Encyclopedia Dramatica

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
In Lulz We Trust
—Official Site Motto
Where Facts Die, And Stereotypes Lie
—Urban Dictionary

Encyclopedia Dramatica (NSFW) is a wiki-based site that you either love or hate - it's pretty much impossible not to be on one side of the fence. ED claims that its purpose is to parody and satirize the internet in a format similar to The Devil's Dictionary, by way of antithesis to The Other Wiki. Created in 2004 to chronicle LiveJournal drama, ED soon developed into a site whose second purpose was also to document "lulz" - pretty much memes and laughing at stupid things people do on the Internet. The site's third purpose - and much of its impact on the culture of the Internet, fandom, and even some parts of Real Life - can be summarized as "trying to offend anybody and everybody" (and we do mean everybody). According to ED themselves, almost nothing on the site should be taken seriously.

Given their goal, the users on this site are mostly trolls and have been described as such in many an article, including a 2009 article in Wired (see the full quote on this page's "Quotes" subpage). It has been described in at least two different instances as an "antifandom site" - specifically, the type of userbase that loves to hate. Over the years, Encyclopedia Dramatica has riffed on some of the biggest media properties, fandoms and fandom community names of the times - often going far past the limits of what even the most severe fandom sporkings dared to consider. At the same time (and for whatever it is or isn't worth), several articles also alternate between mocking the subject and spearing others' mockeries of the subject; for example, though they're not remotely above "ironic bigotry", they also spend just as much time lampooning other bigots.

In its 'prime', ED was considered one of the major troll playgrounds of the Bush-Era Internet, with the other being 4chan's /b/ ("random") board - compared to /b/, where threads would eventually get bumped off the site for good and the users themselves were reputed to have legendarily short attention spans, Encyclopedia Dramatica keeps permanent archives to provide budding young trolls with a convenient list of 4chan's Acceptable Targets, often doubling as a cheat sheet on how to effectively harass them. Given the seemingly-never-ending supply of "budding young trolls", this ensured in theory that anyone who's been documented on the site may never have truly heard the end of it.

This and the nature of the other content it hosted led to no end of legal troubles, severe and otherwise - here have been fairly significant lawsuits of variable merit directed against the site's administrators, or against individual users, mostly alleging libel or defamation, discrimination or copyright infringement. It seemed to culminate in Encyclopedia Dramatica temporarily going down in April 2011 - but then, the site's front page was subsequently redirected to another URL in an attempt to rebrand Oh Internet by none other than then-current owner, GirlVinyl. She had reportedly come to despise that the site had become "incoherent" and "shock for shock's sake", and tried to return it to focusing on LiveJournal drama at it had done in the past, as well as wanting the site to be more profitable.

That latter point in particular did not sit well with some of the regulars, who took to spamming the website's official Facebook fan page with vitriol and porn. Another user opted to host a fork of the original site, which has since found itself changing top-level domains frequently. In early 2020, the site went off-line again - this time with the bizarre explanation that "Encyclopedia Dramatica is down because our admin is in jail and didn't give anyone the password. (He's not in jail for anything site related. He's in jail for forgery)". The site re-emerged that same March, with an article detailing their plans for the future and throwing shade at the old owners.

Though site in its current state is nowhere near the overwhelming font of influence on Internet and fandom culture it once was, with all that said, a direct line can still be traced from ED to the rise of other humor-based sites like Know Your Meme, as well as... less-than-well-regarded sites like CWCWiki and KiwiFarms. Similarly, a major portion of ED's cultural impacts lie in the Bile Fascination angle shared with other sites of their era (Something Awful might come to mind). It also gave birth to a warped form of attention-seeking through instigating drama: the Internet's history is littered with examples of irreverence towards sacred cows not only becoming a sacred cow, but a "moral" imperative - the kind of sanctimony and self-seriousness that ED professes to gleefully mock. And while Encyclopedia Dramatica at least appears to practice an "ironic detachment" from some of their topics, the same cannot be said of some successors... but that is a story for another place and another time.

During their history of "antifandom", Encyclopedia Dramatica has undertaken some creative endeavors of their own - this is usually in the form of games created on their forums, which you can find here. The original TV Tropes is also among the many sites covered by ED, and is naturally not covered on TVT due to their content - while All The Tropes doesn't currently have a page, it does have a note within that same article.

Tropes used in Encyclopedia Dramatica include:
  • Accentuate the Negative: A trademark of the site.
  • Acceptable Targets: Averted. If you let them tell it, having acceptable targets would imply that some are unacceptable.
  • Anarchy Is Chaos: Played fairly straight by the Self-Demonstrating Article on "Anarchy", which would not be out of place on Uncyclopedia.
  • And Knowing Is Half the Battle: Parodied with their main page's featured articles section, "THE MOAR YOU KNOW."
  • Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: The last offensive picture in the "Offended" page is George W. Bush.
  • Brain Bleach: You better have this on hand before clicking a link to ED. On the off-chance you decide to actually take a complete Wiki Walk there (holy crap what are you thinking?!), bring a 9001-gallon tanker of Brain Bleach.
  • Brand X: Some of the "ads" that pop up offer Pedobear T-shirts, Long Cat plushies, links to fake dating sites, and some other things... Yes, even that.
  • But You Screw One Goat!: Several of the people documented — including some almost-literal examples from people who apparently thought telling the whole world about it was a good idea.
  • Button Mashing: The article on Marvel vs. Capcom 2 brings up how this is very common in the game's combos, and of course lambasts Capcom for developing the game that way, and the professional players for exploiting it. Thanks to Marvel vs. Capcom 3 following on that trend, the article about that game also lambasts the game in a similar way.
  • Cheese Eating Surrender Monkey: The article on Street Fighter claims Abel is unrealistic because the french can't fight.
  • Compensating for Something: The article on Final Fantasy VII says Cloud wields the Buster Sword to compensate for his comedically small penis.
  • Crosses The Line 2.28811^11 Times: With the amount of Black Comedy on the site, there might as well not be a line there in the first place.
  • Cute Kitten: Cruelly parodied. "Kitten" redirects to "Cat", which, ironically, is (mostly) safe for work. "Kittens", on the other hand...
  • Dead Baby Comedy: They dedicate an entire page to this - a caption of a harlequin baby is "fried to perfection."
  • Deviant ART: A very common target for the site is Deviant ART and its members. In fact, a noticeable amount of the people shown on ED that could be considered examples of Small Name, Big Ego are members of Deviant ART, as are members of the Furry Fandom.
  • Dying Alone: They have a page for it.
  • Equal Opportunity Evil: Despite its content, people of various different backgrounds, races, religions, and sexualities read and edit the site when they create an account.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: Harm a cat, and you will suffer the consequences of the Internet Hate Machine.
  • Evil Feels Good: Arguably one of the reasons why it has so much traffic.
  • Evil Versus Evil: As noted about the "accuracy" below, sometimes ED is the only place to get the real scoop on the shenanigans of the rest of the scum and villainy of the internet. Mostly because screencaps are highly valued evidence, documenting exactly why a certain target deserves it (and hosting it in a location said target can't just delete the offending entry). If ED is good for nothing else, it's the screencaps. Especially noteworthy is their entry for Electric Retard. When Encyclopedia Dramatica is telling you being offensive isn't the same as being funny...
  • Fan Hater: They pretty much attack the fans of any particular thing they have an article of.
  • Fetish: Dramatica has no qualms with poking fun at the strange fetishes people may have. Furries tend to be a popular target.
  • For the Evulz: Partial Trope Namer.
  • Fun with Acronyms: The article on "CP" (child pornography, specifically the posting thereof on 4chan). Other things that are referred to as "CP" (such as control points in Team Fortress 2) also link to this article, just for the hell of it.
  • Furry Fandom: Debatably their favorite targets; however, ED as a whole actually doesn't hate furries, and will welcome them as long as they don't fools of themselves; a prominent early admin, Jameth, is a furry.
  • Garbage Post Kid
  • GIRL: The Jason Fortuny prank on Craigslist. In September 2006, Mailer Daemon Jason Fortuny (a guy in real life) posted a personal ad pretending to be a woman seeking sexual domination. He then published more than 150 of the replies, complete with explicit photos and personally identifying info, to Encyclopedia Dramatica. One of his victims sued, obtaining a $74,252.60 default judgement.
  • GIFT
  • Gorn: Why you have to be careful when the pictures start loading.
  • Hatedom: The website is basically a combination of every hatedom in existence. Good luck finding a website that can match it in terms of over the top hatred of everything. Well, except Metapedia.
  • Hates Everyone Equally: The intended tone of the site. For example, despite engaging in various levels of "ironic" racism, users who are suspected of being real racists are branded as such and are sneered upon by most of the community. There's even a template that says: "THIS USER MAY ACTUALLY BE RACIST". Their pages for Stormfront and the KKK show that they think as little of racists as they do those who try so hard to be politically correct.
  • High Octane Nightmare Fuel: The part of "Offended" that isn't Squick.
  • Hypocrite: The article on Grand Theft Auto V attacks critics of the torture scene for suddenly bothering with torture but being fine with murder of civilians, cops, prostitutes, anti-governmental activity, and drug dealing.
  • Hypocritical Humor: The description of Tifa Lockhart on the Final Fantasy VII article runs through the sexism spectrum, from going from misogynistically calling her a whore for the way she dresses to complain she is too passive in a radical feminist way.
  • Hive Mind: On the principle of Anonymous.
  • Jerkass: Pretty much the whole point of the site.
  • Kick the Dog: Some people who are attacked really do have personality and mental disorders that haven't been taken care of well. Encyclopedia Dramatica holds nothing back for those people.
  • Lighter and Softer: For a while, there were some SFW versions of the site, including Whatport80 and Oh Internet. These wikis are now defunct.
  • Love It or Hate It: Yeah.
  • Mascot: AE-tan.
  • Memetic Mutation: The only thing they seem to like. Oh, exploitable! Of course, the excess of memes in the articles got to the point where an improvement project was undertaken to curtail the overuse of memes in articles and anything else unfunny.
  • Moe Anthropomorphism: With AE-tan.
  • Moral Event Horizon:
  • Nausea Fuel: If you're reading an article there, odds are there's some Squicky porn or a Shock Site.
  • Non-Indicative Name: You would not automatically assume it is this kind of thing from the title, unless you're so net-bound you immediately thought "controversy" when you read "drama". Based on statements by the former owner, it used to be a legit wiki for a dead LJ community until /b/ and the goons found it.
    • The Persona 4 page is just a redirect for a page about the "bitches and whores" meme which spawned from the original through a Hentai Doujinshi, a meme which can't be further explained here without giving away the biggest twist of the entire game, though that is not surprising since almost all the video game pages do spoil what at least the editors thought it was the biggest twist at the very top without any kind of warning.
  • NSFW: The entire site, due to the ads if not the content. The content that is NSFW is Not Safe For Sanity either.
  • Over 9000: They seem to love this one, with its ubiquity derided on some pages. It'd gotten to the point that on one of the new Improvement Drive pages, it pretty much says "No more. Alright? Stop."
  • Paedo Hunt: Exaggerated and Played for Laughs. Wherever Bioshock is mentioned, the protagonist Jack is called a paedo for the fact he interacts with little girls.
  • Pothole: Possibly the Trope Codifier for using pot holes as a form of humor or commentary - some articles, such as "SHIT NOBODY CARES ABOUT", exist pretty much solely for this reason.
  • Rape As Comedy: Most of the time.
  • Rule 34: Lots, and not just the regular kind - there's some really creepy shit over there. ED even has Rule 34 of AE-tan.
  • Refuge in Audacity: Also the entire point of the site!
  • Refuge in Vulgarity: Speaking of which, NEVER, EVER, EVER go to the article titled "Offended", Your faith in humanity will automatically drop to zero. Let's put it this way: at one point, it manages to turn Pokémon furry porn into a breath of fresh air.
  • The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized: Just look at the "Girlvinyl" page (owner of the .com site). And at the "Oh Internet" page.
  • Sarcasm Mode: One of ED's favorite activities is, when writing an article, to say something along the lines of, say, "Elderly people are totally awesome", and have 'awesome' hyperlinked, leading to a page entitled "Lies" or "Bullshit".
  • Self-Plagiarism: The article on Bioshock says it's basically the developers of System Shock 2 ripping off their own work but putting it on a different setting.
  • Sexy Secretary: Based on their Marvel vs. Capcom commentary, the only reason you should buy the Ultimate update to Marvel vs. Capcom 3 is to see Morrigan dressed like one of these.
  • Schmuck Bait: It says "DO NOT ENTER" on the entry page. So what do you do?
  • Shock Site: They have a catalogue full of these, such as Goatse.
  • Shown Their Work: If it's an article about someone on the net, they're going to show lots of images and footnotes about that person's drama. Even (perhaps especially) if there are embarrassing forum posts that the subject attempted to delete. ED contributors make sure to get screencaps so the lulz is forever preserved.
    • Generally, when they're not being hideously offensive (or perhaps because of it), ED is very accurate. Whereas things must be toned down or excluded from The Other Wiki even if (or sometimes seemingly because they) are factual in the name of neutrality, ED has no such illusions, and will gladly parade all the facts (and speculation and fiction, but it's easy enough to tell because these usually aren't sourced) that rules lawyering can get removed from The Other Wiki.
  • Sitcom Arch Nemesis: Uncyclopedia and The Other Wiki.
  • Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: All but falls off the Cynical end.
  • Skewed Priorities: The article on Final Fantasy VII claims Cloud cares more about his own romantic triangle than the world-threatening plot.
  • Small Name, Big Ego: Goes by the name of "Unwarranted self-importance" there.
  • Start My Own: When the .com domain was both redirected, and redirected to something they didn't like, Anons grouped together and made the .ch domain, rallying most of the former members and plummeting the former site in the Alexa rank. They settled on .es in 2013, before going back to the .se because of necessity. In 2020, the site went to a .wiki domain, and then to an .online one.
  • Squick: See Brain Bleach above.
  • Stealth Parody: The whole damn site claims to be this. Generally. However, much of the humour is so nasty that often you can't tell whether it's a stealth parody by a tongue-in-cheek contributor or an excuse to say really nasty things about people you don't like.
    • It tends to vary by article: If it's attacking a particular group, they're usually serious. If it's stuff like "You", "America", "Gays", "Jews," and "Women", it's more often Dead Baby Comedy - for example, the "JEWS DID WTC" meme mocks those who believe in massive Jewish conspiracies to control everything.
  • Step Three: Profit
  • Strawman Political: Politicians of all stripes get savaged fairly equally, and it's probably one of the only sites out there to give Barack Obama anything close to the same savaging as George Bush.
  • The Internet Is for Porn: When they have an article on a piece of media, chances are they have a gallery of Rule 34 near the bottom of it... And it occasionally comes with a caption mocking you for looking at it.
  • This Loser Is You: Their article on "You". ("You Suck" redirects to "Fail".)
  • Torch the Franchise and Run‎: Girlvinyl's redirection of the original encyclopediadramatica.com domain to a new site, Oh Internet!, went over like a lead balloon in April 2011 - people who hated it more than likely weren't fond of what seemed like an attempt to chuck its old baggage out an airlock, while the people who enjoyed it considered her a sellout. This also triggered a long string of attempts by other Encyclopedia Dramatica users to re-create or restore the original content using other top-level domains (.es, .se, .rs and .ch).
  • Tradesnark™: Used for their WikiFur® article.
  • Troll: The main goal of the wiki is to be so offensive that it will inevitably provoke people to write angry complaints, which means more material for the articles the complaints are related to.
  • True Art Is Incomprehensible: This trope is played around with on their Vincent Li article.
  • We ARE Struggling Together!: For now at least, almost complete aversion. The "greater good" of recovering internet history comes first. Let's see in a few months...
  • Wiki Schizophrenia: An entry can go from mocking its target, to mocking ED, to mocking who are against the target (for example: Nazis, which has an entry for trolling Nazis, trolling by pretending to be a Nazi, links blaming Jews, and links mocking Nazis for blaming Jews). This may be deliberate.
  • Xanatos Gambit: The article "It was a social experiment" mocks people's attempts at claiming to have set up one of these.
  • Your Mileage May Vary: In a very big way.
  • Your Mom: A perennial favorite.
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