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What is this?

You're looking at The Encyclopedia of Pointless, an odd encyclopedia that somebody might edit. It was founded by Mr. Encyclopedia in 1999 and has existed on and off ever since. It's mostly Mr. Encyclopedia's ramblings but anyone is welcome to join in and contribute their inanity.

Why would anyone do that?

It's happened before, and it may well happen again. "If you build it they will come" and all that. If a community shows up, great. If they don't, this will still be the place where Mr. Encyclopedia posts his nonsense. If you have suggestions for how to make this place more welcoming, Please let Mr. Encyclopedia -> mailto:webmaster [snail] eopoint [period] com know.

Why now?

Honestly, this latest incarnation of The Encyclopedia of Pointless is here for two reasons: One, Mr. Encyclopedia finally reacquired the historic URL of the site "eopoint.com" after losing it to URL squatters in 2015. Two, the demise of Cohost.org (2022-2024) meant Mr. Encyclopedia no longer had a convenient place to post random longform nonsense. It feels like the Internet is being crushed down into a handful of big apps so now more than ever we need small independent places to exist online where we aren't tracked and pitted against each other and squeezed for profit.

What's this "Error 404" thing?

Long ago, in an earlier form of the Encyclopedia of Pointless, the error page led to a surreal little interactive fiction story. Later, tools were built to allow folks to add to the story and it grew to be pretty large. It disappeared after a switch to a new site backend but Mr. Encyclopedia kept the old databases and figured out how to import it here.

Now let's be honest. A lot of it is terrible, having been written by weird children in the early 2000s. Also many of the pages have messed up formatting thanks to the bodged-together tool Mr. Encyclopedia used to import those old entries. Fixing it all up and making something coherent and presentable is a long-term project for the site. Feel free to help out, if you want!

What would someone even write here?

There's been plenty of joke encyclopedias before, The Encyclopedia of Pointless isn't even the first one and it started ages ago. It doesn't have to be that deep. Essays, poetry, parodies, hyperfixation infodumps, obscure true knowledge, obvious fake knowledge, there are no hard or fast rules for what does and does not belong in the Encyclopedia.

What if somebody posts something bad here?

Mr. Encyclopedia is the final arbiter of what isn't allowed on the site. If formal rules need to be written up they will be, but rest assured that anything illegal, bigoted, sexually explicit, hateful, harassing, or annoying is not going to stick around. Furthermore, if you come across something offensive on the site, like say a bad bit of 2000s humor in Error 404, let Mr. Encyclopedia -> mailto:webmaster [snail] eopoint [period] com know and he will take care of it.

FUUQ You!

FUUQ you as well.