Max Read at Valleywag reports that Encyclopedia Dramatica is no more:
Unofficial 4chan wiki Encyclopedia Dramatica, the user-authored repository of memes, racism and homophobia, is no more. It’s been replaced by OhInternet, a much cleaner site with much less offensive content. We asked its founder: Is ED preparing to sell out?
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Until this past Thursday, Encyclopedia Dramatica, or ED, was (in the words of Gawker’s Adrian Chen, himself an ED subject) “one of the last bastions of Internet nastiness.” Founded in 2005 by akidwoman named Sherrod DeGrippo, the site exhaustively catalogued thousands of memes, in jokes, characters and concepts from the internet’s adolescent underbelly; unsurprisingly—since it was written and edited by the same 4channers and Anonymous hangers-on who created those memes—it reveled in homophobia, racism and misogyny, not to mention dozens of really gross pictures. The wanton bigotry made it a frequent subject of attack, and earlier this year, when tech issues briefly took the site offline, rumors flew that ED had finally been shut down for good.
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But those were just rumors. This time, DeGrippo has confirmed that ED is gone for good, and has been replaced by OhInternet—a sanitized version of ED’s free-for-all meme wiki, accompanied by a frequently-updated blog. (Coming soon: Forums and an IRC channel.) “Shock for shock’s sake is old at this point and we’re looking forward to the future and how things are evolving,” DeGrippo told Geekosystem. “When you put user experience first, the language becomes highly important and that’s what we’ve done.”…
Reaction to the shift has been, needless to say, ! ! ! dramatic ! ! !. Per Geekosystem (read the comments over there, for full flavor):
The site does have its work cut out for it in winning over Dramatica fans, though. Last night, as regular Encyclopedia Dramatica visitors were discovering the redirect, Oh Internet’s Facebook wall was bombarded with hate messages, graphic pornography, and the like, though the page has been scrubbed as of this morning. And as much as there may have been to loathe about Dramatica, an Internet without it is by definition a more homogeneous one…
I won’t miss the spyware or the OCD lowest-common-denominator witless repetition, but as someone whose people have always believed that a grudge properly cherished is a cultural treasure, I may actually miss the old, untamed ED. I also find it amusing that while its most prolific contributors were undoubtably adolescent boys of all ages, the person who actually did the work of starting and cataloging and running the whole mishegaus was one of us Vagina-Americans:
“There had previously been no upgrades, no redesigns and no changes in seven years. Sites that don’t change, become irrelevant. There are tons of examples. I would like to discuss them with [Gawker founder] Nick Denton. We will sit back and talk about those inscrutable users and their dislike for redesigns….
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The site was created to house information on livejournal users. I have never been a part of anonymous, I have never been a chan user. This is some weird cognizant dissonance that people are seemingly unable to accept. The site was started because I wanted to house some information from livejournal and some drama about hackers Theo DeRaadt and Darren Reed. They are my OTP.”
(I had to look up that last acronym — on Urban Dictionary, since my Firefox says OhInternet is not available at the moment. I’m such an Old, when I was writing fanfic, the definition of ‘slash’ was still an open question.)
Hyperion
I’m having to look up pretty much everything mentioned in the post. Obviously I am not aware of all internet traditions.
pharniel
That’s sad. ED was usefull when having to talk to the minions of The Lulz. Hopefully 1d4chan never gives up the ghost or I’ll actually have to read /tg/ for more cultist-chan or hs40k stuff.
NeenerNeener
“I had to look up that last acronym”
I’m guessing you’re not a Doctor Who fan.
4tehlulz
And not a single fuck was given that day.
robertdsc-PowerBook
I guess I could go to unichan for Boxxy stuff. The ED entry for her was pure gold.
lamh34
Alright, I need to get married so that I can get David Tutera of My Fair Wedding to be my wedding planner. So guys line up. Don’t worry, your only have to stay in it til after the wedding reception. We can get an easy annulment later…lol.
TooManyJens
It still is, but now the fight it mostly between the people who define it as any same-sex pairing, versus people who define it as a non-canonical same-sex pairing (so that you have to read some subtext into it). Of course, when slash started, these were identical since there was no such thing as a canonical same-sex pairing. I tend toward the latter definition because I loves me some subtext, but I’m on the losing end of this one.
j
HUH?
I don’t understand a word of this.
OK, so All My Children and some other soap are dying, I guess.
Same thing.
But, Whatever will become of Inky, Blinky, Pinky and Clyde??!
AAA Bonds
Oh, man. That’s sad news. It was a vile monster, ED, but it was the only place to go to find out what the Internet is actually, really, truly like.
The history of trolling is about to undergo a sanitizing revision, here, that will absolutely rewrite the facts. It’s the only way to “clean up” ED and I’m hoping there are plenty of archives out there.
Anne Laurie
@TooManyJens: In the early-to-mid-1970s, my original-Star-Trek generation, we still hadn’t settled whether slash was explictly same-sex, or if it referred to any non-canonical pairing.
There’s a sercon sociological paper waiting to be written there — how the non-normative sex part pushed aside the not-in-the-original-story part. Sex Trumps Text!
Hermione Granger-Weasley
Oh Anne Laurie don’t be sad.
Death rocks and evolution rolls.
And everything evolves.
The chanese will find a new home, or ….bricolage an old one.
JGabriel
Sherrod DeGrippo via Gawker
Yeah, I’m surprised at the 4chan domination too. I remember Encyclopedia Dramatica as a Fandom_Wank offshoot or parallel development, partly because FW kept getting shut down for violating TOS wherever it set up — if I recall correctly.
The whole point was mock & snark. I don’t think getting rid of the racism/homophobia/misogyny will hurt it much, or, frankly, at all.
.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
i always thought, for better or worse, the shock on ed and 4chan was no worse than any late adolescent “in” group irl talking amongst themselves. of course, i came around to realize that being a member of “in” groups was the problem.
anything that is frowned upon on the respectable internet, will gravitate to any group looking for a cheap fixe of acquired identity.
JGabriel
@AAA Bonds:
I would call Encyclopedia Dramatica: A Wiki for the Internet’s Id. It doesn’t document what it’s really, truly like; it just mocks what the internet is like at it’s most childish and regressive.
.
AAA Bonds
@JGabriel:
We may just be seeing two sides of the same coin, here, in that I’m clearly making a judgment call about the id and the Internet.
If you want to talk cogent articles – even book-length treatments – of the sticky smegma holding together Internet media, I think the center shifted to Something Awful a while back, when they decided to make other sites the main focus of their writing.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
lol, she got $ for selling out somehow. prolly advertisers wouldn’t buy space unless she cleaned up.
DeGrippo went respectable.
And she got OLD.
M-Pop
Pedobear will live on at the Wonkett, however, so it’s not a complete loss, amirite?
Omnes Omnibus
@Hermione Granger-Weasley:
Just you wait.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
.
Republican leaders including John Boehner and Eric Cantor have already admitted that they will vote to raise the U.S. debt limit, so President Obama does not have to negotiate anything away to ensure passage, and will surely demand a clean bill while telling them, eloquently but fiercely, and in solidarity with the great majority of people in the United States, to go to hell. Mark my words.
.
.
Omnes Omnibus
@M-Pop: It’s just ED that’s going away right? 4chan still lives, so Pedobear should be fine. Or am I misinformed?
Lysana
Damn it, I was mentioned in an entry in ED. Was one of the best laughs I had that year, and that’s saying something.
andy
Relentless dachshund is relentless…
youtube.com/watch?v=5lU7LhPRg_U&feature=player_embedded#at=84
Uloborus
I’m afraid that I strongly dislike hate sites and hate-filled people in general. As you may have noticed, I find yelling insults and the kind of people who get off and feel superior doing that kind of thing tiring and unpleasant. So I’m not going to cry that a center they used to feed each other is being closed. But really? There’ll be another. Demands are filled and hate is the oldest and biggest.
@Uncle Clarence Thomas:
I assume that rather than fiercely he’ll tell them with scrupulous politeness. This will once again convince the American people that he’s the only bipartisan and reasonable person in a DC full of screaming donkeys and will keep his approval ratings remarkably high compared to sitting presidents historically.
Oh, and then while smiling and nodding he’ll shiv them in the kidneys like he did with the budget.
TooManyJens
@Anne Laurie:
Huh. My understanding had always been that slash started as same-sex, and the (largely unsuccessful) expansion of the term to mean any non-canonical pairing came later.
The more you know … ::rainbowstar::
Of course, you do still occasionally get the people who think it means “stories with explicit sex,” which is just a world of wrong.
Karen
The same with:
canon, subtext and Mary Sue…
As you can see, I wrote fanfic too.
Karen
@TooManyJens:
It always pisses me off when I see / when the pairings are m/f as opposed to m/m or f/f.
Some people use the word “lemon” which is a term used in anime fanfic for fics with graphic sex.
Omnes Omnibus
@Anne Laurie:
@TooManyJens:
@Karen:
You lost me, but that’s okay. I am sure whatever it is is fun.
Anne Laurie
@Omnes Omnibus: That was in a different (part of the) country, and besides, the zine is dead.
gelfling545
@Omnes Omnibus: A condition to which most of us aspire – given the alternative.
Spaghetti Lee
Hoo boy. I sure spent a lot of time on that site when I was in high school, and the time spent ranged from hilarious to pointless to depressing to scarring, descriptors which apply to 4chan itself as well . But I do agree that this sort of stuff serves a purpose, and I’d like to not see it vanish into the mists of time. Scrubbing history of its nasty bits has yet to do the people in the future any favors.
Omnes Omnibus
@Anne Laurie: I truly love that line. It is … perfect.
Calming Influence
I’m bummed Encyclopedia Dramatica is gone. One of the ultimate internet in-jokes, brilliant and crass, disdaining authority and self mocking. Not for the faint-of-heart, reveling in offending anyone lacking a well developed sense of the absurd, deliberately working outside the limits, challenging ones willingness to see that humor lurks in even the strangest corners. Like fart jokes at a Nobel Prize Ceremony, where only the 1337 get it.
Although only a small part of the whole, them tubes is less complete without ED.
Xecky Gilchrist
@JGabriel: It doesn’t document what it’s really, truly like; it just mocks what the internet is like at it’s most childish and regressive.
Depending on when you ask me, those are the same thing.
On balance, I disliked ED, partly because every time I went there from some blogger’s link I ended up spending a fair amount of time there and feeling like I needed to bathe afterwards. …so did I really dislike it?
In any case, its plug was pulled on my birthday, and I look on that as some sort of present.
bago
This is one of the consequences of building a massive global network/brain. We connect, find out others are just as messed up/unique as you are… (Rule 34 people)
And then suddenly are forced to grow up and deal with the sentience these meat bags give us.
To people who understand what I’m saying, the word goatse sums it all up. You discover it, look on in shock and horror that you are trapped on the same planet with these people, and then do the mature and responsible thing and say”meh”.
Bill (aka 10amla)
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: Old is what happens when you get lucky. The alternatives are worse.
justawriter
Well, I’m so old I remember when the revolution was going to be mimeographed (loved the smell of those old papers). Part of this discussion did remind me of one of my favorite movie scenes from that era …
scarshapedstar
4/15 never forget. The day the lulz died.
scarshapedstar
And all the people looking down their noses at the former ED can DIAF. It was funny. Funny enough to read random pages for hours on end. Try that on, say, Cracked. Or imagine if the BJ Lexicon were suddenly and inexplicably erased. You’d rage hard.
Anne Laurie
@justawriter:
Corflu (correction fluid) was an okay high, but it’s the Ditto(tm) spirits that brings back my fondest memories. Also, as one of my dearest friends always pointed out, the advantage to Ditto was that they were self-limiting — all the incriminating evidence would literally fade away within a decade or so.
Darkrose
@TooManyJens: My wife agrees with you. Me, I’m willing to lean toward the former, because there’s not really another good word to use, especially when things are divided into “slash”, “het” and “gen”.
On the other hand, don’t get me started on how fandom has appropriated and changed the definition of “squick”.
Darkrose
@Karen:
Do people still use that outside of Asian-based-source fandoms? At least in my fandoms, we just describe fics with graphic sex as “porn”.
lol
If any of you ever see any tea party-style signs advertising the ‘Lemon Party’, I highly advise you not to follow the links.
The Moar You Know
Well, this is tragic.
Time to go claim my Golden iPod award.
The Moar You Know
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: No “prolly” about it; they’d mentioned a lot over the last couple of years that the only ad revenue they could get was pron ads, and even that was hard to come by.
Gonna miss a lot of things about them, but their compilations of the HB Gary debacle was the best news reporting that anybody did about that sorry, sad company and their decent into the eternal fires of fail.