The other day I was researching documentary theory, and google threw up a link that had the word "fucking" in it. Not really what you expect to find when you're trying to be studious, so of course I clicked in. Ever heard of Uncyclopedia? Neither had I!
On the home page, Uncyclopedia describes itself as "the content-free encyclopedia that anyone can edit". On other pages, it proudly announces it's a satire on Wikipedia.
Its content ranges from articles on Regifting ("the act of taking a useless gift you've received and presenting it to somebody else under the pretext of it being a recently purchased item that was specifically chosen for the recipient") to Gibberish ("Linguists classify Gibberish as a Romance language, because the only time it is heard is in public houses, being used to pick up women"), and it also hosts other satirical sites, like UnTunes (a collection of fake songs and album sleeves. New home for the Rubber Bandits maybe?), Undictionary (The ick!tionary of all things best left unsaid), UnBooks (Content-free books), UnPoetia (Poetry for people who hate poetry), UnScripts... you get the idea.
In theory, a satire on Wiki would be hilarious. In practice, you've got every nincompoop from here to Shanghai trying to be the next John Daily. To help them along, the friendly Uncyclopedia staff have written an article on How_To_Be_Funny_And_Not_Just_Stupid which is supposed to be funny and, you guessed it, is not.
(Incidentally, after reading the article I decided to test some of the pointers on a friend's status update. I thought I was hilarious. She thought I was a cranky bitch. Conclusion? The article was useless / I'm not funny / people can't identify attempts at written humour without the support of emoticons).
In a nutshell - Uncyclopedia reeks of desperation. Or am I just a cranky bitch?
;) ;) ;)
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