Conservapedia Fannee Doolees
A game in which we guess why conservatives like X but dislike Y
In the early 2000s, the PBS kids’ show Zoom had a segment called Fannee Doolee, in which the child hosts would ask the viewer questions like:
Fannee Doolee likes butterflies, but doesn’t like moths. Why do you think that is?
Or:
Fannee Doolee likes sheep, but doesn’t like lambs. Why do you think that is?
The secret is that Fannee Doolee likes words with double letters, and dislikes words without them.
These days I like to play a more grown-up version of that game, but with Conservapedia. As the name implies, it’s the conservative version of Wikipedia.1 They have political articles written from a far-right perspective, but they also have lots of articles about seemingly innocent things, like the Titanic, which they find zany ways to turn political.
The game is to find two similar topics, one of which they write about in a positive light and the other in a negative light, and try to figure out why. Example:
Conservapedia likes quantum mechanics, but doesn’t like relativity. Why do you think that is?
It’s true; they even have a separate article called “Counterexamples to Relativity.” Here are the reasons, as far as I can tell:
Quantum mechanics is spooky and mysterious. So is God. So in their view, quantum mechanics proves the existence of God.
Relativity sounds like relativism.
Now that you’ve got the idea, here are some more that I’ve found. I’ll put the pairings first so you can play yourself, then I’ll put my explanations at the end. For added fun, try to guess before reading the articles.
Conservapedia…
likes chess, but doesn’t like video games.
likes Surrealism, but doesn’t like Cubism.
…Why do you think that is?
I’d love to hear more if you find them!
Explanations
Chess vs video games
Chess is old-fashioned and skews male. Sort of like conservatives, I guess?
Because violent video games cause school shootings, not guns.
Surrealism vs cubism
Dalí had some religious paintings and was also pretty skilled as a painter.
Picasso was a Communist party member.
The “You call that art?” reaction to Cubism and other modern art is conservative just in the ordinary sense of the word.
Elvis vs the Beatles
Easy, Elvis was a Christian and the Beatles were hippies
TikTok vs Facebook
TikTok is better than Facebook at figuring out what users like, so when the Conservapedia authors go on TikTok they see all these conservative videos and think it’s because TikTok is conservative.
Those are my theories! Please feel free to comment your own.
Aside: There’s also a liberal version of Wikipedia, called Wikipedia.