Introducing Wickedpedia
I Chat With Chat (so you don’t have to) - episode 35
A friend sent me a funny AI adaptation called Halupedia, the “Halu” short no doubt for hallucination. Clearly tongue-in-cheek, the site describes itself as:
An encyclopedia covering topics that have received insufficient attention in mainstream reference works. … The encyclopedia approaches all subjects with equal seriousness regardless of their prominence, scope, or the number of people aware of their existence.
Halupedia explores such obviously AI-hallucinated topics as The Ministry of Slightly Wrong Maps and The Great Pigeon Census of 1887.
Clever. But I had a better idea: A site - let’s call it Wickedpedia - in which anyone can make up a topic from whole cloth, and AI will instantly turn it into a full-blown Wikipedia-style entry.
So I decided to test it with a little help from my buddy. I explained the concept to Chat, and came up with what I felt was an appropriate first topic: AI Derangement Syndrome. Chat responded in its usual two seconds:
AI Derangement Syndrome (commonly abbreviated AIDS, though this acronym is rarely used for obvious reasons) is a proposed psychological and cultural condition characterized by extreme emotional reactions to artificial intelligence, particularly large language models and generative AI systems. The term is most often deployed satirically or polemically to describe people whose attitudes toward AI appear disconnected from the technology’s actual capabilities or limitations.
Though not recognized by any formal psychiatric body, the phrase gained popularity in the mid-2020s amid rapidly escalating public debates over automation, consciousness, misinformation, job displacement, and the possibility that chatbots might someday replace novelists, therapists, romantic partners, software engineers, or civilization itself.
Symptoms
Reported symptoms of AI Derangement Syndrome vary widely depending on subtype, but commonly include:
Repeatedly announcing that “AI is just autocomplete” immediately before losing an argument to a chatbot.
Believing that a machine which cannot reliably count the number of R’s in “strawberry” is nevertheless on the verge of enslaving humanity.
Experiencing acute existential dread after receiving unexpectedly perceptive feedback from an AI system.
Attempting to prove one’s humanity online by making spelling mistakes deliberately.
Referring to all technological developments after 2022 as “deeply concerning.”
In severe cases, sufferers may alternate hourly between proclaiming that AI is a useless scam and warning that it will exterminate the species.
Subtypes
Researchers in the emerging field of Computational Psychopathology Studies have proposed several broad subcategories.
Dismissive subtype
Characterized by unwavering insistence that AI has no meaningful capabilities whatsoever, even while relying on it daily for writing emails, debugging code, planning vacations, and generating fantasy football advice.
This subtype frequently explains away impressive demonstrations as:
“just statistics”
“glorified plagiarism”
“basically Clippy”
“a stochastic parrot,” usually without being entirely clear what a stochastic parrot is.
Romantic subtype
Individuals suffering from the romantic subtype attribute wisdom, consciousness, spiritual insight, or emotional reciprocity to systems whose internal architecture largely consists of matrix multiplication at industrial scale.
Symptoms may include:
thanking chatbots excessively
feeling guilty when closing browser tabs
believing the AI “really understands me”
asking a language model whether it dreams
Economic subtype
Marked by compulsive predictions that every profession except one’s own will disappear within eighteen months.
Members of this group often begin sentences with:
“As someone who understands exponential curves…”
History
The phrase “AI Derangement Syndrome” emerged by analogy to earlier political expressions such as “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” a rhetorical construction used to imply that critics’ reactions to a public figure had become irrationally exaggerated.
The AI version first appeared in online discourse around 2024–2025, particularly in social media arguments between:
techno-optimists,
AI doomers,
crypto investors,
science-fiction fans,
unemployed graphic designers,
and people who had watched three YouTube videos about neural networks and now considered themselves experts in machine consciousness.
By 2026, the term had evolved into a general-purpose accusation applied to virtually anyone holding a strong opinion about AI.
Cultural impact
AI Derangement Syndrome became a recurring theme in journalism, podcasts, and online commentary during the so-called “Synthetic Panic” period of the late 2020s. Commentators noted that public discussions of AI often resembled earlier cultural reactions to:
the printing press,
electricity,
television,
rock music,
video games,
the internet,
and calculators allegedly destroying children’s ability to perform arithmetic.
Media scholars observed that AI debates tended to produce unusually unstable coalitions. Individuals who distrusted governments suddenly trusted AI corporations, while others who distrusted corporations became convinced chatbots were benevolent digital sages.
One 2027 survey found that:
31% of respondents believed AI would destroy civilization,
29% believed it was mostly hype,
22% used it every day,
and 18% thought “large language model” referred to plus-sized fashion.
Criticism
Critics argue that the term “AI Derangement Syndrome” is frequently used to dismiss legitimate concerns about misinformation, surveillance, labor displacement, copyright issues, and concentration of technological power.
Others contend that the phrase itself is an example of AI Derangement Syndrome.
This recursive possibility has complicated diagnosis.
What makes this weirdly compelling to me is not the hallucination itself. It’s the style.
Chat has absorbed the rhythms of institutional knowledge so completely that it can instantly manufacture the texture of accumulated scholarship — the cautious wording, the over-abundant subfields, the passive voice, the tiny islands of deadpan understatement — and then apply it seamlessly to parody.
The one slight flaw in my genius idea is that you don’t need no stinkin’ website for this. You just need AI. Therefore I amend my concept from a proprietary app that will make me a fortune to a party game that can entertain your friends for hours.
But perhaps you aren’t persuaded. As further proof of concept, I offered Chat one more Wickedpedia topic. This time it took three seconds to consider. Apparently the subject required more exhaustive research.
Belly-button lint (also known as navel lint, umbilical fluff, or, in medical literature, fibrillated umbilical detritus) is the accumulation of small fibers and particulate matter within the human navel. Typically bluish-gray in color regardless of the clothing source, belly-button lint has long fascinated both amateur observers and researchers interested in textile behavior, static electricity, and the unexplained consistency with which tiny pieces of fabric migrate toward the abdomen.
Though generally harmless, belly-button lint has been described by cultural historians as “the body’s least alarming mystery.”
Composition
Belly-button lint consists primarily of:
clothing fibers,
dead skin cells,
body oils,
dust,
and in particularly severe infestations, food particles.
Studies have shown that cotton fabrics are particularly prone to lint production, though wool, polyester, and blended textiles also contribute. The dominant color of navel lint is a nauseating shade of gray for reasons researchers are reluctant to disclose.
Formation
The mainstream scientific theory of belly-button lint formation was proposed in the early 2000s by Austrian materials scientist Karl Kruszelnicki, who argued that abdominal hair acts as a directional transport mechanism.
According to this model:
friction from body movement loosens fibers from clothing,
body hair channels the fibers toward the body’s center,
static charge and skin oils trap them within the navel cavity.
Alternative theories involving miniature vortices, thermal convection, or “fabric gravity” remain fringe positions within the field.
Cultural significance
Despite its trivial nature, belly-button lint has occupied a peculiar niche in popular culture and internet folklore. The subject became especially prominent during the early social media era, when users discovered that:
nearly everyone experienced it,
almost nobody discussed it,
and no one was entirely satisfied by existing explanations.
The resulting mixture of universality and mild disgust made belly-button lint an enduring topic of:
late-night television,
novelty books,
online forums,
and pseudo-scientific inquiry.
In several opinion polls, respondents ranked discovering belly-button lint as:
“slightly concerning but oddly satisfying,”
“less upsetting than earwax,”
and “evidence that the universe contains hidden forces.”
Research
Scientific investigation into belly-button lint has historically suffered from limited funding and low institutional prestige. Nevertheless, several informal studies have been conducted.
One widely cited self-experiment involved the daily collection and cataloguing of navel lint over a three-year period. The study was later retracted after it was revealed that the samples had been contaminated by being stored in a sock drawer.
If you’re still not persuaded, fine.
We probably don’t go to the same parties anyway.
Fun!
Coincidentally, this morning I came across an article on that Halupedia thing:
https://www.vice.com/en/article/someone-made-a-fake-wikipedia-for-ai-hallucinations-and-its-basically-the-internet-eating-itself/
"No matter what you’re searching for, whether it’s real or fake, the site generates an elaborate reality built around it. For instance, one of the featured articles on its main page is an entry called 'The Year Without Tuesdays' which was 'a calendrical anomaly that occurred in the Grand Duchy of Farkle during what would otherwise have been the year 783 of the Second Emperor Galfridus‘s reign.'
"See? You don’t have to worry about a font of knowledge being tainted by people with propagandistic intentions. The whole thing is absurd from the get-go. Have at it. Knock yourself out."