Happy Nice Mall

Did you know that there is a Swiss political party dedicated to opposing the use of PowerPoint? Do some believe that Avril Lavigne died in 2003 and was replaced by a similar one? Or that there is a stone that mysteriously looks like a piece of meat in a museum in Taiwan?

Probably not – that is, unless you’re one of the hundreds of thousands of people who follow @depthsofwikipedia. Her Instagram account shares weird and surprising excerpts from the vast, crowdsourced online encyclopedia, including hilarious images (literally a chicken passing by) and small moments in history (Mitt Romney drives for hours on top of his car with his dog). Some posts are healthy – for example HatsuyumeJapanese word for first dream of the year – while others are not safe for work (for example, panda pornography).

Annie Rauwerda, 22, started this account in the early days of the pandemic, while others were baking sourdough bread and learning to knit. “Everybody was starting projects, and that was my project,” she said.

He was a sophomore at the University of Michigan at the time. Students are often discouraged from using Wikipedia as a source for academic studies because most of its pages It can be edited by anyone and may contain false information. But for Ms. Rauwerda, the site has always been more about fun: spending hours clicking one link after another, getting lost in rabbit holes.

“Wikipedia is the best thing on the internet,” said Ms. Rauwerda in a phone call. “The internet is what it was supposed to be. He has a hacker ethos of working together and doing things.”

At first, only his friends were following the account. However, Ms. Rauwerda’s post about the influencer Caroline Calloway, who was upset about being hit on social media, got a wave of interest. Message He featured an old version of his Wikipedia page that said his profession was “nothing”. Ms. Rauwerda apologized, and Ms. Calloway later highlighted the account on her Instagram.

Ms. Rauwerda has since expanded @depthsofwikipedia to Twitter and TikTok. She sells merchandise (like a coffee mug decorated with an image from the Wikipedia entry for “bisexual lighting”) and hosted a live show in Manhattan that included trivia and stand-up.

She frequently directs followers to feature Wikipedia pages, but it’s hard to find an entry these days that will impress Ms. Rauwerda. “If it’s a fun fact featured on the Reddit homepage, I definitely won’t be posting it again,” she said. “For example, there are only 25 balloons in the world. I’ve known this for a long time and it went around Twitter a few days ago. I was shocked. I said, ‘Everybody knows that.

It’s largely selective because so many of its followers rely on @depthsofwikipedia to uncover the hidden gems of the internet.

“I love learning things, especially these weird photos and things I would never have found on my own,” says Gabe Hockett, 15, a high school student in Minneapolis. He said that his favorite posts from the account included:Most Unwanted Song” and “Dave Matthews Band Chicago River incident”

Jen Fox, 22, said posting on the account with her boyfriend was “a special, nerdy love language”. It was also a litmus test for friendships. When copywriter Ms. Fox moved to San Francisco in February, she would tell new people she met about the account. If they were familiar, “We would start DMing each other and sharing our favorite posts, which really felt like solidifying a tangible friendship,” she said. Ms. Fox even attended the @depthsofwikipedia meetup at a local brewery. “There’s such a community behind it,” she said.

It is not new for Wikipedia lovers to rally around their passion for the platform. a Facebook group called Cool Freaks’ Wikipedia ClubFounded eight years ago, it has around 50,000 members actively trading links.

Ms. Rauwerda’s account “makes the internet seem smaller,” said Heather Woods, an assistant professor of rhetoric and technology at Kansas State University. “It shortens the rabbit hole by offering attractive – or sometimes hilariously unattractive – entry points into internet culture.”

Zachary McCune, brand director of the Wikimedia Foundation, which operates Wikipedia, said @depthsofwikipedia is an extension of the site’s contributor values. “This is a place where Wikipedia comes to life, like an after-hours tour at its best,” said Mr McCune.

And with more than 55 million articles on Wikipedia, it’s helpful to have a guide like Ms. Rauwerda. He hopes that visitors to his page will walk away with the newly shared information. “I want you to see something that makes you pause and say, ‘Hmm, that’s interesting’,” Ms. Rauwerda said. “Something that makes you rethink the world a bit.”