Serendipity35

Satirist Stephen Colbert (Comedy Central's Colbert Report) did a bit on his show where he coined the term "wikiality." He says that a wiki version of reality - one that anyone can edit. Kind of the ultimate in revisionist history. The video of the segment is at YouTube (or it was when I wrote this). For Colbert, it was his word for the night.

He told viewers to go to Wikipedia and say that the African elephant population had tripled in the last decade. Of course, it actually has been diminishing for decades, but that doesn't matter in the world of wiki-reality.

The incident reminds me of one of my childhood radio heroes, Jean Shepherd. Shep made up a book, I, Libertine and told listeners to go out and ask for it at stores. They did. Eventually the book was written & published. Another time he told them to ask for Sweetheart soap to prove that he had listeners with buying power. Sweetheart was not an advertiser on his show, so WOR radio fired him... listener protests put him back on the air.

But this isn't about buying power or scamming the public.

Colbert's viewer hit Wikipedia hard. Wikipedia locked down the pages so they could no longer be edited. This one was well publicized, and meant to be a satire (aimed at the Bush administration actually) but what happens when a "special interest group" hits a wiki and changes reality to their view and they don't get noticed?

At least at Wikipedia they are talking about what happened - you should join in.