Wikiality Doesn't Bite

Reality is harsh. Wikiality is easy. 

Wikiality is what exists if you make something up, add it to Wikipedia and a bunch of people decide that it's true. [Bloggers should be ridiculously wealthy, don't you agree?]

Anyhoo, Stephen Colbert coined the term last night on The Colbert Report, just before he decided to reorder the natural order of things by super-imposing wikiality over reality.

He asked viewers to pop online, find wiki articles about elephants and add a fact that he'd invented: The world's elephant population has tripled in six months. Naturally, lots of folks went onto Wikipedia and edited the online encyclopedia to say that the world's elephant population had tripled. The video clip is up on YouTube.

We haven't verified this with the National Geographic yet, but we're pretty sure that the world's elephant population did, briefly and spontaneously, triple for about 20 minutes last night.

Meanwhile, Stephen Colbert has been blocked from Wikipedia. [And the Wiki-king wants a free ticket to New York so he can appear on the show.]

Comments

[Tawker]

I'm no Wiki-King - that's the title of Jimbo Wales (who funnily enough was totally unaware of the Colbert situation) - as for the plane ticket, do you honestly think I can afford the thousand or so it'd cost to fly to New York and back not to mention a hotel and the full deal, especially when I'm a student....

Seriously, it was a joke (and for that matter a parody of the CR)

[Scribblista]

Tawker....
Anyone who controls Wikipedia's servers is a Wiki-King to me.
And, by all means, Colbert should fly you out to NY for the show. In fact, they should put you up at the Four Seasons.

It's only been around for a couple years, but I can't imagine life without Wikipedia anymore... even though it means it's time to throw out my family's 1977 World Book Encyclopedia Set.

[RamonGustav]

Are you eager to secure funds for that dream project of yours?

[Antivirus_man]

Hi, I congratulate you on Merry Christmas!