I was but an innocent man. I came to Wikipedia simply to find out the average lifespan of a toad so that I could win a very intense argument I was having in a YouTube Shorts comment section.
But then I noticed her . . . and I knew, then and there, that my fate was no longer my own. Clad in #0645AD blue sat my muse: Wikipedia’s hyperlink function. While the hyperlink leads you to millions of different pages, her essence as a vehicle of knowledge, as a steward of the known world, remains the same. It is this essence with which I fell in love. I hovered my mouse over the first hyperlink I saw: Bufotenin, a hallucinogenic compound excreted by the Colorado River toad. I clicked. And all of a sudden, my world changed.
There is an insatiability to the human need for knowledge. Had I been born 200 years ago, perhaps documenting the varieties of mushrooms of my ancestral homeland of Suffolk could have been enough to feed this yearning curiosity. However, I was cursed with living in the present day, and my quest to understand the world around me led to an endless cycle of diving into Wikipedia hyperlinks until I found myself soaking in the contents of the Nigerian Stock Exchange and comparing the sorghum production in various subregions of West Africa, then reading the history of the invention of the combine harvester, cackling endlessly as I navigated to the novelty song “The Combine Harvester,” a hit for the Wurzels in 1975, a Scrumpy and Western band; what the fuck is Scrumpy and Western? Why is it inextricably linked to Bristol City Football Club? I have to know everything. I cry in anguish at the sight of every red link as if each dead link were an unborn brother. Solidarity with the fallen.
Just as I was getting to the bottom of H’Angus the Monkey’s election as mayor of Hartlepool in 2002, Wikipedia ceased to load information. I frantically click at the top corner of my computer screen, desperately clawing at the reload button to continue my marauding quest for understanding. Yet, in my panic, I clicked on “view editor history.”
I stopped in my tracks. Under the author tab, just one name appeared: Jonah Lazar. I felt my heart pounding in my jaw. I knew nothing of H’Angus but what I had come to read; how could it be that I wrote this page? I hit the back arrow and retraced my steps: the combine harvester, contributions from: Jonah Lazar. Sorghum production in Chad: Jonah Lazar. Scrumpy and Western: Jonah Lazar. I scrambled through pages I hadn’t even visited, and yet under each and every author tab, my name appeared. What have I become? Where do I end, and where does Wikipedia begin?
I regained my composure. Surely, someone must be impersonating me and writing Wikipedia articles under my name. So I navigate to the identity theft Wikipedia entry to learn more about my situation. As I reach the middle of the page, a curious site appears before me: the mnemonic major system. How intriguing. I click the link to find out more.
