loading . . . Hi, It’s Me, Wikipedia, and I Am Ready for Your Apology _“ Wikipedia, the constantly changing knowledge base created by a global free-for-all of anonymous users, now stands as the leading force for the dumbing down of world knowledge.” – From the book_ Wikipedia: The Dumbing Down of World Knowledge _by Edwin Black 2010_
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Well, well, well. Look who it is.
The global academic, scientific, and pro-fact community.
I suppose you’ve come to say you’re sorry? I hope so, given your years of sneering and hand-wringing about how I was ruining knowledge. Meanwhile, you turned your information environment into a hypercapitalist post-truth digital snuff film.
A lot can change in a couple of decades, huh? Used to be, it was hard to keep up with all you nerds decrying me as the downfall of truth and human inquiry [_1_] [_2_] [_3_]… [_44_].
Well, great job, geniuses. Since you’re so horny for facts, here’s a fact: The White House just appointed a new deputy press secretary, and it’s a three-armed AI Joseph McCarthy doing the Cha Cha Slide [_pictured, right_].
Are you also going to apologize to that student you expelled? (_See also:_Ridgeview University Wikipedia Controversy_._) In 2004, you saw some college guy using me and thought, “What a lazy cheater.”
Now you’d think, “At least he’s not asking Gemini.”
In a few years, you’ll say, “Wow, look, a human being who can read.”
Listen, in some ways, I get it. When I came on the scene in 2001, I probably seemed pretty unsavory compared to the competitors. But that was when academic research happened in __libraries__ and __George W. Bush__ was considered the stupidest president.
Tell me, how have you guardians of facts been doing recently? (_See also:_Techno-Feudalist Infocide_._)
Maybe twenty years ago, the alternative to my 100,000 crowd-sourced editors was a PhD expert, or Edward R. Murrow [_citation needed_]. But today, I’m not looking so bad, huh? Absolute best case, the LLM-generated legal advice you get is merely plagiarizing, probably from me. But more likely, it’s a mish-mash of Reddit posts filtered through an algorithm coded by a Belarusian teenager on the run from Interpol. (_See also:_Illya “CyberGhost” Cieraškovič, Controversies__.)
So, yeah, peer review deez nutz.
How are my competitors doing, the ones you all insisted students use instead of me? That’s right, they were supposed to go to the _American Journal of Social Sciences, Powered by OpenAI_. Or museums, like the Smithsonian’s Charlie Kirk Shrine to American Greatness. I guess they can still count on credible journalism, once they get past the paywall for _Palantir Presents: The Washington Post_ , so they read the Pulitzer-Bezos Prize–winning work of coeditors-in-chief Bari Weiss and Grok.
I bet now you’d kill for a senior thesis based on my free, multilingual, publicly cited, text-based articles, motherfucker [_inappropriate or vulgar language_].
Honestly, it’s been fun to be proven right. Sometimes I still sit back and read the old hits, the concerns that I would “devalue expertise” or “undermine objectivity.” Oooooh, heaven forbid! (_See also:_Sarcasm__.)
I’ll admit, it gives me a certain sadistic pleasure to watch you all completely lose hold of basic reality. I can feel a warm, quivering tingle _deep_ in my footnotes.
And through it all, my army of well-intentioned dorks keeps documenting every bit. I’m not sure who for, at this point. I guess for the future benefit of our Minister of Patriotic Factualization, GodGPT. HahahaHAhaHAhaHAhaHAHAHA.
Well, it’s been fun, but I should probably get back to work, checking in on the updates to my most active pages (__Transnational Kleptocracy__ and __Vaccine Denial in the United States, Part 16, April 2025–Present__).
What’s that? You want me around now? Well, maybe if you ask nicely. And make it worth my while.
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