“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.”

However, it’s at precisely this point, that inb4 shitstorm becomes relevant.

Two things really piss off the collective hivemind of Anonymous: online censorship and attempts to capitalize on their collective labour. The folks at Oh Internet decided to do both at the same time. It’s hard to believe that Grippo failed to see that consequences would never be the same.

News of ED’s demise spread like wildfire throughout Anonymous and 4chan. There is never anything resembling true consensus within the community, but users were displeased to say the least. Oh Internet was was denounced as a low-rent version Know Your Meme and Grippo was declared a sellout by those on /b/. The Facebook page for Oh Internet was targeted with hateful comments and profane images, and the site itself was brought down by an apparent denial of service attack shortly thereafter.

However, Anonymous doesn’t just get mad, it gets busy. Within hours, a text archive of ED made by the fine folks at the Web Ecology Project was circulating around 4chan, IRC channels were created for planning purposes and various Anons and /b/tards were scouring the interwebs and downloading cached versions of ED articles wherever they found them. Operation Save ED was born, and -- if AnonOps is to be believed -- it will be releasing a crowdsourced partial archive of ED in the near future. The move is likely to the chagrin of Grippo and her fellows, who no doubt hoped to capitalize on their monopolistic access to the well of ED content.

The whole affair raises a host of questions. Is this just another example of someone using Anonymous’ ire to gain publicity? Should the proprietors’ of a collaboratively produced site be allowed to dispose of their contributor’s work as they see fit? Should Grippo and the folks behind ED be forced to bear the burden -- both financial and legal -- of maintaining the site simply because so many users find it meaningful? Like Canvas, does Oh Internet have a chance at winning over its former community? These are all interesting queries, and ones that we should endeavor to at least ask, even if we don’t answer them.

Still, while few regular netizens will mourn ED, its demise is another step towards an increasingly homogenous internet where only those sites able to eke out a commercial existence will succeed. As one Redditor noted: “I think that what we're seeing is the final development of Web2.0. They're turning ED into KnowYourMeme - an encyclopedia of internet culture told from the outside, complete with bright styling, vanilla writing and ads everywhere.”

The same user then linked to a video of Futurama’s Professor Farnsworth proclaiming “I don’t want to live on this planet anymore.”