 8, 2010, Encyclopædia Dramatica deleted its article on Operation Payback
. On the same day, Facebook deleted its Operation Payback page, and Twitter suspended Operation Payback's account. An anonymous source told Gawker that the Encyclopedia Dramatica article was deleted as the result of court orders.
Garrett E. Moore, the operator of a fork
of Encyclopædia Dramatica located at encyclopediadramatica.ch, told an interviewer for The Daily Dot
,
When asked about "abusive content", Moore replied by saying,
In a later interview with The Daily Dot, Moore defended his community's belief in free speech.
fan page with "hate messages and pornography".
In a question and answer session at the ROFLCon
summit in October 2011, DeGrippo was asked why Encyclopædia Dramatica was closed and replaced with Oh Internet. She replied: "We were unable to stop the degradation of the content. It just kept getting longer and longer and dumber and dumber and less and less coherent over time." She also explained why the site's content had not been released as an archive, saying that this would have made her personally responsible for any DMCA
and privacy violations that it contained.
On June 21, 2011, Scotland Yard
arrested Ryan Cleary based on alleged connections to LulzSec
. Cleary hosted several LulzSec IRC chatrooms, but LulzSec denies that he was a part of the group. The arrest temporarily disrupted operation of the wiki, but other members were able to resume Ryan's duties. Garrett E. Moore later become the fork's owner. Moore reported difficulties in securing a host for the website.
used Encyclopædia Dramatica to post photographs, e-mails and phone numbers from 176 responses to a Craigslist
advertisement he posted in 2006, in which he posed as a woman seeking sexual encounters with dominant men. The incident was addressed in a blog
hosted at Wired News
, where the blogger
proposes that Encyclopædia Dramatica may be the "world's lamest wiki".
Encyclopædia Dramatica was a "favourite target for critics, who accuse Anonymous of propagating hate," for allowing alleged members of the group to sometimes use the website as a platform
. Through this association, Encyclopædia Dramatica received incidental coverage when actions by members of Anonymous led to the arrest of an alleged pedophile, when they demonstrated against Scientology
in London; when a member of the group broke into the e-mail account of former vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin
, and when a member of Anonymous claimed credit for an attack on the virtual Second Life
headquarters of former presidential candidate John Edwards
. The convergence of Encyclopædia Dramatica with the anti-Scientology campaign of Project Chanology
was noted by technology journalist Julian Dibbell
.
In 2006, "a well-known band of trolls" emailed Encyclopædia Dramatica's creator, DeGrippo, demanding edits to the protected article describing them. After she refused to do so, the trolls ordered taxis, pizzas, escort services and sent death threats and threats of rape to DeGrippo's apartment.
On December 16, 2008, Encyclopædia Dramatica won the People's Choice Winners category for favorite wiki in Mashable
's 2nd Annual Open Web Awards, with wikiHow
as the runner-up and Wikipedia coming in 3rd.
In December 2008, a message on the Encyclopædia Dramatica asked for donations, claiming it was under attack and had lost its advertisers.
In January 2010, the Encyclopædia Dramatica article Aboriginal was removed from the search engine results of Google Australia
, after a lawyer filed a complaint with the Australian Human Rights Commission saying its content was racist. A search on terms related to the article produced a message that one of the results has been removed after a legal request relating to Australia's Racial Discrimination Act (RDA)
. The publicity surrounding this served to raise the profile of the site
. In March 2010, it was reported that the Australian Human Rights Commission had notified the site by e-mail that according to Australian law, the article Aboriginal could be in breach of Sections 18C and 18D of its RDA.
According to Gawker, "An entire blog has been set up to expose ED's staff, including DeGrippo, as cyberbullies." It formerly hosted the personal information of staff members from encyclopediadramatica.com, and its anonymous publisher asserts that the blog is run by a watchdog group focused on "the misdeeds of the people associated with the old and new Encyclopedia Dramatica." The site's maintainer also claims to have consoled and advised some people who felt that they had been harmed by ED. EncyclopediaDramatica.ch accuses Daniel Brandt of authoring the blog. Brandt denies operating the blog, insisting that he is only a "researcher and advisor" for those managing the blog, whose identity is not known to him. Garrett E. Moore describes it as a "stalker blog" and contends that Brandt pressured DeGrippo into closing EncyclopediaDramatica.com. In May 2011, Moore published Brandt's contact information on an IRC channel, and Brandt began to receive Email spam. Brandt responded by contacting the workplace of Moore's fiancée. According to a sysop from encyclopediadramatica.ch, a complaint was lodged, which resulted in the deletion of encyclopediadramatica.ch's article on Daniel Brandt.
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
open wiki
Wiki
A wiki is a website that allows the creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor. Wikis are typically powered by wiki software and are often used collaboratively by multiple users. Examples include...
that used MediaWiki
MediaWiki
MediaWiki is a popular free web-based wiki software application. Developed by the Wikimedia Foundation, it is used to run all of its projects, including Wikipedia, Wiktionary and Wikinews. Numerous other wikis around the world also use it to power their websites...
software. Launched on December 10, 2004, it lampooned
Parody
A parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...
both encyclopedic topics and current events, especially those related or relevant to contemporary internet culture. It was frequently utilized by a socially fluid and dynamic internet subculture
Subculture
In sociology, anthropology and cultural studies, a subculture is a group of people with a culture which differentiates them from the larger culture to which they belong.- Definition :...
known as Anonymous
Anonymous (group)
Anonymous is an international hacking group, spread through the Internet, initiating active civil disobedience, while attempting to maintain anonymity. Originating in 2003 on the imageboard 4chan, the term refers to the concept of many online community users simultaneously existing as an anarchic,...
. The not safe for work site celebrated a subversive
Counterculture
Counterculture is a sociological term used to describe the values and norms of behavior of a cultural group, or subculture, that run counter to those of the social mainstream of the day, the cultural equivalent of political opposition. Counterculture can also be described as a group whose behavior...
"trolling
Troll (Internet)
In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking readers into an emotional response...
culture
Culture
Culture is a term that has many different inter-related meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...
", and documented internet memes, culture
Cyberculture
Cyberculture is the culture that has emerged, or is emerging, from the use of computer networks for communication, entertainment and business. It is also the study of various social phenomena associated with the Internet and other new forms of network communication, such as online communities,...
, and events, such as mass organized pranks, trolling events, "raids", large scale failures of internet security, and criticism of conservative internet communities which were accused of self-censorship
Self-censorship
Self-censorship is the act of censoring or classifying one's own work , out of fear of, or deference to, the sensibilities of others, without overt pressure from any specific party or institution of authority...
in order to garner prestige or positive coverage from traditional and established media outlets
Old media
The Old Media or Legacy Media are traditional means of communication and expression that have existed since before the advent of the new medium of the Internet...
. The magazine Wired
Wired (magazine)
Wired is a full-color monthly American magazine and on-line periodical, published since January 1993, that reports on how new and developing technology affects culture, the economy, and politics...
described the site as "where the vast parallel universe of Anonymous in-jokes, catchphrases, and obsessions is lovingly annotated, and you will discover an elaborate trolling culture: Flamingly racist and misogynist content lurks throughout, all of it calculated to offend". Ninemsn
NineMSN
ninemsn is an Australian 50/50 joint venture between Microsoft and Nine Entertainment Co.. It effectively acts as the website for both the Nine Network and MSN, and is one of Australia's most popular websites...
described Encyclopædia Dramatica as: "Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
's evil twin. It’s a site where almost every article is biased, offensive, unsourced, and without the faintest trace of political correctness
Political correctness
Political correctness is a term which denotes language, ideas, policies, and behavior seen as seeking to minimize social and institutional offense in occupational, gender, racial, cultural, sexual orientation, certain other religions, beliefs or ideologies, disability, and age-related contexts,...
. A search through its archives will reveal animated images of people committing suicide, articles glorifying extreme racism and sexism, and a seemingly endless supply of twisted, shocking views on just about every major human tragedy in history."
On April 14, 2011, the original URL of the site was redirected to a new website that bore little resemblance with Encyclopedia Dramatica named Oh Internet. Parts of the ED community harshly criticized the changes. On the night of the Encyclopedia Dramatica shutdown, regular ED visitors bombarded the 'Oh Internet' Facebook wall with hate messages. Several mirrors of the original site have since started up, including one located at encyclopediadramatica.ch which is generally regarded as its replacement.
Content
Encyclopædia Dramatica was founded in 2004 by Sherrod DeGrippo, also known as "Girlvinyl". DeGrippo found LiveJournal in 2000 and became enthralled by the behavior of some of its members:"People were accessible and it was bidirectional. Voyeurs and exhibitionists were able to interact in a way that was normalized. That’s why I started ED. It was mostly just personalities that were just so nuts and fascinating."
She became involved in the LJdrama community, which covered stories on LiveJournal gossip. When the community was banned from LiveJournal, they created their own website. In 2002, two LiveJournal users, Joshua Williams (aka mediacrat) and Andrewpants, became intimately involved with each other. After they broke off their relationship, LJdrama decided to document the resulting drama. Unflattering photographs of Williams were spread on the web, and Williams considered this to be harassment. He threatened legal action, traveled to Portland, Oregon, in order to speak to LiveJournal's abuse team, and reported the alleged harassment to a local TV news station. DeGrippo created Encyclopedia Dramatica in order to "house some information from livejournal and some drama about hackers Theo DeRaadt
Theo de Raadt
Theo de Raadt , born May 19, 1968 in Pretoria, South Africa, is a software engineer who lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. He is the founder and leader of the OpenBSD and OpenSSH projects, and was a founding member of the NetBSD project.- Childhood :...
and Darren Reed."
Encyclopedia Dramatica characterized itself as being "in the spirit of Ambrose Bierce
Ambrose Bierce
Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce was an American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist and satirist...
's The Devil's Dictionary
The Devil's Dictionary
The Devil's Dictionary is a satirical "reference" book written by Ambrose Bierce. The book offers reinterpretations of terms in the English language, lampooning cant and political doublespeak, as well as other aspects of human foolishness and frailty. It was originally published in 1906 as The...
". The New York Times Magazine
The New York Times Magazine
The New York Times Magazine is a Sunday magazine supplement included with the Sunday edition of The New York Times. It is host to feature articles longer than those typically in the newspaper and has attracted many notable contributors...
recognized the wiki as "an online compendium of troll humor and troll lore" that it labeled a "troll archive". C't
C't
c't – Magazin für Computertechnik is a German computer magazine, published by the Heinz Heise publishing house. Originally a special section of the electronics magazine elrad, the magazine has been published monthly since December 1983 and biweekly since October 1997...
, a European magazine for IT
Information technology
Information technology is the acquisition, processing, storage and dissemination of vocal, pictorial, textual and numerical information by a microelectronics-based combination of computing and telecommunications...
professionals, noted the site's role in introducing newcomers to the culture of 4chan's /b/, a notorious Internet imageboard. Encyclopædia Dramatica defined trolling in terms of doing things "for the lulz" (for laughs), a phrase that it qualifies as "a catchall explanation for any trolling you do."
The targets of this trolling came from "every pocket of the Web", to include not only the non-corporeal
Matter
Matter is a general term for the substance of which all physical objects consist. Typically, matter includes atoms and other particles which have mass. A common way of defining matter is as anything that has mass and occupies volume...
aspects of Internet phenomena, (e.g. online catchphrases, fan pages, forums, and viral phenomena
Viral phenomenon
Viral phenomena are objects or patterns able to replicate themselves or convert other objects into copies of themselves when these objects are exposed to them....
), but also real people (e.g. amateur celebrities, identifiable internet drama participants and even Encyclopædia Dramatica's own forum members). These were derided in a manner described variously as "coarse", "offensive", "obscene", "irreverent, obtuse, politically incorrect
Political correctness
Political correctness is a term which denotes language, ideas, policies, and behavior seen as seeking to minimize social and institutional offense in occupational, gender, racial, cultural, sexual orientation, certain other religions, beliefs or ideologies, disability, and age-related contexts,...
", "crude but hilarious", and "crude and abusive". The material was presented to appear comprehensive, with extensive use of shock-value
Shock value
Shock value is the potential of an action , image, text, or other form of communication to provoke a reaction of disgust, shock, anger, fear, or similar negative emotions.-Shock value as humor:...
prose, drawings, photographs, and the like. The emotional responses were then added to the articles, often in similarly derogatory or inflammatory manner, with the purpose of provoking further emotional response. Adherents of the practice asserted that visitors to the website "shouldn't take anything said on Dramatica seriously."
Articles at Encyclopædia Dramatica were notably critical of MySpace
MySpace
Myspace is a social networking service owned by Specific Media LLC and pop star Justin Timberlake. Myspace launched in August 2003 and is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. In August 2011, Myspace had 33.1 million unique U.S. visitors....
as well as users on YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
, LiveJournal, DeviantART
DeviantArt
deviantART is an online community showcasing various forms of user-made artwork. It was first launched on August 7, 2000 by Scott Jarkoff, Matthew Stephens, Angelo Sotira and others. deviantArt, Inc...
, and Wikipedia. In The New York Times Magazine, journalist Jonathan Dee described it as a "snarky Wikipedia anti-fansite". Shaun Davies of Australia's Nine Network
Nine Network
The Nine Network , is an Australian television network with headquarters based in Willoughby, a suburb located on the North Shore of Sydney. For 50 years since television's inception in Australia, between 1956 and 2006, it was the most watched television network in Australia...
called it "Wikipedia's bastard child, a compendium of internet trends and culture which lampoons every subject it touches." The site "[was] run like Wikipedia, but its style is the opposite; most of its information is biased and opinionated, not to mention racist, homophobic, and spiteful, but on the upside its snide attitude makes it spot-on about most Internet memes it covers." This coverage of Internet jargon and memes had been acknowledged in the New Statesman
New Statesman
New Statesman is a British centre-left political and cultural magazine published weekly in London. Founded in 1913, and connected with leading members of the Fabian Society, the magazine reached a circulation peak in the late 1960s....
, on Language Log
Language Log
Language Log is a collaborative language blog maintained by University of Pennsylvania phonetician Mark Liberman.The site is updated daily at the whims of the contributors, and most of the posts are on language use in the media and popular culture. Google search results are frequently used as a...
, in C't
C't
c't – Magazin für Computertechnik is a German computer magazine, published by the Heinz Heise publishing house. Originally a special section of the electronics magazine elrad, the magazine has been published monthly since December 1983 and biweekly since October 1997...
magazine, and in Wired magazine.
According to Sherrod DeGrippo,
"As long as something wasn’t submitted as illegal or an abuse complaint, I didn’t even see it. Wikis are something that you either closely, closely monitor and manage, or you just let it go."
On December 8, 2010, Encyclopædia Dramatica deleted its article on Operation Payback
Operation Payback
Operation Payback is a coordinated, decentralized group of attacks on opponents of Internet piracy by Internet activists using the "Anonymous" moniker - a group sometimes affiliated with the website 4chan. Operation Payback started as retaliation to distributed denial of service attacks on torrent...
. On the same day, Facebook deleted its Operation Payback page, and Twitter suspended Operation Payback's account. An anonymous source told Gawker that the Encyclopedia Dramatica article was deleted as the result of court orders.
Garrett E. Moore, the operator of a fork
Fork (software development)
In software engineering, a project fork happens when developers take a legal copy of source code from one software package and start independent development on it, creating a distinct piece of software...
of Encyclopædia Dramatica located at encyclopediadramatica.ch, told an interviewer for The Daily Dot
The Daily Dot
The Daily Dot is an online newspaper that covers internet topics. It aims to be the "hometown newspaper" of the internet. It has a 25 member editorial staff. The CEO is Nick White....
,
"People take themselves too seriously, they can't laugh at anything. We make fun of everything. I make fun of skinny white computer nerds, but I am one."
When asked about "abusive content", Moore replied by saying,
"I'm not going to leave a 14 year old girl's address up on a page cause some dipshit got mad at her and made an article. But if you dress up like a fox and wear diapers and then take pictures of it? That's fair game, sir."
In a later interview with The Daily Dot, Moore defended his community's belief in free speech.
Oh Internet
DeGrippo eventually became disillusioned with Encyclopædia Dramatica. She had hoped that ED would return back to its roots and focus on LiveJournal drama. On April 14, 2011, the URL encyclopediadramatica.com was redirected to Oh Internet, an "entirely different," safe-for-work website DeGrippo created. DeGrippo stated that "Shock for shock’s sake is old at this point [...] ." Some regular users of Encyclopædia Dramatica were displeased by the change and attacked the website's official FacebookFacebook
Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...
fan page with "hate messages and pornography".
In a question and answer session at the ROFLCon
ROFLCon
ROFLCon is a biennial convention of Internet memes that first took place April 25–26, 2008, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The meeting was first announced in late 2007....
summit in October 2011, DeGrippo was asked why Encyclopædia Dramatica was closed and replaced with Oh Internet. She replied: "We were unable to stop the degradation of the content. It just kept getting longer and longer and dumber and dumber and less and less coherent over time." She also explained why the site's content had not been released as an archive, saying that this would have made her personally responsible for any DMCA
Digital Millennium Copyright Act
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act is a United States copyright law that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization . It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or services intended to circumvent measures that control access to...
and privacy violations that it contained.
EncyclopediaDramatica.ch
The Web Ecology Project made a downloadable archive of former Encyclopedia Dramatica content. Fan-made torrents and mirror sites are also available. Ryan Cleary hosted a fork of Encyclopædia Dramatica at encyclopediadramatica.ch. Members of this project gathered text and images from Google's web cache, and a script was created to upload cached information.On June 21, 2011, Scotland Yard
Scotland Yard
Scotland Yard is a metonym for the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police Service of London, UK. It derives from the location of the original Metropolitan Police headquarters at 4 Whitehall Place, which had a rear entrance on a street called Great Scotland Yard. The Scotland Yard entrance became...
arrested Ryan Cleary based on alleged connections to LulzSec
LulzSec
Lulz Security, commonly abbreviated as LulzSec, is a computer hacker group that claims responsibility for several high profile attacks, including the compromise of user accounts from Sony Pictures in 2011. The group also claimed responsibility for taking the CIA website offline...
. Cleary hosted several LulzSec IRC chatrooms, but LulzSec denies that he was a part of the group. The arrest temporarily disrupted operation of the wiki, but other members were able to resume Ryan's duties. Garrett E. Moore later become the fork's owner. Moore reported difficulties in securing a host for the website.
Reception
The website received mainstream media attention after Jason FortunyJason Fortuny
Jason Fortuny is a Seattle-area freelance graphic designer and network administrator who received a degree of media attention when he published online the personal details and photographs of the men who responded to a fake personal ad he posted on Craigslist...
used Encyclopædia Dramatica to post photographs, e-mails and phone numbers from 176 responses to a Craigslist
Craigslist
Craigslist is a centralized network of online communities featuring free online classified advertisements, with sections devoted to jobs, housing, personals, for sale, services, community, gigs, résumés, and discussion forums....
advertisement he posted in 2006, in which he posed as a woman seeking sexual encounters with dominant men. The incident was addressed in a blog
Blog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
hosted at Wired News
Wired News
Wired News is an online technology news website, formerly known as HotWired, that split off from Wired magazine when the magazine was purchased by Condé Nast Publishing in the 1990s. Wired News was owned by Lycos not long after the split, until Condé Nast purchased Wired News on July 11, 2006...
, where the blogger
Blog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
proposes that Encyclopædia Dramatica may be the "world's lamest wiki".
Encyclopædia Dramatica was a "favourite target for critics, who accuse Anonymous of propagating hate," for allowing alleged members of the group to sometimes use the website as a platform
Platformism
Platformism is a tendency within the wider anarchist movement originally theorised by Nestor Makhno and is mainly based on his concept of anarchism and the organisational theories in the tradition of Dielo Truda's Organizational Platform of the General Union of Anarchists ...
. Through this association, Encyclopædia Dramatica received incidental coverage when actions by members of Anonymous led to the arrest of an alleged pedophile, when they demonstrated against Scientology
Scientology
Scientology is a body of beliefs and related practices created by science fiction and fantasy author L. Ron Hubbard , starting in 1952, as a successor to his earlier self-help system, Dianetics...
in London; when a member of the group broke into the e-mail account of former vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin
Sarah Palin
Sarah Louise Palin is an American politician, commentator and author. As the Republican Party nominee for Vice President in the 2008 presidential election, she was the first Alaskan on the national ticket of a major party and first Republican woman nominated for the vice-presidency.She was...
, and when a member of Anonymous claimed credit for an attack on the virtual Second Life
Second Life
Second Life is an online virtual world developed by Linden Lab. It was launched on June 23, 2003. A number of free client programs, or Viewers, enable Second Life users, called Residents, to interact with each other through avatars...
headquarters of former presidential candidate John Edwards
John Edwards
Johnny Reid "John" Edwards is an American politician, who served as a U.S. Senator from North Carolina. He was the Democratic nominee for Vice President in 2004, and was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004 and 2008.He defeated incumbent Republican Lauch Faircloth in...
. The convergence of Encyclopædia Dramatica with the anti-Scientology campaign of Project Chanology
Project Chanology
Project Chanology is a protest movement against the practices of the Church of Scientology by members of Anonymous, a leaderless Internet-based group that defines itself as ubiquitous...
was noted by technology journalist Julian Dibbell
Julian Dibbell
Julian Dibbell is an American author and technology journalist with a particular interest in social systems within online communities. His 1993 article "A Rape in Cyberspace" detailed attempts of LambdaMOO, an online community, to quantify and deal with lawbreaking in its midst. The article was...
.
In 2006, "a well-known band of trolls" emailed Encyclopædia Dramatica's creator, DeGrippo, demanding edits to the protected article describing them. After she refused to do so, the trolls ordered taxis, pizzas, escort services and sent death threats and threats of rape to DeGrippo's apartment.
On December 16, 2008, Encyclopædia Dramatica won the People's Choice Winners category for favorite wiki in Mashable
Mashable
Mashable is an American news website and Internet news blog founded by Pete Cashmore. The website's primary focus is social media news, but also covers news and developments in mobile, entertainment, online video, business, web development, technology, memes and gadgets...
's 2nd Annual Open Web Awards, with wikiHow
WikiHow
wikiHow is a web-based and wiki-based community, consisting of an extensive database of how-to guides. wikiHow's mission is to build the world's largest and highest quality how-to manual. The site started as an extension of the already existing eHow website, and has evolved to host over 127,000...
as the runner-up and Wikipedia coming in 3rd.
In December 2008, a message on the Encyclopædia Dramatica asked for donations, claiming it was under attack and had lost its advertisers.
In January 2010, the Encyclopædia Dramatica article Aboriginal was removed from the search engine results of Google Australia
Google search
Google or Google Web Search is a web search engine owned by Google Inc. Google Search is the most-used search engine on the World Wide Web, receiving several hundred million queries each day through its various services....
, after a lawyer filed a complaint with the Australian Human Rights Commission saying its content was racist. A search on terms related to the article produced a message that one of the results has been removed after a legal request relating to Australia's Racial Discrimination Act (RDA)
Racial Discrimination Act 1975
The Racial Discrimination Act 1975 is a statute passed by the Australian Parliament during the Prime Ministership of Labor Gough Whitlam....
. The publicity surrounding this served to raise the profile of the site
Streisand effect
The Streisand effect is a primarily online phenomenon in which an attempt to hide or remove a piece of information has the unintended consequence of publicizing the information more widely...
. In March 2010, it was reported that the Australian Human Rights Commission had notified the site by e-mail that according to Australian law, the article Aboriginal could be in breach of Sections 18C and 18D of its RDA.
According to Gawker, "An entire blog has been set up to expose ED's staff, including DeGrippo, as cyberbullies." It formerly hosted the personal information of staff members from encyclopediadramatica.com, and its anonymous publisher asserts that the blog is run by a watchdog group focused on "the misdeeds of the people associated with the old and new Encyclopedia Dramatica." The site's maintainer also claims to have consoled and advised some people who felt that they had been harmed by ED. EncyclopediaDramatica.ch accuses Daniel Brandt of authoring the blog. Brandt denies operating the blog, insisting that he is only a "researcher and advisor" for those managing the blog, whose identity is not known to him. Garrett E. Moore describes it as a "stalker blog" and contends that Brandt pressured DeGrippo into closing EncyclopediaDramatica.com. In May 2011, Moore published Brandt's contact information on an IRC channel, and Brandt began to receive Email spam. Brandt responded by contacting the workplace of Moore's fiancée. According to a sysop from encyclopediadramatica.ch, a complaint was lodged, which resulted in the deletion of encyclopediadramatica.ch's article on Daniel Brandt.
See also
- Internet MemeInternet memeThe term Internet meme is used to describe a concept that spreads via the Internet. The term is a reference to the concept of memes, although the latter concept refers to a much broader category of cultural information.-Description:...
- List of Internet phenomena
- Lurkmore.ruLurkmore.ruLurkmore.ru or Lurkomorye is a Russian-language MediaWiki-powered online encyclopedia focused on Internet subcultures, folklore, and memes. As of July 31, 2011, Lurkomorye contains 5552 articles. It is one of the most popular humor websites of the Russian Internet...
- UncyclopediaUncyclopediaUncyclopedia is a satirical website that parodies Wikipedia. Founded in 2005 as an originally English-language wiki, the project currently spans over 75 languages...
External links
- Encyclopædia Dramatica (Archive)
- WhatPort80 (Archive)