To protest the “Stop Online Piracy Act” (SOPA) and “Protect IP Act” (PIPA) bills in Congress, Wikipedia has shut down for the day. As readers around the world cope with the loss, Facts Without Wikipedia has become a trending topic on Twitter.
We’ve enjoyed reading these fake facts all morning, and we collected our favorite encyclopedia flash fiction below–what have you learned without Wikipedia? Author Ben Greenman has published a helpful essay at McSweeney’s.
Here’s more about the protest: “Wikipedia is protesting against SOPA and PIPA by blacking out the English Wikipedia for 24 hours, beginning at midnight January 18, Eastern Time … SOPA and PIPA represent two bills in the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate respectively … In short, these bills are efforts to stop copyright infringement committed by foreign web sites, but, in our opinion, they do so in a way that actually infringes free expression while harming the Internet.”