Adequacy.org
Encyclopedia
Adequacy.org was a satirical
web site. It featured articles on politics
, religion
, technology
, history
, and sociology
, as well as the "Linux Zealot" cartoon series. The site shut down on September 11, 2002, but has since made its archives available.
Adequacy.org's slogan was "News for grown-ups," a play on the slogan of the popular Slashdot
technology news site, "News for nerds. Stuff that matters," as Adequacy's founding editors were regular trolls on Slashdot. http://www.adequacy.org/stories/2001.7.25.7321.26410.html
and Kuro5hin
, other technology-oriented discussion sites. They devised and posted many comments designed to provoke outraged responses; common styles included slighting a revered operating system
or open source
leader, or posting messages with simple but deliberate technical errors, which would incite hundreds of corrections.
After several years of such behavior, the Adequacy authors decided to open their own site consisting entirely of such articles intended to incite the reader, where users "in the know" would post comments agreeing with the articles.
Behind the scenes, the targets of the articles would be enticed to come to Adequacy and read the article. Adequacy members would post to weblogs, and other discussion forums, often pretending to be outraged by the article themselves. As an example, the article Not Just Harmless Funhttp://www.adequacy.org/public/stories/2001.11.20.94827.169.html, which argues that all anime
is hentai
and is designed to destroy Christian
moral
s, was promoted on Usenet
as such: "the author is some kind of Christian lunatic who believes that anime is all about paedophilia!"http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=45e4b219.0111290908.6900acc4%40posting.google.com. The person behind this Usenet posting was James "spiralx" Skinner, also known as "Jon Erikson", the author of the article in question. He later stated, "I wrote the article to wind up anime-loving geeks."http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2003/7/18/205013/523?pid=158#165
in a mildly controversial Kuro5hin
article, The Adequacy-Style Troll: A Brief Refresherhttp://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/7/18/205013/523. Williams' article was composed in response to the article titled Pedal Error: A Brief Refresherhttp://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/7/17/164027/186, written by "RobotSlave", a former Adequacy editor. Williams argued that the articles on Adequacy used a common methodology; that they started with basic, factually correct premises, followed reasonable-sounding but carefully constructed flawed logic, and arrived at outrageous conclusions. The article takes the stance that trolling attempts to cause chaos or disorder and is thus critical of Adequacy (it claims Adequacy-style trolling "brings a blender to the ordinary practice of shit-stirring"). Williams claims that deadpan satire of the sort found on Adequacy is too easy to mistake for sincere argument.
Another popular device used in Adequacy articles was to hyperlink
almost every word or phrase to another article on the Internet
, related to the specific word or phrase linked, often humour
ously, but meaningless in the context of the article. Confined perspectives concerning subjects such as the British Empire were openly mocked; or the sentence "we survived a hardy winter" might have the word "hardy" linked to an article on Laurel and Hardy
. Adequacy would also occasionally hyperlink to itself using words like "controversy" or phrases such as "the world's most controversial web site".
Adequacy would often deliberately misspell the targets of its satire. For example, Linux was always written as "Lunix", which has connotations of "lunatics" (although this spelling was already widely used in humorous contexts elsewhere, notably by Jeff K.). Linus Torvalds
was written as either "Linux Torvalds", "Lunix Torvaldez" or "Linyos Torovoltos", and claimed to be a native of various countries, most often Russia. There were also technological in-jokes such as the idea of "IP Tokens" which could be stolen by hackers and used for nefarious purposes if you didn't have the correct protection mechanisms. Interestingly, this predated genuine "your computer is broadcasting an IP address
!" web adverts which try to scare people into buying firewalls.
Many respondents to Adequacy used the point by point rebuttal format for raising their objections. For a brief period, Adequacy responded to such comments by removing them from public view and replacing them with a "Deletion Notice", which contained only their consequently incoherent responses, together with a copyright violation notice, chastising the poster for reproducing the entirety of the contested article without the author's permission.http://www.adequacy.org/public/stories/2002.4.16.17245.2964.html#35 http://www.adequacy.org/public/stories/2002.4.16.84844.1816.html#119 http://www.adequacy.org/public/stories/2002.4.30.73310.8177.html#4 This was termed a "War on Copyright Violation"http://www.adequacy.org/public/stories/2002.4.28.12297.7631.html, perhaps as a satirical reference to the War on Drugs
or War on Terrorism
.
and Washington, DC. Consequently, Adequacy published many "straight" stories related to the attacks. One of the earliest satires of the global terrorism phenomenon to appear on the Internet, John Montoya's "Why The Bombings Mean That We Must Support My Politics", actually ridiculed the politicians and pundits who used the attacks as a platform to advance their particular views. Although the story contained no specific names, it was intended as a response to technology evangelist Eric S. Raymond
, who had opined on the evening following the attacks that armed civilians on the airliners could have averted the attacks and that the "lawmakers who disarmed all the non-terrorists on those four airplanes" were in part responsible for them. Raymond's comments, published mere hours after the attacks had taken place, generated widespread outrage, even among those who otherwise supported his role as an open source spokesman.
The Adequacy story, which was initially published on September 12, was its most popular post-9/11 story and was eventually syndicated by AlterNet
on October 2, 2001, causing it to be mentioned by a number of online news and discussion sites. The piece was also mentioned in The Industry Standard
, wherein commentator Keith Dawson referred to it as "a brilliant height of satire".
In a return to more traditional fare, Adequacy used the October 2001 anthrax attacks
against U.S. politicians and media figures as an occasion to petition the thrash metal band Anthrax
to change their name. http://www.adequacy.org/public/stories/2001.10.12.14247.119.html (The suggested replacement chosen by readers was "Basket Full Of Puppies".) The posted story implied that the band was engaged in "tasteless, juvenile antics" and that their name had been recently-chosen in order to capitalize on the media coverage of the attacks. This prompted an angry response from Scott Ian
, the band's rhythm guitarist:
Adequacy first gained widespread Internet notoriety after the December 2, 2001 publication of a story entitled "Is Your Son a Computer Hacker?" http://www.adequacy.org/public/stories/2001.12.2.42056.2147.html The story was engineered to raise the hackles of as wide a swath of the Internet geek
community as possible; it lampooned such topics as the Linux
operating system, processors from Advanced Micro Devices
, online gaming
, and rave culture. Furor over the story spread quickly through technology / gaming blogs and Usenet
newsgroupshttp://groups.google.com/groups?lnk=hpsg&hl=en&q=%22is+your+son+a+computer+hacker%3F%22, and visitors came to the site in droves to express their opinions. The story received an official count of 5,913 individual comments, not including several thousand more that were hidden by the Adequacy editors. This figure even exceeds the record of the much more heavily-visited Slashdot, which (as of November 21, 2006) stands at 5,687 replies to the story "Kerry Concedes Election to Bush".
The publicity of the hacker story reached its highest point on January 7, 2002, when Adequacy was featured as the "Site of the Night" on the TechTV
television program The Screen Savers
. Hosts Leo Laporte
and Martin Sargent
discussed the "warning signs" enumerated in the article individually, and while Laporte seemed inclined to believe that the article was a joke, neither was ultimately sure of what to make of it. "Is this a joke?" asked Laporte incredulously, to which Sargent replied "Do you think? I don't know. I can't tell."
On October 23, 2001, Adequacy published an interview http://www.adequacy.org/public/stories/2001.9.26.215455.365.html with actor Wil Wheaton
which consisted mostly of questions poking fun of his stint as Wesley Crusher
on the television program Star Trek: The Next Generation
. Wheaton, being familiar with the nature of the site, was willing to "play along" and provide the outrageous questions with equally-outrageous answers. However, many of the readers of his own blog were not familiar with Adequacy and were dismayed over the answers that he had provided; Wheaton later expressed regret for doing the interview.
In April 2002, ex-stripper and Playboy
model Koleen Brooks
made national news when the voters of the town of Georgetown, Colorado
voted to recall her from her position as the town's mayor, citing conduct "unbecoming an elected official". Brooks granted an interview with Adequacy wherein she discussed her performance as mayor and the circumstances surrounding her recall. http://www.adequacy.org/public/stories/2002.5.2.63024.18154.html
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
web site. It featured articles on politics
Politics
Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...
, religion
Religion
Religion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values. Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to...
, technology
Technology
Technology is the making, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems or methods of organization in order to solve a problem or perform a specific function. It can also refer to the collection of such tools, machinery, and procedures. The word technology comes ;...
, history
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...
, and sociology
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
, as well as the "Linux Zealot" cartoon series. The site shut down on September 11, 2002, but has since made its archives available.
Adequacy.org's slogan was "News for grown-ups," a play on the slogan of the popular Slashdot
Slashdot
Slashdot is a technology-related news website owned by Geeknet, Inc. The site, which bills itself as "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters", features user-submitted and ‑evaluated current affairs news stories about science- and technology-related topics. Each story has a comments section...
technology news site, "News for nerds. Stuff that matters," as Adequacy's founding editors were regular trolls on Slashdot. http://www.adequacy.org/stories/2001.7.25.7321.26410.html
Background
The Adequacy authors began as trolls on SlashdotSlashdot
Slashdot is a technology-related news website owned by Geeknet, Inc. The site, which bills itself as "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters", features user-submitted and ‑evaluated current affairs news stories about science- and technology-related topics. Each story has a comments section...
and Kuro5hin
Kuro5hin
Kuro5hin is a collaborative discussion website. Articles are created and submitted by Kuro5hin's users and submitted to queue for evaluation. Site members can vote for or against publishing an article and, once the article has reached a certain number of votes, it is then published to the site...
, other technology-oriented discussion sites. They devised and posted many comments designed to provoke outraged responses; common styles included slighting a revered operating system
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
or open source
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
leader, or posting messages with simple but deliberate technical errors, which would incite hundreds of corrections.
After several years of such behavior, the Adequacy authors decided to open their own site consisting entirely of such articles intended to incite the reader, where users "in the know" would post comments agreeing with the articles.
Behind the scenes, the targets of the articles would be enticed to come to Adequacy and read the article. Adequacy members would post to weblogs, and other discussion forums, often pretending to be outraged by the article themselves. As an example, the article Not Just Harmless Funhttp://www.adequacy.org/public/stories/2001.11.20.94827.169.html, which argues that all anime
Anime
is the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....
is hentai
Hentai
is a Japanese word that, in the West, is used when referring to sexually explicit or pornographic comics and animation, particularly those of Japanese origin such as anime, manga, and computer games. The word hentai is a kanji compound of 変 and 態...
and is designed to destroy Christian
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
moral
Moral
A moral is a message conveyed or a lesson to be learned from a story or event. The moral may be left to the hearer, reader or viewer to determine for themselves, or may be explicitly encapsulated in a maxim...
s, was promoted on Usenet
Usenet
Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It developed from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980...
as such: "the author is some kind of Christian lunatic who believes that anime is all about paedophilia!"http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=45e4b219.0111290908.6900acc4%40posting.google.com. The person behind this Usenet posting was James "spiralx" Skinner, also known as "Jon Erikson", the author of the article in question. He later stated, "I wrote the article to wind up anime-loving geeks."http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2003/7/18/205013/523?pid=158#165
Adequacy style
Roger "localroger" Williams attempted a summary of Adequacy's general modus operandiModus operandi
Modus operandi is a Latin phrase, approximately translated as "mode of operation". The term is used to describe someone's habits or manner of working, their method of operating or functioning...
in a mildly controversial Kuro5hin
Kuro5hin
Kuro5hin is a collaborative discussion website. Articles are created and submitted by Kuro5hin's users and submitted to queue for evaluation. Site members can vote for or against publishing an article and, once the article has reached a certain number of votes, it is then published to the site...
article, The Adequacy-Style Troll: A Brief Refresherhttp://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/7/18/205013/523. Williams' article was composed in response to the article titled Pedal Error: A Brief Refresherhttp://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/7/17/164027/186, written by "RobotSlave", a former Adequacy editor. Williams argued that the articles on Adequacy used a common methodology; that they started with basic, factually correct premises, followed reasonable-sounding but carefully constructed flawed logic, and arrived at outrageous conclusions. The article takes the stance that trolling attempts to cause chaos or disorder and is thus critical of Adequacy (it claims Adequacy-style trolling "brings a blender to the ordinary practice of shit-stirring"). Williams claims that deadpan satire of the sort found on Adequacy is too easy to mistake for sincere argument.
Another popular device used in Adequacy articles was to hyperlink
Hyperlink
In computing, a hyperlink is a reference to data that the reader can directly follow, or that is followed automatically. A hyperlink points to a whole document or to a specific element within a document. Hypertext is text with hyperlinks...
almost every word or phrase to another article on the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
, related to the specific word or phrase linked, often humour
Humour
Humour or humor is the tendency of particular cognitive experiences to provoke laughter and provide amusement...
ously, but meaningless in the context of the article. Confined perspectives concerning subjects such as the British Empire were openly mocked; or the sentence "we survived a hardy winter" might have the word "hardy" linked to an article on Laurel and Hardy
Laurel and Hardy
Laurel and Hardy were one of the most popular and critically acclaimed comedy double acts of the early Classical Hollywood era of American cinema...
. Adequacy would also occasionally hyperlink to itself using words like "controversy" or phrases such as "the world's most controversial web site".
Adequacy would often deliberately misspell the targets of its satire. For example, Linux was always written as "Lunix", which has connotations of "lunatics" (although this spelling was already widely used in humorous contexts elsewhere, notably by Jeff K.). Linus Torvalds
Linus Torvalds
Linus Benedict Torvalds is a Finnish software engineer and hacker, best known for having initiated the development of the open source Linux kernel. He later became the chief architect of the Linux kernel, and now acts as the project's coordinator...
was written as either "Linux Torvalds", "Lunix Torvaldez" or "Linyos Torovoltos", and claimed to be a native of various countries, most often Russia. There were also technological in-jokes such as the idea of "IP Tokens" which could be stolen by hackers and used for nefarious purposes if you didn't have the correct protection mechanisms. Interestingly, this predated genuine "your computer is broadcasting an IP address
IP address
An Internet Protocol address is a numerical label assigned to each device participating in a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication. An IP address serves two principal functions: host or network interface identification and location addressing...
!" web adverts which try to scare people into buying firewalls.
Many respondents to Adequacy used the point by point rebuttal format for raising their objections. For a brief period, Adequacy responded to such comments by removing them from public view and replacing them with a "Deletion Notice", which contained only their consequently incoherent responses, together with a copyright violation notice, chastising the poster for reproducing the entirety of the contested article without the author's permission.http://www.adequacy.org/public/stories/2002.4.16.17245.2964.html#35 http://www.adequacy.org/public/stories/2002.4.16.84844.1816.html#119 http://www.adequacy.org/public/stories/2002.4.30.73310.8177.html#4 This was termed a "War on Copyright Violation"http://www.adequacy.org/public/stories/2002.4.28.12297.7631.html, perhaps as a satirical reference to the War on Drugs
War on Drugs
The War on Drugs is a campaign of prohibition and foreign military aid and military intervention being undertaken by the United States government, with the assistance of participating countries, intended to both define and reduce the illegal drug trade...
or War on Terrorism
War on Terrorism
The War on Terror is a term commonly applied to an international military campaign led by the United States and the United Kingdom with the support of other North Atlantic Treaty Organisation as well as non-NATO countries...
.
Notable Stories
As was the case for many humor-oriented Web sites, the mood on Adequacy was considerably more somber in the immediate aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in New York CityNew York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
and Washington, DC. Consequently, Adequacy published many "straight" stories related to the attacks. One of the earliest satires of the global terrorism phenomenon to appear on the Internet, John Montoya's "Why The Bombings Mean That We Must Support My Politics", actually ridiculed the politicians and pundits who used the attacks as a platform to advance their particular views. Although the story contained no specific names, it was intended as a response to technology evangelist Eric S. Raymond
Eric S. Raymond
Eric Steven Raymond , often referred to as ESR, is an American computer programmer, author and open source software advocate. After the 1997 publication of The Cathedral and the Bazaar, Raymond was for a number of years frequently quoted as an unofficial spokesman for the open source movement...
, who had opined on the evening following the attacks that armed civilians on the airliners could have averted the attacks and that the "lawmakers who disarmed all the non-terrorists on those four airplanes" were in part responsible for them. Raymond's comments, published mere hours after the attacks had taken place, generated widespread outrage, even among those who otherwise supported his role as an open source spokesman.
The Adequacy story, which was initially published on September 12, was its most popular post-9/11 story and was eventually syndicated by AlterNet
AlterNet
AlterNet, a project of the non-profit Independent Media Institute, is a progressive/liberal activist news service. Launched in 1998, AlterNet now claims a readership of over 3 million visitors per month .AlterNet publishes original content as well as journalism from a wide variety of other sources...
on October 2, 2001, causing it to be mentioned by a number of online news and discussion sites. The piece was also mentioned in The Industry Standard
The Industry Standard
The Industry Standard is a news web site dedicated to technology business news, part of InfoWorld, a news web site covering technology in general...
, wherein commentator Keith Dawson referred to it as "a brilliant height of satire".
In a return to more traditional fare, Adequacy used the October 2001 anthrax attacks
2001 anthrax attacks
The 2001 anthrax attacks in the United States, also known as Amerithrax from its Federal Bureau of Investigation case name, occurred over the course of several weeks beginning on Tuesday, September 18, 2001, one week after the September 11 attacks. Letters containing anthrax spores were mailed to...
against U.S. politicians and media figures as an occasion to petition the thrash metal band Anthrax
Anthrax (band)
Anthrax is an American heavy metal band from New York City, formed in 1981. Founded by guitarists Scott Ian and Danny Lilker, the band has since released ten studio albums and 20 singles, and an EP featuring Public Enemy. The band was one of the most popular of the 1980s thrash metal scene...
to change their name. http://www.adequacy.org/public/stories/2001.10.12.14247.119.html (The suggested replacement chosen by readers was "Basket Full Of Puppies".) The posted story implied that the band was engaged in "tasteless, juvenile antics" and that their name had been recently-chosen in order to capitalize on the media coverage of the attacks. This prompted an angry response from Scott Ian
Scott Ian
Scott Ian Rosenfeld , better known by the stage name Scott Ian, is an American musician, best known as the rhythm & lead guitarist for the heavy metal band Anthrax. Ian is also the guitarist and a founding member of the crossover thrash band Stormtroopers of Death...
, the band's rhythm guitarist:
Some asshole from some thing called the Adequacy Org. e-mailed us demanding that we change our name. The guy is clueless. He talks about our new album called Spreading The Disease, calls us Grind Core, Death Metal and Speed Metal. He thinks we named the band last week to 'take advantage of this horrific situation.' Last week…..twenty years ago……. No big difference there. What a jackass.
Adequacy first gained widespread Internet notoriety after the December 2, 2001 publication of a story entitled "Is Your Son a Computer Hacker?" http://www.adequacy.org/public/stories/2001.12.2.42056.2147.html The story was engineered to raise the hackles of as wide a swath of the Internet geek
Geek
The word geek is a slang term, with different meanings ranging from "a computer expert or enthusiast" to "a carnival performer who performs sensationally morbid or disgusting acts", with a general pejorative meaning of "a peculiar or otherwise dislikable person, esp[ecially] one who is perceived to...
community as possible; it lampooned such topics as the Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
operating system, processors from Advanced Micro Devices
Advanced Micro Devices
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. or AMD is an American multinational semiconductor company based in Sunnyvale, California, that develops computer processors and related technologies for commercial and consumer markets...
, online gaming
Online game
An online game is a game played over some form of computer network. This almost always means the Internet or equivalent technology, but games have always used whatever technology was current: modems before the Internet, and hard wired terminals before modems...
, and rave culture. Furor over the story spread quickly through technology / gaming blogs and Usenet
Usenet
Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It developed from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980...
newsgroupshttp://groups.google.com/groups?lnk=hpsg&hl=en&q=%22is+your+son+a+computer+hacker%3F%22, and visitors came to the site in droves to express their opinions. The story received an official count of 5,913 individual comments, not including several thousand more that were hidden by the Adequacy editors. This figure even exceeds the record of the much more heavily-visited Slashdot, which (as of November 21, 2006) stands at 5,687 replies to the story "Kerry Concedes Election to Bush".
The publicity of the hacker story reached its highest point on January 7, 2002, when Adequacy was featured as the "Site of the Night" on the TechTV
TechTV
TechTV was a 24-hour cable and satellite channel based in San Francisco featuring news and shows about computers, technology, and the Internet. In 2004, it merged with the G4 gaming channel which ultimately dissolved TechTV programming...
television program The Screen Savers
The Screen Savers
The Screen Savers was a live American TV show on TechTV. The show launched concurrently with the channel ZDTV on May 11, 1998. The Screen Savers originally centered around computers, new technologies, and their adaptations in the world...
. Hosts Leo Laporte
Leo Laporte
Léo Gordon Laporte is an Emmy Award winning, American technology broadcaster, author, and entrepreneur. A former resident of Providence, Rhode Island, he now lives in Petaluma, California with his wife Jennifer and two children, Abby and Henry....
and Martin Sargent
Martin Sargent
Martin Paul Sargent is an American television personality and was co-host of the This WEEK in FUN podcast with Sarah Lane...
discussed the "warning signs" enumerated in the article individually, and while Laporte seemed inclined to believe that the article was a joke, neither was ultimately sure of what to make of it. "Is this a joke?" asked Laporte incredulously, to which Sargent replied "Do you think? I don't know. I can't tell."
On October 23, 2001, Adequacy published an interview http://www.adequacy.org/public/stories/2001.9.26.215455.365.html with actor Wil Wheaton
Wil Wheaton
Richard William "Wil" Wheaton III is an American actor and writer. As an actor, he is best known for his portrayals of Wesley Crusher on the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation, Gordie Lachance in the film Stand by Me and Joey Trotta in Toy Soldiers...
which consisted mostly of questions poking fun of his stint as Wesley Crusher
Wesley Crusher
Wesley Crusher is a character in the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation. He is Beverly Crusher's son and is portrayed by actor Wil Wheaton, the character was a regular for the first four seasons. Afterwards, the character appeared sporadically. The character also appeared briefly in...
on the television program Star Trek: The Next Generation
Star Trek: The Next Generation
Star Trek: The Next Generation is an American science fiction television series created by Gene Roddenberry as part of the Star Trek franchise. Roddenberry, Rick Berman, and Michael Piller served as executive producers at different times throughout the production...
. Wheaton, being familiar with the nature of the site, was willing to "play along" and provide the outrageous questions with equally-outrageous answers. However, many of the readers of his own blog were not familiar with Adequacy and were dismayed over the answers that he had provided; Wheaton later expressed regret for doing the interview.
In April 2002, ex-stripper and Playboy
Playboy
Playboy is an American men's magazine that features photographs of nude women as well as journalism and fiction. It was founded in Chicago in 1953 by Hugh Hefner and his associates, and funded in part by a $1,000 loan from Hefner's mother. The magazine has grown into Playboy Enterprises, Inc., with...
model Koleen Brooks
Koleen Brooks
Koleen Brooks is an American politician and model, and a former mayor of Georgetown, Colorado and topless dancer. She was ousted from her position as mayor due to "unbecoming" conduct and subsequently posed for Playboy, cashing in on her notoriety.-Background:Brooks grew up in Georgetown, Colorado...
made national news when the voters of the town of Georgetown, Colorado
Georgetown, Colorado
The historic town of Georgetown is a Territorial Charter Municipality that is the county seat of Clear Creek County, Colorado, United States. The former silver mining camp along Clear Creek in the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains was established in 1859 during the Pike's Peak Gold Rush...
voted to recall her from her position as the town's mayor, citing conduct "unbecoming an elected official". Brooks granted an interview with Adequacy wherein she discussed her performance as mayor and the circumstances surrounding her recall. http://www.adequacy.org/public/stories/2002.5.2.63024.18154.html