Annie Rauwerda can’t remember a world without Wikipedia. Born in 1999, just two years before the platform launched, she says it has been omnipresent in her life and a source of endless fascination.

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic when she was a neuroscience student at the University of Michigan, Rauwerda said she spent a lot of time on Wikipedia and started posting quirky stories she found.

“As I clicked around, there were so many things with goofy titles,” said the now 26-year-old. “I thought to myself: ‘This could be big.’”

Making as many as five videos a day, Rauwerda indeed gained an audience with her off-beat discoveries — from stolen and missing moon rocks to the back story of people demonstrating “high fives.”  She created Depths of Wikipedia, a group of social media accounts and has more than 1.5 million followers on Instagram, 200,000 on TikTok, and 130,000 on BlueSky.  

In 2022, Rauwerda was named the Media Contributor of the Year by the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that hosts Wikipedia.

In October, Rauwerda was invited to present at the Internet Archive event in San Francisco celebrating the milestone of 1 trillion webpages saved. She brought a burst of energy and humor to the stage as she shared screenshots of some of her favorite Wikipedia articles.

Watch Annie at Internet Archive’s 1 Trillion Web Page Celebration:

Rauwerda calls herself an Internet Archive “super fan” and acknowledges its value in providing links to original sources.

“If Wikipedia is worth anything at all, it’s because of the citations, and those citations are increasingly hard to access,” she said, noting that more than half of the community articles contain a dead link. “That’s not a concern, though, for us, because we have partnerships with the Internet Archive to make sure that those links are archived and can be clicked by anyone.”

Professionally and personally, Rauwerda said she uses the Archive constantly as she looks for material, seeks out old blogs or edits Wikipedia pages.

“It’s really hard for me to think of an organization that I’m more enthusiastic about,” Rauwerda said of the Internet Archive. “I just love everything about it.”

What will matter most to future generations is hard to predict, Rauwerda said, so it’s crucial to save as much of the digital landscape as possible. “I’m thankful the Internet Archive exists,” she said, “especially given how fragile everything is online.”

Rauwerda said she’s had a “simultaneous love affair with the Internet Archive and Wikipedia” — often toggling back and forth as she dives into topics. She said she embraces the spirit of the open web and the community of people who support this work.

Beyond her social media presence, Rauwerda is writing a book about Wikipedia for Little Brown. The series of light-hearted essays about the off-beat people behind Wikipedia is slated for publication in the fall of 2026.

Rauwerda also turned her discoveries into a comedy show, which she first performed at small clubs in New York. After landing an agent, she went on a multi-city tour of the U.S., customizing the material for each region. She has another round of shows booked for 2026.

“It’s been so fun,” she said. “I’m gonna ride this while it lasts.”