Friday, July 25, 2014

San Francisco, California -- In a turn of events that shocked nerdom and made it pull out its inhaler, Wikipedia co- founder and Internet entrepreneur Jimbo "Jimmy" Wales' head went asplode.

As it happened, Wales was last seen pulling an all-nighter in his office Tuesday. At some point between then and Friday, his head literally exploded from within. His body was found this morning when the staff complained about an odd smell - not the usual smell of a determined and unshowered Jimbo, but the smell of death and inactivity - only to find in horror an office covered in dried blood and gray matter. It was revealed during the autopsy that Wales experienced what is known by phrenologists as exploding head syndrome, a rare condition that most famously plagued President John F. Kennedy. Although it was quickly assumed Jimbo's head exploded due to stress, Wikia co-founder Angela Beesley poetically spelled out the full story during a press conference:

“ It's the biggest kept secret in the Wikisphere. After being caught editing his own Wikipedia entry on himself, Jimmy created multiple sockpuppets so that he could edit it without raising suspicion. Once he polished and perfected his own biography, describing himself as more god than man, he realized he could use this power for a lesser good in overseeing all of Wikipedia and contributing from within the shadows. This became a bit of an unhealthy obsession for him, until he would become the dominant editor. More than merely getting the ball rolling, he became the ball. A significant fraction of what you think is millions of editors collaborating for a single cause and collective pride...was actually Jimmy. Around the clock, he was constantly editing, revising, uploading, correcting, deleting and arguing with himself on the talk pages. Roughly 10% of Wikipedian activity was Jimbo Wales. After many years of this, his wiki skills became what can only be described as superhuman. We all felt he was becoming the god he always knew he was. Jimmy's brain power grew tenfold that of the average human being. It was as if he wasn't actually accumulating the sum of all human knowledge into one place so much as he was releasing it from his own mind. He was letting us all know what he knew. Alas, his own mind could not be contained within his finite mortal head, and was liberated into the cosmos. ”



She went on to explain that Wales not only propped up Wikipedia, but Wikia as well. "We have a little unwritten rule at Wikia: If it exists, there's a wiki of it. If there isn't a wiki of it, one will be provided. Jimmy was that provider. How many people give a hoot about car key molds or Australian cuisine? Subjects pulled straight from Jimmy's ass. He had a neurotic obsession with making sure every conceivable topic had a wiki dedicated to it. It didn't matter if the wiki was light in content. It simply needed to exist. Now, in a world without Jimmy, the only hope for obscure topics is cranks and people on the autism spectrum, God bless 'em."

She closed with what many would have called prophecy, if not for the unnecessary Star Wars reference; a line written by a head admin of Wookieepedia for the sake of needed promotion that Beesley regrets ever uttering.

“ Wikipedia was built and intertwined with Jimmy's amazing brain, and with said brain gone it will suffer the exact same fate. We don't know when - 3 minutes or 15 years from now - but Wikipedia will inevitably burst from within and cascade into a million little pieces. Like when Luke Skywalker destroyed the Death Star, but, like, you know, a kazillion times more dramatic and cooler. ”



Written in Jimbo Wales' will was the request that his body be donated to science. However, the intention of that request was that his brain would be studied and used for the vast improvement of mankind. Following a vote from the Wikimedia board of directors, the rest of Jimbo's body was donated to science after all, while the raw hamburger meat that was his exploded brains was fed to his dogs. His family was not consulted in this decision.

Sources [ edit ]

exploding whales, no matter how pants-shittingly awesome that is. The exploding Wales is not to be confused with, no matter how pants-shittingly awesome that is.

Ellen Emmerentze Jervell "10,000 Wikipedia Articles Is a Good Day's Work, Until Your Head Blows Up" The Wall Street Journal, July 25, 2014