(no subject)
I haven't written in a while. BUT I WAS MOVED TO DO SO by the sheer absurdity of the relatively small subsection wikipedia articles that are currently classified under the "spoken articles" tag.
Now, I assume the point of this project is to make wikipedia more accessible to the blind. A noble goal, surely, but the idea itself strikes me as a bit silly, since surely half the fun/point of wikipedia is the linking, which isn't really replicable in spoken form. However, what strikes me as much, much sillier is WHICH articles the lovely people of wikipedia have chosen to vocalize, which range from the bizarre (crushing by elephant, toilets in Japan, exploding whale) to the trivial (Saint Demetrius of Thessaloniki, Bulbasaur, U Can't Touch This) to the naughty (handjob, fuck) to those which were selected clearly to demonstrate the silliness of the project (Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116, which begins "The following article, Albin...") There is an understandable preponderance of silly-sounding words, and, for some reason, every single article even tangentially related to the Mighty Boosh. (Which is how I discovered this odd phenomenon.) EVERY SINGLE ARTICLE. Read by the same person. Clearly, this man has made it his mission in life to spread information such as the fact that Noel Fielding frequently refers to himself as a woman throughout the vision-impaired community. And you know what? I salute him for that.
Now, I assume the point of this project is to make wikipedia more accessible to the blind. A noble goal, surely, but the idea itself strikes me as a bit silly, since surely half the fun/point of wikipedia is the linking, which isn't really replicable in spoken form. However, what strikes me as much, much sillier is WHICH articles the lovely people of wikipedia have chosen to vocalize, which range from the bizarre (crushing by elephant, toilets in Japan, exploding whale) to the trivial (Saint Demetrius of Thessaloniki, Bulbasaur, U Can't Touch This) to the naughty (handjob, fuck) to those which were selected clearly to demonstrate the silliness of the project (Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116, which begins "The following article, Albin...") There is an understandable preponderance of silly-sounding words, and, for some reason, every single article even tangentially related to the Mighty Boosh. (Which is how I discovered this odd phenomenon.) EVERY SINGLE ARTICLE. Read by the same person. Clearly, this man has made it his mission in life to spread information such as the fact that Noel Fielding frequently refers to himself as a woman throughout the vision-impaired community. And you know what? I salute him for that.