“inb4 shitstorm”

If you ever encounter this phrase on 4chan, it means that someone has predicted that a certain post, statement or event is going to cause a significant uproar in the community. And that’s precisely what happened yesterday when countless trolls, /b/tards and Anons discovered that their online storehouse of institutional memory -- a wiki known as Encyclopedia Dramatica -- had vanished from the web.

Launched in 2004, Encyclopedia Dramatica -- or ED to its friends -- was what Wikipedia would look like if you put it through some kind of inversion machine. Whereas Jimmy Wales and company forged a community around ideals like “neutral point of view” and “don’t be a dick”, ED threw objectivity out the window and prided itself on packing as much offensiveness as possible into every entry. Not surprisingly, those behind ED cited Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary as an inspiration.

ED quickly attracted the attention and interest of the nascent Anonymous subculture, and the wiki became, in the words of Wired, the place “where the vast parallel universe of Anonymous in-jokes, catchphrases, and obsessions is lovingly annotated”. Shifts in the culture, notable raids -- ranging from small attacks on other online communities to organized campaigns like Project Chanology -- and other ephemera were all carefully documented and presented in what can only be termed as Anonymous’ unique editorial voice.

However, those that went seeking that voice as of yesterday were redirected to a site called Oh Internet. Almost overnight, those behind ED had demolished the site and replaced it with a sanitized version boasting “toned down content style and a streamlined design”. Sherrod Grippo, one of ED’s founders, explained the move by saying “shock for shock’s sake is old at this point.”