Template:Did you know nominations/Dril Official "Mr. Ten Years" Anniversary Collection

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Yoninah (talk) 23:22, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

Dril Official "Mr. Ten Years" Anniversary Collection edit

Created by Brandt Luke Zorn (talk). Self-nominated at 01:10, 12 October 2018 (UTC).

  • New article, long enough, thoroughly cited. Hook is is found in the article, with a citation to The Verge. QPQ done. hinnk (talk) 21:01, 14 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Much of this article was cut and pasted from dril. Since the copied text was not created in the last 7 days, the copied text needs to be expanded 5x per WP:DYKSG#A5 to qualify this new article for DYK. Template:Copied must also be placed on the talk pages of both articles. Yoninah (talk) 18:22, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Thanks for catching that; I didn't see the original edit message. It looks the amount moved from dril would be ~1.4k characters. Most of that was added by Brandt Luke Zorn the same day as the article's creation. The prose that existed was ~500 characters, which would be a 5x expansion. Not sure how best to apply the standard. hinnk (talk) 22:03, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
  • @Hinnk: I'm sorry, I'm not following you. But if 1400 characters was moved from dril, the character count in the new article needs to be 7000 characters to qualify for DYK. Yoninah (talk) 22:09, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
  • @Yoninah: What hinnk pointed out is that most of the prose that I "moved" was written and added—by me–on October 8, the same day I created the new article. In other words, most of the copy-pasted text had been created within 7 days of the article creation and this nomination. The only moved prose that I hadn't created that same day (according to hinnk—I haven't checked yet myself) was about ~500 characters. The prose portion of the new article is ~3500 characters. ~500 * 5 = ~2500 < ~3500. —BLZ · talk 04:32, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
  • @Brandt Luke Zorn: Okay, I see what you did now. You posted the copy at dril and then moved it to the new article the same day. Fine. But before restoring the tick, I'd like to note that it doesn't say anything about societal collapse in the source; it just talks about a "post-collapse" era. Based on the preceding quote from dril, it seems to be talking about a server collapse. Yoninah (talk) 20:02, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
  • It is a societal collapse, not just a server collapse. The full quote from the book preface is: "This book is, without a doubt, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, of posts, designed to withstand the fall of civilization [emphasis added] and ensure that my invaluable Content permeates the hearts and minds of post-collapse [emphasis added] generations, in order to prevent the whole of humanity from reverting to the way of the cave man."
There are sufficient clues even in the portions quoted in the Verge article to show dril is contemplating not merely the end of Twitter, but the collapse of society as we know it: military/government takeover (allusions to FEMA conspiracies and "Jade Helm 15 bull shit"), extreme deprivation ("forcing society to scrape together a meager existence within a miserable, Offline Hell"), community resilience in the face of a post-technological reversion/Dark Age (in which humanity is "reverting to the way of the cave man"). The final paragraph of the Vice review also alludes to the book's intent to preserve dril's posts for a future that is not only post-Twitter, but also post-apocalyptic. I've elaborated a little bit in the "content" section to include these additional bits of info and clarify dril's intent. —BLZ · talk 22:34, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
  • @Brandt Luke Zorn: Then could you add another cite to that sentence? Because the more I read The Verge piece, the more it seems to be talking about going back to a pre-computer era. Yoninah (talk) 14:52, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
  • @Yoninah: If you mean add another cite to the hook, "the preface of the book itself" was already listed as a source; I've slightly modified the "source" under the hook to make that more clear. Those cites are also in the article. dril says "the fall of civilization", I'm not sure how much more conclusive that can be. Remember too that dril is a comedian. Explaining a joke often ruins it, but it seems necessary here. He describes a total societal collapse—look to the elements I pointed out above, the ones present even in the Verge's truncated excerpt (does a Jade Helm 15 conspiracy theory-esque military takeover sound like part of a return to a "pre-computer era", or is it more indicative of a societal breakdown?). But the humor is that what he finds most alarming about a catastrophic, dystopian fall of civilization is that it means people would be "Offline" and unable to access his posts. He describes a complete disaster scenario, yet is most hung up on the loss of computers—and not just that, but the loss of the most trivial use of computers imaginable: reading (his) tweets.
As a side note: I'm not sure what meaningful distinction you're drawing between a "going back to a pre-computer era" and "societal collapse", anyway. The first "type" of societal collapse named in the Wikipedia article is Reversion/Simplification, which includes the loss of advanced technologies. Think about how dependent the modern economy is on computers. Off the top of my head, we need computers for: all modern forms of communication, most modern forms of long-term planning, the day-to-day functioning of advanced (and even developing!) economies, global trade, agriculture, advanced machinery of the modern industrial sector, and safeguarding of nuclear weaponry. If we suddenly lost computers, would society stay the same, or would it collapse? —BLZ · talk 19:32, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
  • I didn't mean to add the additional cite on this template, but to the article, after this sentence: According to dril's preface, he published the book to preserve his posts in the event of a societal collapse that takes Twitter's servers offline. I'm sorry I opened up such a can of worms. But dril does seem to be talking more about a digital dark age than about societal collapse. Yoninah (talk) 21:16, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
  • It's both. The digital dark age he describes is a result of broader societal collapse. Added an additional citation to the sentence in the article. —BLZ · talk 21:46, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Thank you. Restoring tick per hinnk's review. Yoninah (talk) 23:21, 12 November 2018 (UTC)