Your teachers may have told you that Wikipedia is not a solid source for academic essays. But that doesn't mean it's not a good source to have a laugh or two. Or for your nerdy side to get lost for half a day in some obscure article about planned procrastination and all its related links.
Luckily, there's an online page where you can find all kinds of weird snippets from Wikipedia. The Depths of Wikipedia is a hugely popular account with millions of fans on all its social media platforms. You can find our previous articles on this group of social media accounts here and here.
More info: Annie Rauwerda | Instagram | X | TikTok
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What started out as a silly quarantine project has now become a vastly popular endeavor for Annie. The Depths of Wikipedia page on Instagram has 1.4 million followers and 13.3 million likes on TikTok. In 2022, Rauwerda became the Media Contributor of the Year. The accounts have even spawned live comedy shows that Annie hosts based on trivia from Wikipedia.
Back in a 2021 interview for Bored Panda, Annie detailed how the page came to be. "It was early quarantine (the stage when everyone was attempting new projects), and I was working on a page of my friend's quaranzine. I wanted to piece together Wikipedia excerpts into some virtual art."
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It's only fitting that the account has its own Wikipedia page. The entry details how Depths of Wikipedia first became famous due to Instagram influencer Caroline Calloway. She brought the page to the attention of her followers by criticizing a post where her occupation was described as "nothing."
Annie very graciously apologized to her, and Calloway then shared a few of the account's posts on her social media. Rauwerda says that boosted her account a lot. Today, many famous people follow the Depths of Wikipedia account, including John Mayer (Annie says she fangirled about his follow the most), Troye Sivan, Neil Gaiman, Olivia Wilde, and Lex Fridman.
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Annie also did a TEDx talk in 2023, titled "Why an encyclopedia is my favorite place on the Internet." In an interview for The New York Times in 2022, Annie explained how Wikipedia is the best place on the Internet. "It's what the Internet was supposed to be. It has this hacker ethos of working together and making something."
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Heather Woods, an assistant professor of Rhetoric and Technology at Kansas State University, explained to The New York Times that the appeal of the Depths of Wikipedia comes from its ability to make the Internet feel smaller. "It shortcuts the rabbit-hole phenomenon by offering attractive — or sometimes hilariously unattractive — entry points to internet culture."
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Rauwerda is a big believer in crowd-sourced knowledge. She often encourages people to contribute to Wikipedia, and she is an editor herself. "Protecting open-access information is so vital. You should definitely start editing if you don't already,” Annie told us back in 2021. "It's such a rewarding and impactful hobby, and we need more people with diverse perspectives in editing."
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Annie says she grew up on the Internet and didn't have screen restrictions growing up. In middle school, she used to Wikirace with her friends. She says it's partly what got her interested in Wikipedia in general. "You start at an article — something random like 'A$AP Rocky' — and then you click the hyperlinks to get to a destination like 'chicken hypnotism' or something like that," she explained the game to Mashable.
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Some people discover Depths of Wikipedia on TikTok, where Annie creates more engaging content. The following on Instagram is bigger, and she admits that curating content there is easier. "I think TikTok is fun, and I like the way you can use sound and timing, but it's definitely more effort to make a post."
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In June of 2023, Annie started cooking a vegan perpetual stew and decided to share it with the public. She started hosting 'stew nights' in her neighborhood in Bushwick, Brooklyn, where people could come to eat and contribute to the stew with their ingredients. It lasted for 60 days and ended in August of 2023.
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The perpetual stew stint was similar in its philosophy to what Annie is doing with Depths of Wikipedia. It's people coming together to make something good. "I love Wikipedia and all, but I do get a little sick of it,” Rauwerda told Grub Street. "This is just really fun 'cause it's a reminder that, like, I don't have to be the Wikipedia girl all the time. I can take a break and be the stew girl."
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For now, Annie is also working on a book about the cultural history of Wikipedia. "If you like the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit, just wait for the printed not-encyclopedia that you pay money for," she wrote on her website in 2023. "It’ll be [a] cultural history of Wikipedia with as much of its goofy content as possible."
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