Annie Rauwerda's Depths of Wikipedia Phenomenon

It started as a quarantine curiosity: in April 2020, Annie Rauwerda, a neuroscience student at the University of Michigan, decided to dig through Wikipedia and began sharing the site’s weirdest corners with her friends on Instagram. She called the project Depths of Wikipedia. Within months, she’d created a phenomenon with over 1.6 million Instagram followers as of December 2025.

Rauwerda’s first inspiration came from two places: a collage of Wikipedia excerpts she made for a friend’s zine, and a photo from Wikipedia’s article on cow tipping. That photo, which showed a pair of cows with an odd, matter-of-fact caption, sparked the idea that Wikipedia was full of strange, delightful, and sometimes outright bizarre information just waiting to be discovered.

Long before Depths of Wikipedia launched, Rauwerda was already a Wikipedia power user. As a child, she spent hours reading Wikipedia entries and mastering the art of Wikiracing, a game where players try to navigate from one page to another in as few clicks as possible. In middle and high school, she played with friends, racing from topics like "the French Revolution" to "banana" in record time. This early fascination with Wikipedia’s sprawling, interconnected structure laid the groundwork for her later project.

The Instagram account’s first viral moment arrived in July 2020, when influencer Caroline Calloway, herself the subject of many internet stories, reposted Depths of Wikipedia to her Instagram story. This came shortly after Calloway publicly criticized the account for posting an older version of her Wikipedia page that had listed her occupation as “nothing.” Rauwerda apologized, and Calloway’s subsequent promotion brought thousands of new followers to Depths of Wikipedia in a matter of days.

As the follower count exploded, Rauwerda expanded the project to TikTok, X (formerly Twitter), and other platforms. She launched a newsletter to provide in-depth dives into the strangest Wikipedia articles, creating a multi-platform brand devoted to sharing the internet’s oddest knowledge. By October 2021, Rauwerda reported receiving between 30 and 50 article submissions from fans every single day, each suggesting new pages brimming with strangeness, trivia, or the outright absurd.

Rauwerda remains highly selective about which articles she features. She chooses entries that are not only strange, but that reveal the quirks of how collaborative knowledge gets made. Among the articles she’s highlighted: “exploding trousers,” a story of New Zealand farmers whose pants burst into flames after exposure to sodium chlorate; “Nuclear Gandhi,” which describes a famous glitch in the Civilization video game series that made Mahatma Gandhi unusually prone to launching nuclear war; “chess on a really big board,” documenting actual historical attempts to play chess on oversized, multi-dimensional boards; and “sexually active popes,” a Wikipedia page chronicling the personal lives of pontiffs through the ages.

Rauwerda is not just a curator of Wikipedia weirdness, but also an active Wikipedia editor. She takes photographs to upload to Wikimedia Commons, adding to the encyclopedia’s growing collection of free-use images. She’s hosted Wikipedia edit-a-thons in partnership with the Wikimedia New York City chapter, inviting newcomers to help improve articles and expand the encyclopedia’s coverage. Her involvement in the Wikipedia community extends to hosting live comedy shows, where she regales audiences with the wildest bits of Wikipedia trivia. Between 2021 and 2023, she performed these shows in cities like Boston, pulling in fans who’d discovered her online and wanted to see her celebrate Wikipedia in person.

In October 2023, Rauwerda gave a TED talk titled “The Joy of Learning Random Things on Wikipedia.” In it, she described the thrill of following Wikipedia’s endless hyperlinks and how the site’s structure encourages curiosity and serendipity. According to Rauwerda, Wikipedia’s open-edit model and vastness make it a kind of digital labyrinth, one that rewards aimless wandering with surprising discoveries.

The Depths of Wikipedia account has drawn high-profile followers, including Neil Gaiman, John Mayer, Troye Sivan, Olivia Wilde, and Lex Fridman. These celebrities, spanning literature, music, and media, have publicly praised the project or shared posts from the account. Their involvement has amplified the reach of Depths of Wikipedia, pulling in even larger audiences and transforming Rauwerda’s pet project into a major force in internet culture.

Heather Woods, a professor of rhetoric and technology at Kansas State University, has commented that Depths of Wikipedia “makes the internet feel smaller” by offering unexpected entry points to internet culture. The account serves as a kind of curated rabbit hole, pulling users out of algorithm-driven feeds and into the unruly, often hilarious, collective encyclopedia that is Wikipedia. Zachary McCune, brand director of the Wikimedia Foundation, described the account as “a place where Wikipedia comes to life, like an after-hours tour of the best of Wikipedia.”

Simon Garfield, in his 2023 book All the Knowledge in the World, called Depths of Wikipedia “a great Twitter feed. It may suck up all your spare time,” alluding to the addictive nature of following links from the account back to the original Wikipedia articles, and from there, deeper into the internet’s knowledge maze.

In 2022, Rauwerda was named Media Contributor of the Year at the annual Wikimedian of the Year awards. The Wikimedia Foundation, which hosts Wikipedia, recognized her for making Wikipedia’s culture and quirks accessible to millions, shining a light on how collective knowledge is built—and how weird, funny, and human that process can be.

Depths of Wikipedia’s influence extends offline, too. In 2022, at a live Boston show, a man known as “Shrug Guy” appeared. He had gained minor internet fame in 2006 as the model for the Wikipedia entry on “shrug.” In 2022, he recreated his classic shrug pose for a photo, and in 2026, he performed the pose again onstage, blurring the line between Wikipedia trivia and real-life performance.

The posts featured by Depths of Wikipedia are often both niche and strangely universal, touching on shared human experiences, obscure corners of history, and occasionally outright internet folklore. For example, the article on “exploding trousers” describes real-life events in 1930s New Zealand, when farmers using sodium chlorate weedkiller discovered their pants could combust. The culprit, sodium chlorate, is a strong oxidizer that reacts violently with organic materials like cotton, turning an ordinary day in the fields into a hazardous ordeal.

The “Nuclear Gandhi” article tells the story of a programming oversight in Civilization that set Gandhi’s “aggression” value so low that, when modified, it wrapped around to a maximum value, causing Gandhi—known for his pacifism—to become the world’s most trigger-happy leader, repeatedly launching nuclear weapons. This accidental bug became a gaming legend and a meme, illustrating how Wikipedia records not only factual history, but also the mythology and culture surrounding games.

“Chess on a really big board” documents oversized chess variants, such as Capablanca chess, which was played on a 10x8 board and introduced new pieces like the chancellor and archbishop. These experimental forms of chess, some of which date back to the Middle Ages, challenge the limits of strategy and memory, and highlight humanity’s obsession with pushing the boundaries of familiar games.

The “sexually active popes” article catalogues instances throughout history when members of the papacy were known to have had relationships, affairs, or children—a reminder that even the highest offices in religious institutions have tangled personal histories that end up, eventually, in the public record.

The collaborative nature of Wikipedia means that anyone can add to, edit, or challenge the contents of a page, and this openness sometimes leads to bizarre arguments and editorial “edit wars.” Depths of Wikipedia has spotlighted these moments, revealing how anonymous editors can debate, sometimes for years, over the exact phrasing of a sentence or the placement of an image. One example is the Wikipedia talk page for “cow tipping,” where editors have argued about whether cow tipping is a real phenomenon or just rural legend, citing everything from scientific studies to personal anecdotes.

Rauwerda’s live shows add a performance dimension to Wikipedia trivia. She blends stand-up comedy with PowerPoint presentations, riffing on the oddest Wikipedia pages and encouraging audience participation. At these events, she sometimes invites audience members to contribute live edits to Wikipedia, demystifying the editing process and inviting new contributors to join the encyclopedia’s community.

Rauwerda also travels to Wikipedia-related conferences, connecting with other “Wikimedians” and sharing her observations on the encyclopedia’s culture. At Wikimania, the annual global conference for Wikipedia contributors, she’s presented on how memes and humor can increase engagement with Wikipedia and attract new volunteers.

The rapid growth of Depths of Wikipedia’s following has turned the account into an accidental educational tool. Teachers have used its posts to spark classroom discussions, and librarians have cited the account as a gateway for students to practice research skills. The posts’ blend of humor and accurate sourcing shows how entertainment and information can coexist on the internet.

The selection process for which Wikipedia articles get featured involves sifting through dozens of daily submissions. Rauwerda says she looks for articles that are not only strange, but that also reflect Wikipedia’s unique editorial culture. She avoids articles with dubious sourcing or ones that seem like obvious internet hoaxes, preferring entries that have been subject to serious editorial scrutiny or that have a well-documented history in the Wikipedia archives.

The account’s reach extends to other languages and cultures as well. Depths of Wikipedia has inspired spin-offs and imitators in languages including Arabic, Catalan, Japanese, and Russian, each adapting the concept to highlight local oddities and cultural quirks recorded on their own language Wikipedias.

Depths of Wikipedia has also contributed to raising awareness about the Wikimedia Foundation’s non-profit status and the volunteer-driven model that keeps Wikipedia running. By focusing attention on the human side of Wikipedia—its editors, arguments, and accidental humor—the account demystifies the process of knowledge-building and helps recruit new contributors.

Rauwerda herself has become an inadvertent influencer. She’s been profiled in publications like The New York Times, Paste Magazine, and Vice. Journalists have described the account as “infectious,” “hilariously educational,” and “a breath of fresh air in your feed.” As of late 2025, Rauwerda continues to run the accounts and curate submissions, maintaining an active role in both the Wikipedia and social media communities.

Among the quirkiest facts highlighted by Depths of Wikipedia is the existence of the Wikipedia article “List of sexually active popes,” which catalogues over two dozen popes known to have had children or lovers, from Pope Alexander VI, notorious for his extravagant lifestyle during the Renaissance, to earlier popes whose personal lives were subjects of both rumor and official record.

The account has also brought attention to the Wikipedia article “Exploding trousers,” which details an incident from 1931 in New Zealand, when farmers using sodium chlorate as a weedkiller found their clothing bursting into flames with little warning. Sodium chlorate, a chemical oxidizer, reacts vigorously with organic material like cotton and wool, leading to a rash of small disasters in the rural South Island and a flurry of newspaper coverage at the time.

Articles like “Nuclear Gandhi” document how a simple programmatic error in a video game can create a persistent legend. In the original Civilization, Gandhi’s aggression value was set so low that, due to integer underflow, it became very high under certain conditions, making him unusually quick to launch nuclear weapons. This led to years of speculation among gamers, with Wikipedia collecting and preserving the evolving story.

The page “Chess on a really big board” documents the many attempts to expand chess beyond its traditional 8x8 grid, from Capablanca chess—named after the world champion José Raúl Capablanca, who introduced new pieces and a 10x8 board in the 1920s—to modern “fairy chess” variants played at global conventions.

“Cow tipping,” a page that inspired Rauwerda to start the account, has been the subject of repeated edit wars between those who insist it’s an urban legend and those who claim it’s a real rural pastime. The article includes references to scientific analyses studying the mechanics and feasibility of tipping a cow, including a 2005 study from the University of British Columbia that concluded it would require the coordinated effort of at least two people due to the cow’s weight and low center of gravity.

In addition to strange encyclopedia entries, Depths of Wikipedia has also spotlighted Wikipedia’s own internal culture. The page “Wikipedia:Lamest edit wars” chronicles disputes over topics as trivial as the color used for hyperlinks or whether the word “the” should appear in a particular article title. Some of these arguments have lasted over a decade, with hundreds of edits and thousands of words devoted to decisions as petty as whether to call Pluto a “planet.”

Rauwerda is also known for sharing the Wikipedia page on “List of inventors killed by their own inventions,” which includes names like Franz Reichelt, who jumped off the Eiffel Tower in his homemade parachute suit in 1912 and was killed on impact, and Thomas Midgley Jr., who developed both leaded gasoline and chlorofluorocarbons and was ultimately killed by a device he invented to help him get out of bed after being paralyzed by polio.

The account frequently highlights the Wikipedia policy of “citation needed,” pointing out how this simple phrase has become a meme both inside and outside the Wikipedia community. On Wikipedia, the “citation needed” tag signals a statement that isn’t backed up by a reliable source, and its presence on odd claims has fueled endless internet jokes.

Another article Rauwerda has featured involves “List of animals with fraudulent diplomas,” which catalogues instances where animals—including a cat named Colby Nolan—were awarded fake academic degrees as part of sting operations against diploma mills, exposing fraudulent institutions by showing how easily a non-human could earn a degree.

In August 2022, Rauwerda received the Wikimedia Foundation’s Media Contributor of the Year award, cementing her status as a bridge between Wikipedia’s volunteer editors and a massive audience hungry for weird, delightful facts.