Mar 16, 2007

Something Wiki this way comes

By Malcolm Fleschner / Humor Columnist

If there's one thing I have always strived to achieve with this column, it's to someday get through my first sentence without having to stop and ask myself a question like, "Wait, is it 'strived,' or 'strove'? Or maybe 'striven'? It can't be 'stroved,' can it? 'Strought'?"

Thankfully in this, the Internet age, I don't have to scratch my head over a grammatical sticking point like this for long. Just a few keystrokes and mouse clicks take me directly to a page where it definitively states that, "To unlock your sexy potential, seamless push-ups or barely-there tops offer provocative cleavage or a deeper plunge."

Whoops! Hold on, there, it seems that while innocently looking for a Web site addressing questions of proper English usage I mistakenly surfed over to the homepage for Victoria's Secret. Purely by accident, I assure you. It's not like that page is listed as one of my browser's "favorites" or anything. And, as luck would have it, while perusing the 2007 bra models, I discovered the answer to my question, which turns out to be, "Let the copy editor worry about it."

This example notwithstanding, even today I'm still regularly amazed at the way the Web provides near-instantaneous access to virtually any piece of information. This certainly wasn't the case when I was a kid, when my friends and I, despite our youth, would debate some of the most pressing issues of the day, such as the Camp David accords or the gas crisis. No, wait, we mainly argued about minutiae like who on the Red Sox had the best batting average against left-handed pitchers or which of the Tuscadero sisters Fonzie dated first on "Happy Days."

Today, the Internet provides answers to questions like this within seconds, but back then our only way to resolve such disputes involved name-calling, which would then escalate into a wrestling match that only ended with someone winding up pinned to the ground. At this point the pinned individual (usually me) came to his senses and admitted that, come to think of it, maybe Pinky Tuscadero was on the show before her sister, Leather, particularly if making such an admission meant he didn't have to eat any more dirt. This was also, coincidentally, how Jimmy Carter got Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat to resolve their disputes at Camp David.

Admittedly, there were certain flaws to this schoolyard-style approach to information dissemination. For example, when I was a kid, the received medical wisdom was that eating Pop Rocks while drinking Coke would instantly create a buildup of gas, causing your stomach to explode. We knew this to be true because that's how Mikey, the onetime star of Life Cereal commercials, had met his fate. "Hey Mikey, he doesn't like it!" we used to shout to one another, mocking the child star's signature phrase as we imagined the messy scene of his demise.

Today a quick Internet search reveals that this piece of childhood lore was hopelessly inaccurate. Mikey wasn't killed by eating Pop Rocks and drinking Coke - it turns out that he died in a bizarre role-playing love-triangle murder-suicide pact with the kid who played Cousin Oliver on the Brady Bunch and Jerry Mathers as the Beaver.

Ha! I'm just kidding, of course. Everyone knows Jerry Mathers died when he choked on a ham sandwich he was sharing with Mama Cass. But the sad fact is that despite the hype, the Internet has not proven to be a wholly unimpeachable source of unvarnished truth.
Much of the blame is directed at Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia consisting of entries contributed, fact-checked and edited exclusively by volunteers who may or may not have any actual credentials or expertise. Nevertheless, for the most part this anarchic system works, and the vast majority of the millions of Wikipedia entries feature accurate information. Still, the critics can't help but carp about Wikipedia's rare minor errors, such as when the listing of some long-forgotten 12th century pope's reign is off by a few years, or the entry describing former vice president Dan Quayle as "a carnivorous fungus subsisting primarily on dung-borne nematodes."

Despite these sporadic and mostly trivial inaccuracies, there's no question that the Internet has revolutionized and simplified the way millions of people access information. I do admit to feeling a little jealous of today's kids, though. I can't help but wonder if things might have been a little different if I'd had the Web to consult whenever a dispute arose with another kid. That way, maybe I could have avoided getting beat up over minor issues like which NBA player had the biggest Afro or the real reason Rod Stewart had to get his stomach pumped.

Instead I could have just gotten beat up for having a computer. Or is it "beaten?"

Malcolm Fleschner is glad to take a moment from checking those "grammar" Web sites to respond to reader e-mails sent to Malcolm@CultureShlock.com.