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Geekosystem: Encyclopedia Dramatica Is No More: OhInternet Rises from the Ashes
by Robert Quigley | 9:36 am, April 15th, 2011

From 2004 to 2011, Encyclopedia Dramatica was one of the few resources out there for people who wanted to learn about the strange culture of the Internet. The open wiki was always anarchic, and frequently racist, homophobic and otherwise offensive — indeed, last year, the Australian Human Rights Commission threatened it with legal action over an article that “encourage[d] racial hatred against Aborigines.” In more recent years, Know Your Meme, which was recently purchased by Cheezburger Networks at a low seven-figure valuation, picked up the slack in educating readers about Internet arcana, as did meme-savvier blogs. But Dramatica, for better or worse, remained the one outlet that covered many topics that more mainstream outlets feared to touch, and frequently exposed the dark underbelly of Internet happenings on which other sites tried to paint a cheerier facade.

Last night, visitors to Dramatica’s home page found themselves automatically redirected to a new site called OhInternet which appeared to have more in common with the new, slicker generation of Internet culture trackers than with the unvarnished, offensive Dramatica of old. Some fans of Dramatica wondered if this was an elaborate troll or an April Fool’s joke; visiting Dramatica’s old IP address, 208.99.87.133, gave a message that was interpreted by some to mean that Dramatica was only temporarily offline. But the redirect is permanent, Encyclopedia Dramatica founder and current OhInternet primary contributor Sherrod DeGrippo told me by email, and OhInternet is here to stay.

Encyclopedia Dramatica is no more.

( DeGrippo says that the biggest difference between OhInternet and Dramatica is that the new site has moved towards 'a more toned down content style and a streamlined design: Shock for shock’s sake is old at this point and we’re looking forward to the future and how things are evolving' )

Looks like Ms. DiGrippo has grown up and decided to sell out. If so, the pressures of commerce did what the pressure of law could not.

Above crossposted to we_love_nebris and ontd_political on LiveJournal.