A Parody of Knowledge

Do you need facts and figures that will contribute to your research writing? You’ve landed a grant to do field work for six months, and suddenly you’ve got to improvise? Do you desperately need the references for your paper that you have to hand in tomorrow? Do you need to get up to speed on current events?

Well, Uncyclopedia is definitely not the place for you!

If you’re confused, don’t worry, since confusion and the movement that created it ("Confucionism") are totally normal. But if you’re still not clear, Uncyclopedia gives a perfect definition: the word comes from "Corn Fusion: the process by which corn atoms collide at a high rate of speed, but what it is said to have been it is said to have been what it is...and...erm...cause ordinary people to splutter, think, and even lose consciousness." Confucionized even more? Exactly!

Let’s look a little bit deeper into the linguistic analysis of the term itself and maybe we can arrive at some sort of conclusion of what this thing represents. In reality, it’s self explanatory. Uncyclopedia comes from the Greek words Un and cyclop, meaning something that is not chasing it’s own tail – unrecyclable: no deposit, no return – and maybe does not have one eye, (generally people do not agree with this) and, of course, Edia, the goddess of Media (by some coincidence people do not agree with this either). But besides promoting these Mythic Monsters, Uncyclopedia is about humor and making people laugh.

The Uncyclopedia is a parody version of the publicity-grabbing, easy-reference Wikipedia. It has one and one point only: to confuse you, to irritate you and to take up your free time. It is intended to make one point and one point only, which is generally whatever you heard last. It’s sort of like Congress or Parliament – except that unlike either of these, Uncyclopedia has a sense of humor.

The mission of Uncyclopedia is to provide the world’s misinformation in the least redeeming and most searingly sarcastic and humorous possible way. Offense is likely, and certainly to be expected.

After typing "Austria" in the search field the first sentence you see is: "Attention: if you are President Bush, you are looking for Australia."  Then it goes on to follow the Wikipedia format, how "Austria, ‘The land of Kangaroos,’ was so named by Australia during the years when Austria was used for kangaroo storage by the first Australian settlers." The capital of Austria is Vienna and "The people of Vienna are known as Wieners. There is a continuing rivalry between the people of the Austrian capital and the people of the German business district, the Frankfurters, as to which group has the bigger sausage."

Besides the sausages, you can find important information on how Austria’s economy, which is dependant on exporting Mozart Balls even though the supply of the chocolates is extremely limited; you can also learn how Austria was once controlled by the religious leader Frank Sinatra and how to confuse Austrians just by speaking German to them. There is, in fact, a mass of useful data on Austria.

But this is not where the story ends, since afterwards I made the terminal mistake of doing a search for my own country, Macedonia. There I found out that the name of my country is not actually Macedonia, but it varies with the regional dialects. Some call it My-ass-donia and others Tcfkatfyrom, which is an acronym of The Country Formerly Known as the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. But these are just speculations, they say, since the real ancestors of this country are the Macadamia Nuts, and when they were building the grounding pillars to it they said "Let this be a nutty land," and so it was.

So if you are easily offended, if you do not have a sense of humor, and if your level of intelligence is higher than the level of Uncyclopedia, you fit the profile to visit and be annoyed and irritated.