Dinner Party via Wikimedia Commons

A new website, Dilettantepedia, just launched. It provides the minimum amount of information about any subject that a dilettante needs to appear knowledgeable about that subject. Just enough, but certainly no more than the minimum quantity that will allow the user to demonstrate his far-reaching expertise.

Dilettantepedia is the polar opposite of Wikipedia, which provides such complete information about every subject that it is not useful to the dilettante. The overload of information is a source of much trouble in the world today, as dilettantes are being upstaged by people who claim more and more depth in a subject, more depth, in fact, than anyone else cares about. Those people are Info-zealots, extremists who do not tolerate a change of subject until every last crumb of information has been regurgitated from Wikipedia. This leads to excessive drinking by their dinner partners and has resulted in an increasing number of DWI arrests.

Dilettantepedia encourages a quick change of conversation topic, leaving the Wikipedia bore floundering with his cell phone while the dilettante races assuredly from one subject to another. A key feature of Dilettantepedia is a link to related subjects, which allows the user to change the topic while demonstrating to all the listeners that he is fully informed on almost everything.

The Dilettantepedia theme song is:

I know a little bit about a lot o’ things,

But I don’t know enough about you.

Just when I think you’re mine,

You try a different line,

And baby, what can I do?

The aspiring dilettante who accesses the new website will immediately find that the lyrics were written and recorded by Peggy Lee. He will not find that it was orchestrated by Dave Barbour, that it was recorded by the Mills Brothers or a mass of other useless information, for that matter. It will provide a quick link to Peggy Lee’s movie career, where the only information will be that she almost won an Academy Award for Pete Kelly’s Blues and allow  several more changes of topic before his dinner partners know what hit them.