Episode 231: Conservapedia

Sometimes it feels like the online world is split into multiple, incompatible perceptions of reality. This is not a new development. In fact, in the mid-aughts one man tried to create an isolated island of American christian conservative thinking by launching a website called Conservapedia. Though it was advertised as being free from the supposed liberal bias of Wikipedia, Conservapedia became a home of pseudoscience, conspiracy theories, and general right-wing grievances. It even launched a project to create a new English translation of the Bible that was manlier and more conservative than previous translations. To help us understand the history of Conservapedia, we recruited our resident reddit atheist debunker, Travis. He’s going to walk us through the story of Conservpedia’s creation and show off some of the latest additions to the online encyclopedia, which is still active after 17 years. References https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2007-jun-19-na-schlafly19-story.html https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Conservapedia https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Conservapedia:Night_of_the_Blunt_Knives https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Lenski_affair https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2009/oct/11/conservative-bible-project-liberal-conservapedia Subscribe for $5 a month to get an extra episode of QAA every week + access to ongoing series like 'Manclan' and 'Trickle Down': http://www.patreon.com/QAnonAnonymous QAA's Website: https://qanonanonymous.com Music by Pontus Berghe. Editing by Corey Klotz.