https://defector.com/in-search-of-wikipedias-shrug-guy
"I really love traveling into Wikipedia’s obscure depths. So much so that I
post Wikipedia-sourced trivia pretty much every day on social media. Wikipedia
gets a lot of credit for its unequaled breadth—its comically specific accounts
about, say, “homosexuality in the Batman franchise” and “fictional cyborgs” and
“sexually active popes”—but I have a special spot in my heart for how it
handles the basics. Floor. Human mouth. Thought.
Thank you (phrase).
Reasonable person. Everyday life. The word
The. The maddeningly banal
articles that read as if they were written by aliens trying to describe humans
to each other.
Sometimes I wonder about the people in the pictures illustrating these
articles. Like the people grinding in the article “Grinding.” Or the couple in
the “High five” article who have since gotten married, had children, and
re-created the photos as a family. These are real people, immortalized by some
collision of timing and contingency as the Platonic ideal of a basic human
gesture.
One of my favorites in this category is the “Shrug” article, which has been
educating the masses on the gesture of indifference since 2005.
Some of the content of “Shrug” should be utterly obvious to any non-alien: “The
shoulder-raising action may be accompanied by rotating the palms upwards,
pulling closed lips downwards, raising the eyebrows or tilting the head to one
side.” Yes, that is a shrug. But there are a few surprising tidbits. Did you
know that people from the Philippines, Iran, or Iraq “may interpret a shrug as
a somewhat impolite sign of confidence”? Now you do.
The real triumph of the “Shrug” article, though, is its sole photo. It’s a man
with a perplexing assortment of accessories: a tiara labeled “SCAMPER,” a neon
wristband, a comically loose paisley tie. He’s holding some clear, unlabeled
grog topped with a lime, his face plastered with a wide-eyed bewilderment that
seems to suggest that he’s just as confused about the situation as you are.
Until recently, the word “man” in the caption was hyperlinked to the Wiki page
for “Man”—a detail that I, a Wikipedia editor and enthusiast, find almost as
charming as the photo itself."
Via
Garbage Day: A virtual mall with infinite storefronts
https://www.garbageday.email/p/a-virtual-mall-with-infinite-storefronts
Share and enjoy,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
