Monday, June 23, 2008

Wikihistory: Great Geek Comedy

How on our green Earth did I forget this? Months ago I bookmarked this excellent comedic treatment of time travel as a Wiki project, then it fell into the mires of Firefox and fell from my short-term memory. Anybody who has ever edited Wikipedia (yes, you nerds) or any other wiki-based sites or forums should appreciate this dispatch from the International Association of Time Travellers (hit the link above for the full piece):

"At 14:52:28, FreedomFighter69 wrote:
Reporting my first temporal excursion since joining IATT: have just returned from 1936 Berlin, having taken the place of one of Leni Riefenstahl's cameramen and assassinated Adolf Hitler during the opening of the Olympic Games. Let a free world rejoice!

At 14:57:44, SilverFox316 wrote:
Back from 1936 Berlin; incapacitated FreedomFighter69 before he could pull his little stunt. Freedomfighter69, as you are a new member, please read IATT Bulletin 1147 regarding the killing of Hitler before your next excursion. Failure to do so may result in your expulsion per Bylaw 223.

At 18:06:59, BigChill wrote:
Take it easy on the kid, SilverFox316; everybody kills Hitler on their first trip. I did. It always gets fixed within a few minutes, what's the harm?"



Assuming that you've read the piece, I'll state now that I take comedic issue with the inclusion of the Hong Xiuquan/Taiping Rebellion reference, not because of the moral ambivalence of killing a single individual to save the lives of millions (though that's a worthy point), but because they chose a real-world event. It would have been much funnier (and more clever) had they chosen a fictional event to be subverted. Then part of the joke would have been that it simply didn't happen.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Thanks for commenting - I reserve the right only to delete ads, nonsensical spam or comments indistinguishable from such.

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.