Edinburgh Fringe 2026
Depths of Wikipedia
Annie Rauwerda
Genre: Comedic, Comedy, One Person Show, Solo Show, Spoken Word, Talk
Venue: Underbelly Bristo Square
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
Charming, quick-witted, and laughably benign, her show brings a welcome breath of fresh air in amongst the doom and gloom.
Review
Surely no one needs an introduction to Wikipedia at this point. A staple of many a late-night internet browse, and know-all database for all sorts of homework-based queries (despite a continual urging from the teacher to not use ‘untrustworthy sources’), it’s gone from humble beginnings in 2001 to the cultural behemoth that it is nowadays. And with that quarter century of history to boot, it’s likewise amassed a whole host of quirks and various anecdotes along the way.
If you weren’t already aware, Wikipedia is entirely reliant on volunteer editors in order to continually function. The concept of a Wiki, after all, is as an open-source website that anyone can edit – and in the famous words of Uncle Ben, with great power comes great responsibility. As the website has no core ownership, it is far less likely to bend to the will of malicious actors – fake news and propaganda can easily be edited away by editors on masse. As such, Wikipedia, to the despair of secondary school teachers everywhere, is likely our most trustworthy source of information on the internet these days – a statement that the tireless Wikipedia editors are singlehandedly responsible for. And with that continual editing comes a whole lot of quirks, something to which Annie Rauwerda can attest.
Rauwerda, creator of this hour-long show and owner of the popular Depths of Wikipedia Instagram page, is one such editor, and she knows the machinations of the website very well. So well, in fact, that she can take us on a confidently manned tour around the various foibles within Wikipedia’s depths, featuring everything from lists of sexually active popes all the way to arguments over dog photos. With quibbles over wording and deciphering why exactly Longcat is famous, she leads us through some of the more notable acts of vandalism on the website, and some of the more charmingly banal arguments that spill over from the community pages.
Her first Fringe show, but certainly not her first rodeo, Rauwerda’s comedy will appeal to a very specific subsection of the Edinburgh audience. But this is by no means a bad thing – the popularity of her account can attest to that. Charming, quick-witted, and laughably benign, her show brings a welcome breath of fresh air in amongst the doom and gloom, and provides some hilarious sight gags that had the crowd laughing throughout. But perhaps the most important thing is that the Depths of Wikipedia reminds us that people still do really care about truth and objectivity in amongst the era of AI slop and misinformation. Her show has a remarkably human heart with a littering of wordplay – and if you love some pun-based humour, you’re certainly in for a treat.
