What started out as a silly quarantine project has now become a vastly popular endeavor for Annie. The Depths of Wikipedia page on Instagram has 1.4 million followers and 13.3 million likes on TikTok. In 2022, Rauwerda became the Media Contributor of the Year. The accounts have even spawned live comedy shows that Annie hosts based on trivia from Wikipedia.
Back in a 2021 interview for Bored Panda, Annie detailed how the page came to be. "It was early quarantine (the stage when everyone was attempting new projects), and I was working on a page of my friend's quaranzine. I wanted to piece together Wikipedia excerpts into some virtual art."
It's only fitting that the account has its own Wikipedia page. The entry details how Depths of Wikipedia first became famous due to Instagram influencer Caroline Calloway. She brought the page to the attention of her followers by criticizing a post where her occupation was described as "nothing."
Annie very graciously apologized to her, and Calloway then shared a few of the account's posts on her social media. Rauwerda says that boosted her account a lot. Today, many famous people follow the Depths of Wikipedia account, including John Mayer (Annie says she fangirled about his follow the most), Troye Sivan, Neil Gaiman, Olivia Wilde, and Lex Fridman.
Annie also did a TEDx talk in 2023, titled "Why an encyclopedia is my favorite place on the Internet." In an interview for The New York Times in 2022, Annie explained how Wikipedia is the best place on the Internet. "It's what the Internet was supposed to be. It has this hacker ethos of working together and making something."
Heather Woods, an assistant professor of Rhetoric and Technology at Kansas State University, explained to The New York Times that the appeal of the Depths of Wikipedia comes from its ability to make the Internet feel smaller. "It shortcuts the rabbit-hole phenomenon by offering attractive — or sometimes hilariously unattractive — entry points to internet culture."
Rauwerda is a big believer in crowd-sourced knowledge. She often encourages people to contribute to Wikipedia, and she is an editor herself. "Protecting open-access information is so vital. You should definitely start editing if you don't already,” Annie told us back in 2021. "It's such a rewarding and impactful hobby, and we need more people with diverse perspectives in editing."
Annie says she grew up on the Internet and didn't have screen restrictions growing up. In middle school, she used to Wikirace with her friends. She says it's partly what got her interested in Wikipedia in general. "You start at an article — something random like 'A$AP Rocky' — and then you click the hyperlinks to get to a destination like 'chicken hypnotism' or something like that," she explained the game to Mashable.
