Hello, and welcome to today's deep dive. I am
your host, and I'm super excited to get into
our topic today. Hey, everyone. I'm your resident
expert for the day. And yeah, I am very ready
for this one. Awesome. So today we're going to
do a deep dive into, honestly, one of the most
viewed and highly debated cultural phenomena
of the last five years. Oh, yeah. Absolutely
massive. Right. We are talking about what I eat
in the day videos. You know the ones I mean.
Oh, I mean. Everyone knows them, the highly curated
vlogs, the relentless aesthetic standards. Exactly.
The profound cultural impact of people documenting
literally every single meal online. It is a huge
topic. It is. So to get the absolute baseline
facts for this deep dive, I went to the internet's
largest supposed free -for -all encyclopedia.
I typed in the query, hit enter. And you hit
a wall. I hit an absolute void. The page has
been completely wiped from existence. We're looking
at a literal article not found. Yeah, and if
you are, like most people, navigating the internet,
when you hit that dead end, your instinct is
to simply close the PAB. Totally. You just bail.
Exactly. You assume the information just isn't
there, and you move on to the next search result.
But we are absolutely not doing that today. No,
we are not. Because instead of just abandoning
the topic, we are embarking on this, like, Meta
analytical mission. We are going to basically
conduct an autopsy on this empty digital room
Which I love it is such a brilliant way to look
at it, right? It turns out when you stop looking
for the missing information and start looking
at the architecture of the void itself It's actually
highly structured It is. By studying the scaffolding
around the missing information, we actually learn
more about the philosophical priorities of the
platform. Oh, totally. It tells this much bigger
story about the death of open knowledge, you
know, and how human culture is aggressively categorized.
And the intense bureaucracy required to even
exist on the modern Internet. We're essentially
looking at the foundational rules of digital
reality. So let's start with the crime scene
itself, the literal visual environment of this
empty page. Because the source material for this
deep dive isn't actually text about food or internet
influencers. No, it is the raw user interface
of this blank screen. And I mean, the sheer amount
of aesthetic control the platform gives you over
this absolute nothingness is just jarring. It
really is. The list of visual toggles is entirely
comprehensive. The moment you land on this void,
you're presented with an appearance menu. Yeah,
a whole suite of personal tools. You can go into
a setting called color beta. and meticulously
set the non -existent page to light, dark, or
automatic. Which is wild. And you can adjust
the text size from small to standard to large.
is incredibly confusing. Right, because the page
itself stubbornly insists in a submenu that it
always uses small font size. Right, so why even
give me the option? And you can even toggle the
layout width from standard to wide so that the
emptiness stretches as wide as possible for your
browser window. Which brings us to, honestly,
the most perplexing toggle on the entire interface.
Oh my gosh, yes. The birthday mode. The baby
globe. the baby globe. You can actually go into
the side menu and flip this toggle from zero
disabled to one enabled on a page that holds
zero information. It is. It's so strange. OK,
let's unpack this. It is exactly like walking
into this massive world renowned museum. I like
this analogy. So you walk in and the climate
control is just humming perfectly. The recessed
lighting is fully adjustable on these like. beautiful
brushed steel dimmer switches. Very fancy. Super
fancy. There are state -of -the -art accessibility
ramps at every single corner, but there's absolutely
zero art on the walls. Nothing at all. Nothing.
Why do we need birthday mode for a void? Why
does the platform care so much about the framing
when the picture is missing? Because it highlights
a fundamental shift in how digital platforms
are engineered today. The user experience, that
aesthetic scaffolding is prioritized above everything
else. Oh, wow. even above the actual content.
Exactly. It operates completely independently
of the actual content. The platform is designed
to make you feel comfortable, accommodated, and
in control of your environment. Even when it
is handing you a completely blank sheet of paper.
Right. It is the illusion of a personalized experience.
Like, please, make yourself at home in our empty
room. Dim the lights if you prefer. That is the
exact psychological mechanism at play. It signals
to the user that the architecture of the internet
is permanent and robust. while human knowledge
is, you know, transient. The frames built to
outlast the painting. Beautifully put. And providing
this level of granular control, letting you dictate
light mode, dark mode, wide margins, it's a deliberate
design choice to build systemic trust. Because
if the interface is this polished and functional,
you inherently trust the authority of the system.
Yes. Even when it tells you your query doesn't
exist. Man, that is deep. Which brings us to
the obvious next question. If the museum room
is empty and the lighting is perfectly tuned,
how does a person actually go about putting art
on the walls? Right, because this page doesn't
just apologize for being empty. No, it hands
you a strict, highly detailed instructional manual
for existence. It lays out the exact sequence
of bureaucratic events required to bring what
I eat in a day videos into reality. And it is
heavily guarded. I mean, the text specifically
dictates you need to log in or create an account
and be auto confirmed to create new articles.
Auto confirmed. Auto confirmed. Or it offers
an alternative. It says you can use the article
wizard. to submit a draft for review or request
a new article. Which is quite the process. I
find this fascinating because it completely shatters
the public perception of this site. We've been
told since the early 2000s that this is the democratized
free -for -all. The open encyclopedia that anyone
can edit. Right. But reading this, it sounds
like a bureaucratic video game quest. Use the
wizard to submit a draft. What's fascinating
here is what this reveals about the curation
of information. The rhetoric of the early internet
was undeniably about tearing down walls and open
access. For sure. Information wants to be free,
all that. Exactly. But this single empty page
proves that era is dead. Knowledge on the modern
internet is locked behind massive structural
hurdles. Designed to protect the integrity of
the database, I'm assuming. Precisely. Ensuring
only vetted entities can fill the void. Hold
on, let me push back on that framing a little
bit. Calling it a tragedy of the open web feels
a bit nostalgic, doesn't it? How do you mean?
Well, if this site didn't have these wizards
and auto -confirmed statuses, wouldn't it just
be an absolute wasteland of automated spam, corporate
PR, and malicious vandalism? That is a completely
fair point. Like, they have to draw a line somewhere
to keep the whole thing from collapsing, right?
Yes, and that cuts to the core of why these systems
exist. You have to look at the mechanics of how
malicious actors operate online. Okay. Automated
spam networks and bot farms can generate thousands
of fake pages per second, flooding a site with
links to malware or counterfeit goods. Oh wow.
Thousands a second. Easily. So the concept of
being auto -confirmed is actually a mathematical
defense mechanism against that? How does that
actually work under the hood? Like what makes
a user auto -confirmed? It usually requires an
account to age for a specific number of days
and for that user to make a minimum number of
legitimate edits to existing pages. I see. A
spam bot operates on volume and speed. It cannot
afford to wait four days and carefully correct
typos on an article about 14th century agriculture
just to earn the right to post a spam link. That
makes total sense. By forcing a user to earn
that status, the platform essentially bankrupts
the bot's business model. Exactly. So the friction
is highly intentional. Completely intentional.
But what about normal people? Well, for the human
users who aren't auto -confirmed, they are forced
into the article wizard. Which sounds fun, but
I'm guessing it isn't. It is not a magical helper.
It is a funnel. It forces you to conform to their
exact formatting rules, their citation standards,
and their internal logic before a human moderator
will even look at your draft. Wow. So the barrier
to entry for defining reality is incredibly high.
You have to speak their structural language perfectly.
You really do. It reminds me of the modern friction
we all deal with every day online. Getting locked
out of an account and being forced through a
labyrinth of automated customer service menus.
Oh, absolutely. Proving you are human over and
over again. Right. The system assumes you are
a threat until you prove you are a compliant
citizen of their database. That is an excellent
comparison. The platform values its own security
and structural integrity far more than it values
your immediate contribution. Here's where it
gets really interesting though. What if someone
actually did all of that? You mean jump through
all the hoops? Yeah, what if a dedicated user
sought out the article wizard, leveled up their
account, became auto -confirmed, and successfully
published the What I Eat in a Day videos page?
But we still can't see it. This is where the
empty page becomes almost ominous. Under a heading
titled Other Reasons This Message May Be Displayed,
it provides a list of technical and administrative
excuses for the void. The first thing it suggests
is that there might simply be a delay in updating
the database, and it advises the user to wait
a few minutes or try the purge function. I have
to admit, I have absolutely no idea what a purge
function is. It sounds incredibly aggressive,
like something out of a sci -fi movie. It does
sound dramatic, but it points to a fascinating
piece of unseen internet infrastructure. Let's
break down how a massive site like this actually
operates. OK, late on me. When you request a
web page, a server has to build it from scratch.
It queries the database for the text. It fetches
the images. It loads the formatting. Sounds like
a lot of work for one page. It is. So if a million
people ask for that same page the exact same
second, the servers would literally melt down
under the computational load. So how do they
survive that kind of traffic? They use a caching
layer. Think of it like taking a Polaroid picture
of the fully assembled web page. Oh, OK, like
a snapshot. Exactly. Instead of building the
page from scratch a million times, the server
just hands out copies of the Polaroid. It requires
almost zero computational power. OK, that makes
a lot of sense. So where does the purge come
in? A cache delay happens when the underlying
database has been updated, like someone just
published the new article. But the system is
still handing out the old Polaroid of an empty
page. Oh. So the purge function is a manual command
that forces the server to throw away the old
Polaroid, query the database, and take a brand
new snapshot of the current reality. Wow. So
the article might actually be alive and well,
just hiding behind an outdated snapshot of nothingness.
Precisely. But the technical excuses don't stop
there. The page also warns that search titles
are case -sensitive except for the first character.
Oh, I saw that. It suggests you might need to
check for alternative capitalizations or see
if someone created a redirect. Which is incredibly
pedantic. Right. It's like we might have the
sum of human knowledge, but only if you capitalize
the third letter correctly. It is a stark reminder
that computers do not understand context or nuance.
They understand exact string matches. But the
final reason provided on this empty page. Yeah.
This is the one that really got me. It says if
the page has been deleted, check the deletion
log and see why was the page I created deleted.
The deletion log. Yeah. This suddenly doesn't
feel like a helpful encyclopedia anymore. It
feels like a redacted government file. Check
the deletion log. It carries a lot of weight,
doesn't it? It strongly implies that what I eat
in a day videos might have existed. Someone might
have poured their heart into researching it,
passed the wizard, earned their auto -confirmed
status, and then... A governing body actively
erased it. It's entirely possible. The philosophical
weight of having the question, why was the page
I created deleted, hyperlinked on a blank screen,
just I don't know, heartbreaking. It forces us
to confront a very uncomfortable truth about
the impermanence of digital data and the intense
subjectivity of the historical record. Because
we kind of assume everything online is forever.
We do. We have this collective delusion that
the Internet is an infinite hard drive where
everything lives permanently. But this single
line of text shatters that. It reminds us that
there is an active ongoing judgment by moderators
determining what is worthy of preservation and
what is garbage. But again, someone has to take
out the trash, right? Like if I make a page about
my pet hamster, it doesn't belong in a global
encyclopedia. Certainly. Blatant spam or self
-promotion is an easy call. But the deletion
log isn't just a trash can, it is a battleground.
A battleground? Yes. There are massive historical
wars fought on these platforms over a concept
known as notability. Okay, who decides what is
notable? Exactly the issue. Who decides if a
massive cultural trend like what I eat in a day
videos which has billions of views drive entire
industries and shapes how a generation views
food and diet is notable enough for the permanent
record? So a topic of massive sociological importance
could be actively weighed judged as unencyclopedic
by a few gatekeepers with the right administrative
permissions and purged into the ether. Exactly.
The deletion log is a graveyard of rejected human
culture. It forces us to ask, who is writing
the rules of history? Man, that is intense. A
cultural movement might be defining the Veitgeist,
but if it doesn't fit the rigid structural criteria
of this specific database, it is wiped from their
reality. The platform is dictating that if it
cannot be formatted properly, it does not exist.
It's wild to think about. You search for a reflection
of the modern culture you live in, and the platform
hands you a blank page and says, no, that doesn't
count. Check the log. But the architecture of
this empty page offers you one last lifeline.
Before you leave the digital room in defeat,
it points you toward a back door. The epistemological
scavenger hunt. Yes. The text at the bottom of
the void says, look for what I eat in a day videos
on one of Wikipedia's sister projects. Right.
And then it provides this incredibly exhaustive,
rigid list of alternative dimensions where your
query might be allowed to live. It essentially
takes the entire chaotic spectrum of human knowledge
and partitions it into 10 distinct isolated categories.
I have to list these out because visualizing
our topic fitting into some of these boxes is
to your comedy. Please do. Okay, so it suggests
looking in Wiktionary, which is the Wiktionary.
Wikibooks for textbooks. Wiki for quotations.
Wikisource the library. Still going. Oh, there's
more. Wikiversity for learning resources. Commons
for media. Wikinews as a news source. Wikidata,
the linked database. And my absolute favorites,
Wikivoyage, the travel guide, and Wikispecies,
the species directory. It is quite the spread
of options. I am just picturing myself desperately
trying to find what I eat in a day videos classified
as a new biological organism in the WikiSpecies
directory. This is a funny image. Or logging
into WikiVoyage to see if a diet vlog is considered
a valid vacation destination. It is so deeply
mechanical. The system clearly has no idea what
you are actually searching for. It just aggressively
throws you against the walls of its categorical
boxes. So what does this all mean? Why give me
these specific options? Well, if we connect this
to the bigger picture, to understand why it does
this, we have to look at the philosophy of early
Internet database design. Why can't a, quote,
a biological species and a travel itinerary live
in the same database? I'm assuming it has to
do with how the information is structured. Exactly.
It comes down to database schemas. Relational
databases get bogged down and break if you mix
fundamentally different data types. Because they
need different fields. Right. A biological species
entry requires highly specific relational fields.
Kingdom, phylum, class, order. A quotation requires
completely different fields. Author, date, publication,
context. Oh, I see. If you shove them all into
one massive table, the system collapses under
the semantic confusion. So the early internet
architects decided to just build completely separate
houses for different types of data. Yes, they
partitioned knowledge to protect the servers.
But the result, decades later, is this incredibly
rigid taxonomy. And it forces the user into that
taxonomy. Exactly. By offering you these absurd
alternatives, the void is forcing you, the user,
to fundamentally question what category of reality
your query actually belongs to. It's like trying
to input a modern smartphone. into a 19th century
Dewey decimal system in a physical library. It's
a great way to think about it. The smartphone
has tremendous value and exists in reality, but
the Victorian filing rules simply cannot comprehend
what it is. It is a what I eat in a day. video,
a piece of media to be stored in the Commons.
Is it a linguistic trend for the Wiktionary?
Is it a sociological learning resource for Wikiversity?
Or is it news? The platform rejects the topic
from the main encyclopedia but says perhaps it
fits perfectly into one of these other highly
specific boxes. It exposes how inflexible digital
taxonomy really is. It really does. Things that
are fluid, highly cultural, or purely aesthetic
struggle to find a home in a system that demands
stripped black and white classification. We are
trying to shove a chaotic moving target of internet
culture into filing cabinets designed by a mechanical
algorithm. Exactly. Please place your viral TikTok
trend in the species directory or the quotation
ledger. It's completely absurd, but it is the
only architecture we have. And we have to remember
that this architecture dictates how future generations
will find or entirely fail to find information
about us. Wow. We are leaving behind a historical
record that is defined more by its filing rules
than its actual human context. Precisely. This
has been an absolute trip. We started out with
what was essentially a digital dead end. an article
not found page. An absolute void. And instead
of finding out what internet influencers eat
for breakfast, we uncovered the hidden scaffolding
of the internet's most vital information repository.
We stepped into the void and found out exactly
how it is built. We analyzed the aesthetic priorities,
the adjustable lighting and birthday mode toggles
that are designed to keep us comfortable and
trusting even when we are handed nothing. We
met the gatekeepers and realized that contributing
to the permanent record requires passing an article
wizard. Navigating cash delays. Right. And earning
an auto -confirmed status to prove we aren't
malicious bots. We explored the digital graveyard
of the deletion log, recognizing that an absence
of information is rarely an accident. It is often
the result of an active, highly subjective judgment
call about what deserved to be remembered. And
finally, we were sent on a mechanical scavenger
hunt through the sister projects, forced to ask
whether a modern blog is a biological species,
a travel destination, or a textbook, simply because
the database demands a category. It entirely
transforms how you view the platform. The empty
space is just as engineered as the articles themselves.
It really does. And for you listening, I want
you to take this with you. The next time you
are searching for something online, whether you
are prepping for a meeting, doing research for
school, or just diving down a rabbit hole out
of sheer curiosity. And you hit a dead end, a
404 error, or an article not found page. Don't
just immediately close the tab. Take a second.
Look at the architecture of the empty space.
Look at the menus, the bureaucratic rules, the
suggested redirects. Because the way a complex
system handles absence tells you absolutely everything
you need to know about how it manages presence.
The rules of the void define the shape of reality.
Perfectly said. Exactly. Which leaves us with
one final thought to mull over. If a platform
has the unprecedented power to define the strict
rules of creation, forcing you through wizards,
maintaining hidden deletion logs that erase cultural
history, and dictating exactly which sister projects
are valid categories of existence, who actually
controls the boundaries of what you're allowed
to know. That is the big question. If the digital
library shelf is empty, is it because the book
was never written? Or because a system designed
to protect its own architecture decided it simply
didn't belong?