Encyclopedia

Encyclopædia Dramatica is a satirical open wiki built on Media Wiki software. Launched on December 10, 2004, it satirizes both encyclopedic topics and current events, especially those related to or relevant to internet culture. It is also associated with the internet subculture Anonymous. The site’s “elaborate trolling culture”, chronicling of internet trolling, use of content with shock value, and criticism of other internet communities have all gained media coverage and commentary. Some of the content on Encyclopædia Dramatica has been called “flamingly racist and misogynist”,sexually explicit or otherwise disturbing, including uncensored material taken from shock sites.

Encyclopædia Dramatica was founded in 2004 by Sherrod DeGrippo, also known as “Girlvinyl”. It characterizes itself as “[d]one in the spirit of Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary“. The New York Times has characterized 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. An author has said that it is a platform from which to initiate “exchange between the sensitive and the cruel” in order to achieve the “joy of disrupting another’s emotional equilibrium” because it “intentionally disrupts online communities” whose members have an “emotional investment” in the.Encyclopædia Dramatica defines 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 come 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 are derided in a manner described variously as “coarse”, “offensive”, “obscene”,”irreverent, obtuse, politically incorrect”, ”crude but hilarious”, ”crude and abusive”.The material is presented to appear comprehensive, with extensive use of shock-value prose, drawings, photographs, and the like. The emotional responses are then added to the articles, often in similarly derogatory or inflammatory manner, with the purpose of provoking further emotional response. Adherents of the practice assert that visitors to the website “shouldn’t take anything said on Dramatica seriously.”

Articles at Encyclopædia Dramatica are notably critical of MySpace as well as users on YouTube, Live Journal, 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 has called it “Wikipedia’s bastard child, a compendium of internet trends and culture which lampoons every subject it touches.” The site “is 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 has been acknowledged in the New Statesman, on Language Log, in C’t magazine, and in Wired magazine - where it was described once as the wiki “where the vast parallel universe of Anonymous in-jokes, catchphrases, and obsessions is lovingly annotated”.

In 2006 a group of trolls emailed the website’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. In December 2008, the site claimed they needed donations as they were under attack and had lost its advertisers.