It’s unlikely you will witness a more enthusiastic performance at this year’s Fringe than that brought to the stage at Underbelly’s Cowbarn by American internet personality, journalist, and comedian Annie Rauwerda.

She’s also a qualified neuroscientist.

So in love, and so in tune with Wikipedia is she, that in 2022 she was recognised as the Wikimedia World Media Contributor of the Year. Actually, scrub that – in love with and in tune with Wikimedia is an understatement; Rauwerda is obsessed, and this obsession is to both Wikipedia’s benefit and to our joy. Naturally, she has a Wikipedia article all about her.

For exactly an hour Rauwerda ‘lectures’ us on the back story of Wiki using a huge PowerPoint projection.  But this is no death by PowerPoint.  This is Life by PowerPoint. This performance is so engaging, so affecting, so damned funny that no-one in the audience left with anything other than delight in their eyes.

It’s certainly not typical Fringe fare but it is the sort of thing that curious Fringe aficionados lap up. It’s a kind of performance art comedy that leaves you reaching for superlatives.

During the show we get under the bonnet of Wiki: how citations work, how chat can blow up into mortal combat, facts and figures – like there are 7.22 million Wiki articles, an article on The Meaning of Life has been edited 11,000 times, Diannaa [sic], a contributor, has made 320,000 edits on copyright violations, one contributor has changed the phrase ‘comprised of’ 100,000 times because he considers the phrase grammatically incorrect – there’s tons of this stuff that’s just, you know, interesting, and very, very funny.

We hear of fecal sludge, of dogs wearing hats, of cows lying down just because they want to.  She explains how Long Term Abusers (LTAs) like to subvert Wiki by editing maliciously.  The facts and the funnies just keep coming in Rauwerda’s trademark style – a bit like Alyson Hannigan’s, ‘This one time, at band camp…’ delivery in American Pie.

She enthuses about Wiki’s absolute integrity – billionaires cannot erase information that they don’t want the world to read. She celebrates the fact that it’s created by humans – ordinary people, not algorithms – and no, AI ain’t gonna destroy it any time soon.  If anything, AI will make Wiki even more authoritative than it is currently.

A very respected academic is pictured sitting with the caption, Guy Standing, sitting.  That’s just funny, and it gets a roar of approval from an increasingly enthusiastic audience. This is the Fringe doing what it does best. Fact!

Depths of Wikipedia has finished its run