Depths of Wikipedia

Submission 5,945

Part of a series on Wikipedia. [View Related Entries]

About

Depths of Wikipedia is a gimmick Instagram, Twitter and TikTok account that posts screenshots of weird and funny Wikipedia articles. Created in April 2020, the Instagram account achieved massive popularity in the following years, with the Twitter gimmick becoming viral in March 2022.

History

On April 20th, 2020, Instagram^[1] gimmick account Depths of Wikipedia (dephthsofwikipedia) was launched by Univesity of Michigan student Annie Rauwerda. On the same day, the account made its first post,^[2] a series of screenshots of the subsection "Kidney stones" found in the Wikipedia article for Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, a mine train roller coaster. The post gained over 1,300 likes in two years (shown below).

Starting in April 2020, the account regularly posted screenshots of funny, bizarre and unusual Wikipedia articles; for example, on May 5th, 2020, the account shared^[3] a Wikipedia article for sexy prime, with the post gaining over 270 likes in two years.

As of January 15th, 2021, the Instagram^[10] account amassed nearly 100,000 followers.

On July 31st, 2020, Twitter^[4] gimmick account @depthsofwiki was launched. On January 15th, 2021, Annie Rauwerda launched @depthsofwikipedia TikTok^[5] account, with Rauwerda explaining intersting and funny phenomena rather than simply sharing screenshots of articles.

Already on January 15th, 2021, a TikTok^[6] shared by @depthsofwikipedia received over one millkion views (shown below, left, more examples shown center and right).

On Twitter, the account posted its first viral tweet^[7] on March 3rd, 2021, with a screenshot of an article "Thinking about the immortality of the crab" gaining over 9,700 retweets and 49,200 likes in one year (shown below, left). Through 2021, the account posted more viral tweets; for example, a post^[8] made on July 12th, 2021, gained over 7,700 retweets and 69,200 likes in nine months (shown below, center). A tweet^[9] shared on November 24th, 2021, gained over 11,500 retweets and 64,500 likes in four months (shown below, right).

The Twitter account saw a surge in popularity in March 2022 as many of its tweets went viral that month.

Features

Depths of Wikiedpia gimmick accounts on Twitter and Instagram share screenshots of Wikipedia articles containing trivia that stand out for one reason for another, such as being funny, bizarre, unusual or containing interesting visuals. On TikTok, the accounts creator Annie Rauwerda comments on various articles and shares humorous sketches referencing her discoveries.

Highlights

Starting in January 2021, Depths of Wikipedi gimmick pages attracted attention of online media, with interviews with Rauwerda appearing in InsideHook,^[11] i-D,^[12] Forbes,^[13] Mashable,^[14] VICE^[15] and other media outlets.

In March 2022, Depths of Wikipedia popularized a Sumerian bar joke about a dog walking into a tavern created between 4,500 and 1,900 B.C., with the joke becoming a subject of memes in the following days.^[16]