WAntifa is a far-left, anti-fascist and anti-racist political movement in the United States. As a highly decentralized array of autonomous groups, antifa uses both nonviolent and violent direct action to achieve its aims rather than policy reform. Much of antifa political activism is nonviolent, involving poster and flyer campaigns, mutual aid, speeches, protest marches, and community organizing. They also engage in protest tactics, seeking to combat fascists and racists such as neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other far-right extremists. Antifa's willingness to directly confront far-right activists is a departure from other leftist opposition movements. This confrontation sometimes involves digital activism, doxing, harassment, physical violence, and property damage against those they identify as belonging to the far right.
WThe Henryk Batuta hoax was a hoax perpetrated on the Polish Wikipedia from November 2004 to February 2006, the main element of which was a biographical article about a nonexistent socialist revolutionary, Henryk Batuta.
WThe reliability of Wikipedia concerns the validity, verifiability, and veracity of Wikipedia and its user-generated editing model, particularly its English-language edition. It is written and edited by volunteer editors who generate online content with the editorial oversight of other volunteer editors via community-generated policies and guidelines. Wikipedia carries the general disclaimer that it can be "edited by anyone at any time" and maintains an inclusion threshold of "verifiability, not truth." This editing model is highly concentrated as 77% of all articles are written by 1% of its editors, a majority of whom are anonymous. The reliability of the project has been tested statistically, through comparative review, analysis of the historical patterns, and strengths and weaknesses inherent in its editing process. The online encyclopedia has been criticized for its factual reliability, principally regarding its content, presentation, and editorial processes. Studies and surveys attempting to gauge the reliability of Wikipedia have been mixed, with findings varied and inconsistent.
WA bikini bridge is defined as "when bikini bottoms are suspended between the two hip bones, causing a space between the bikini and the lower abdomen". It originated in the United States on January 5, 2014, created by users of /b/ section on the imageboard 4chan as a parody of popular thinspiration memes. According to a posting on the website, users intended to spread content across social media regarding bikini bridges. It was reported on by U.S. television program Today on January 7. Several commentators critiqued the posts for displaying insensitivity or being "dangerous" for women with an eating disorder.
WBoilerplate is a fictional robot which would have existed in the Victorian era and early 20th century. It was created in 2000 by Portland, Oregon USA artist Paul Guinan. Originally intended for comics, the character became known via a faux-historical website created by Guinan, and has since appeared in other media.
WThe CERN ritual hoax is a found footage video that depicts a supposed occult ritual occurring in the grounds of CERN, a European particle physics research organization. The video shows several people dressed in black cloaks surrounding a statue of the Hindu deity Shiva and apparently stabbing a woman in a human sacrifice. The video ended with the person filming crying out and running away.
W"Chew the fat" or "chew the rag" are English expressions for gossiping or making friendly small talk, or a long and informal conversation with someone.
WThe secret cow level, or simply the cow level, is a level featured in the action role-playing hack and slash dungeon crawler video game series Diablo, developed and published by Blizzard Entertainment. It first appears as postgame content in 2000's Diablo II, where it is officially known as the "Moo Moo Farm". Players may access the level after collecting a special combination of items to conjure a portal leading to the level. The player character is confronted upon arrival by a large horde of armed anthropomorphic cows led by a boss character called the "Cow King".
WWashington, D.C., the capital of the United States, experienced a series of protests and riots following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Some of the events involved violence, looting, and destruction.
WThe dihydrogen monoxide parody involves calling water by an unfamiliar chemical name, most often "dihydrogen monoxide" (DHMO), and listing some of water's properties in a particularly alarming manner, such as accelerating corrosion (rust) and causing suffocation (drowning). The parody often calls for dihydrogen monoxide to be banned, regulated, or labeled as dangerous. It plays into chemophobia and demonstrates how a lack of scientific literacy and an exaggerated analysis can lead to misplaced fears. The parody has been used with other chemical names such as hydrogen hydroxide, dihydrogen oxide, hydroxic acid, hydric acid and oxidane.
WThe Essjay controversy centered on Ryan Jordan, a Wikipedia editor who went by the username Essjay. On Wikipedia, he falsely presented himself as a university professor of religion. He was active from 2005 to 2008, and was elected to top positions of trust by the community, including the rank of administrator and arbitration committee member. In July 2006, The New Yorker published an article about "Essjay", and mentioned that he was a university professor of religion. The New Yorker later acknowledged it did not know his real name. The controversy came to involve Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales who, after initially defending Jordan, eventually asked for his resignation in March 2007.
WFake news is false or misleading information presented as news. It often has the aim of damaging the reputation of a person or entity, or making money through advertising revenue. However, the term does not have a fixed definition, and has been applied more broadly to include any type of false information, including unintentional and unconscious mechanisms, and also by high-profile individuals to apply to any news unfavourable to their personal perspectives.
WThe technology company Google has added Easter eggs into many of its products and services, such as Google Search, YouTube, and Android since at least 2000.
WHelicopter Shark is a composition of two photographs that gives the impression that a great white shark is leaping out of the water to attack military personnel climbing a suspended ladder attached to a Special Forces UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter. The photo was widely circulated via an email in 2001, along with a claim that it had been chosen as "National Geographic Photo of the Year". The email in question was usually written in the following form: "AND YOU THINK YOUR HAVING A BAD DAY AT WORK !!" [sic] The photo is similar to an incident in the 1966 film Batman where a shark attacks Batman on a ladder from a helicopter. This raised suspicions that the photo in question was a hoax. National Geographic publicly disavowed the photo and the claimed award as a hoax.
WSamuel Whitcomb Hyde is an American comedian, writer, performance artist and actor. He co-created the sketch comedy group Million Dollar Extreme (MDE) with Charls Carroll and Nick Rochefort.
WThe iLoo was a cancelled Microsoft project to develop a Wi-Fi Internet-enabled portable toilet. The iLoo, which was to debut at British summer festivals, was described as being a portable toilet with wireless broadband Internet, an adjustable plasma screen, a membrane wireless keyboard, a six-channel speaker system, and toilet paper embossed with popular web site addresses. The iLoo was also to have an extra screen and keyboard on the outside, and was to be guarded. It was intended as the next in a series of successful initiatives by MSN UK which sought to introduce the internet in unusual locations, including MSN Street, MSN Park Bench and MSN Deckchair.
WJar'Edo Wens was a deliberately fictitious Wikipedia article which existed for almost 10 years before being spotted in November 2014 and deleted in March 2015. At the time, it was the longest-lasting hoax article discovered in the history of Wikipedia.
WKremvax was originally a fictitious Usenet site at the Kremlin, named like the then large number of Usenet VAXen with names of the form foovax. Kremvax was announced on April 1, 1984 in a posting ostensibly originated there by Soviet leader Konstantin Chernenko. The posting was actually forged by Piet Beertema of CWI as an April Fool's prank—"because the notion that Usenet might ever penetrate the Iron Curtain seemed so totally absurd at the time".
Wlonelygirl15 is a web series that was released on YouTube June 16, 2006 to August 1, 2008. Initially presented as an authentic video diary, it gained wide media attention in September 2006 when the show was revealed to be fictional. The plot began with the mundane life of a teenage girl; the narrative became increasingly bizarre, portraying her dealings with secret occult practices within her family, including the mysterious disappearance of her parents, and a "secret" ceremony prescribed by leaders of the cult. The series was created by Mesh Flinders, a screenwriter and filmmaker from Marin County, California; Miles Beckett, a surgical residency dropout turned filmmaker; and Greg Goodfried, a former attorney with Mitchell, Silberberg and Knupp, LLP.
WThe Mars hoax was a hoax circulated by e-mail that began in 2003, that claimed that Mars would look as large as the full Moon to the naked eye on August 27, 2003. The hoax has since resurfaced each time before Mars is at its closest to Earth, about every 22 months. It began from a misinterpretation and exaggeration of a sentence in an e-mail message that reported the close approach between Mars and the Earth in August 2003. At that time, the distance between the two planets was about 55,758,000 kilometres (34,646,000 mi), which was the closest distance between them since September 24, 57,617 BC, when the distance has been calculated to have been about 55,718,000 kilometres (34,622,000 mi).
WAlan Mcilwraith is a Scottish former call centre worker from Glasgow who was exposed as a military impostor by a tabloid newspaper after he passed himself off as a much-decorated British Army officer.
WMillion Dollar Extreme (MDE) is an American sketch comedy troupe. The main members are Sam Hyde, Charls Carroll, and Nick Rochefort. The group remains largely inactive since the cancellation of their show World Peace in 2016. They are known for their online videos, anti-comedy, and public pranks mainly uploaded on their several related YouTube channels. They are also controversial for their support from alt-right and white supremacist fans, and Sam Hyde's connections to the alt-right. The group's first channel was permanently banned in 2018 for violating community guidelines.
WThe Nibiru cataclysm is a supposed disastrous encounter between Earth and a large planetary object that certain groups believed would take place in the early 21st century. Believers in this doomsday event usually refer to this object as Nibiru or Planet X. The idea was first put forward in 1995 by Nancy Lieder, founder of the website ZetaTalk. Lieder describes herself as a contactee with the ability to receive messages from extraterrestrials from the Zeta Reticuli star system through an implant in her brain. She states that she was chosen to warn mankind that the object would sweep through the inner Solar System in May 2003 causing Earth to undergo a physical pole shift that would destroy most of humanity.
WNuclear Gandhi is an Internet meme and an urban legend about the video game Civilization. According to the legend, there was a bug in Civilization that eventually forced the pacifist leader Mahatma Gandhi to be extremely aggressive and to use nuclear weapons heavily.
WThe Pacific Northwest tree octopus is an Internet hoax created in 1998 by a humor writer under the pseudonym Lyle Zapato. This fictitious endangered species of cephalopod was given the Latin name Octopus paxarbolis. It was purportedly able to live both on land and in water, and was said to live in the Olympic National Forest and nearby rivers, spawning in water where its eggs are laid. Its major predator was said to be the Sasquatch. Since its creation, the Pacific Northwest tree octopus website has been commonly referenced in Internet literacy classes in schools and has been used in multiple studies demonstrating children's gullibility regarding online sources of information.
WRedcore is a web browser developed by Chinese company Redcore Times (Beijing) Technology Ltd.. Redcore is based on Chromium and uses the Blink browser engine.
WSave Toby was a humor website. The premise of the site was that the website's anonymous webmasters would eat Toby, a pet rabbit, unless they received $50,000 in donations to care for it. The website also spawned a book, fully titled: Save Toby: Only YOU have the power to save Toby!
W"Seriously McDonalds" is the name under which a viral photograph was spread in June 2011. The photograph shows a sign, which is in fact a hoax, claiming that McDonald's has implemented a new policy charging African-Americans more, as "an insurance measure". Despite having existed for some time, the picture was spread around the Internet, especially on Twitter, in June 2011, by people who were offended or amused by the photograph. McDonald's acted quickly to deny the legitimacy of the sign, but it continued to trend on Twitter under the hashtag "#SeriouslyMcDonalds" and "#seriouslymcdonalds" for a few days. The company's response to the hoax has received praise from journalists and public relations professionals.
WiReport was CNN's citizen journalism initiative that allowed people from around the globe to contribute pictures and video of breaking news stories. It was similar to Wikinews in that it allowed, and encouraged, ordinary citizens to submit stories, photos and videos related to news of any sort. This ranged from breaking news to a story that a person believed is newsworthy. Submissions were not edited, fact-checked, or screened before they were posted. Stories that were verified were approved for use on all of CNN's platforms. The program was launched on August 2, 2006 to take advantage of the newsgathering capabilities of citizens at the scene of notable events. iReport grew out of another related program: CNN's Fan Zone, which allowed viewers to contribute pictures and video from the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany.
WThis Man, according to a website created in 2008 by Italian marketer Andrea Natella named Ever Dream This Man?, was a person who was claimed to have been repeatedly seen in dreams by the whole world since 2006, but was never found in real life. Natella created the site in 2008, but it was not until October 2009 that it gained attention from the press and online internet users. This Man's notoriety spawned several internet memes that spoofed flyers of the website, references in films and television shows like The X-Files, and a manga series based on the hoax by Weekly Shōnen Magazine.
WThe "tourist guy" was an internet phenomenon that featured a digitally altered photograph of a tourist on the observation deck of the World Trade Center, showing a plane about to hit the tower in the background; thus suggesting the September 11 attacks. The photo went viral as many manipulated pictures spread online. The man in the photograph was identified as Hungarian Péter Guzli, who took the photo in 1997. Guzli said he edited the photo as a joke for his friends and did not realize it would spread across the Internet.
WIn May 2005, an unregistered editor posted a hoax article onto Wikipedia about journalist John Seigenthaler. The article falsely stated that Seigenthaler had been a suspect in the assassinations of U.S. President John F. Kennedy and U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.