In the last three weeks, this Reddit showerthought has garnered a great deal of attention: “The owner of the testicles displayed on Wikipedia about testicles represents every man’s balls.”
Now, whether or not one caucasian dude’s testicles can actually represent all of ball-dom is highly questionable, but the notion may not be entirely wrong, either. After all, if someone’s never heard of a testile, where’s the first place they’re going? Probably Wikipedia. So there’s an argument to be made that those balls do represent all testicles. But if one man maybe, kinda, sorta represents every testicle on the planet, well then, whose testicles are they?
I’ll tell you right now that I never discovered the man’s real name. I’m no private eye, but I’m usually pretty good at tracking people down (as I did with the guy who invented the waterbed, for example). With Mr. Wikiballs though, I don’t know who he is or where he’s located. I never went to his front door and asked him to prove that he’s the guy in the pictures. That said, I do know an awful lot about him now (like, stuff I don’t know and don’t want to know about my best friends and closest family members).
So, my friends, let me share with you what I found.
Fortunately, Wikipedia keeps a history of every version of every page of its site and you can see them all right at the “View History” tab at the top of each page. Since the Wikipedia page for “Testicle” first began on August 3, 2002, there have been nearly 4,500 different versions of the page, with every added picture or edited sentence creating a new version. If you’re interested, here’s how the very first version on the page appeared, with a mere 131 words and absolutely zero visual aids:
On April 13, 2004, the page got its first image, a mere black-and-white medical drawing that came from the 1918 edition of Gray’s Anatomy.
On November 4, 2006, the Testicle page received its first photograph by way of a dissected cat testicle submitted by user Arcadian, who used an image created by Wikipedia user Uwe Gille, who describes himself as “a veterinarian from Halle (Saale), Germany,” which gives him a perfectly legit reason to have pics of cat balls. I have no doubt that Arcadian and Dr. Gille were adding that picture for the good of humankind, but they unwittingly opened the door to exhibitionists who really wanted their junk on Wikipedia.
The first of these exhibitionist photos I believe was submitted about a month later, on December 7, 2006. To be clear, though, I can’t be sure of it because the image no longer generates and the user who submitted the change to the page — who had the username Delta212 — is no longer on Wikipedia.
Two days later, on December 9th, another user — who only had an I.P. address — deleted Delta212’s photo. Three days after that, that same username-less user submitted a replacement picture called “Human scrotum, external view,” which also fails to load today. Who were these guys, and were these homemade dick pics? I honestly don’t know, but part of me suspects they’re both the same person, and Delta212 didn’t always log in before adding a pic to Wikipedia.
As an aside, my favorite version of the Testicle page came from December 18, 2006, when an unnamed user deleted the entire page and replaced it with “hahaha testicles.” A mere minute later however, a Wiki user named Wiki Alf restored the previous version, killing the joke of I.P. address 168.216.25.74, who seems to have been something of a Wikipedia anarchist in the years from 2006 to 2012.
The day after the “hahaha testicles” version of the page, the image described as “Human scrotum, external view” was deleted by the user MosheA, who called the image “highly distasteful, not encyclopedic in the least,” in their comments.
On May 20, 2007, a user named Nikon307 added a picture of his own balls to the Wikipedia page. I can confirm that these were his own balls because Wikipedia is big on copyright and they flagged the image for lacking the proper copyright info. Soon after that, on June 15th, Nikon307 confirmed that this was himself, giving Wikipedia the go-ahead to use the image. For almost two whole months, Nikon307’s balls would be the sole package on Wikipedia’s Testicle page, but on July 15th, they were deleted by an unnamed user. Mysteriously, Nikon307’s balls then reappeared on December 22, 2008 by a totally different user. They would remain there for some time to come.
While Nikon307 tried to claim the Testicle page for his own — and did a fairly decent job of it — on January 22, 2009, a user named Emptybone decided that he was taking over Wikipedia’s Testicle page, and he did so with vigor. Using images from another user named Creator, Emptybone added several pics of Creator’s balls as well as Creator’s dick and balls together. From this, I can fairly definitively deduce that Emptybone and Creator are one and the same, as Emptybone always took from the same bank of images, including for other Wikipedia pages.
Emptybone’s dick pics would be removed from the Testicle page by other users, but his balls stuck around, mostly because Emptybone did all he could to defend them. Not only did Emptybone post his pics, he also reposted them after other users deleted them, and continued to do so until May 2010, when he made his last revision to the Testicle page (which, again, would seem to confirm that there is no way these aren’t Emptybone’s balls).
As for Nikon307, his balls made their last stand on January 1, 2010, when an unnamed user deleted his picture, referring to it as an “expired, superfluous image.” Part of me feels bad for Nikon307’s balls; still, I think it’s fair to say that Nikon307 didn’t want this badly enough, and certainly not as bad as Emptybone, whose images are still the only two human ball photographs on Wikipedia’s Testicle page. He no longer even has to defend his title — it seems that the internet, and Wikipedia’s editors, don’t dare to challenge him.
What else is there to know about Emptybone?
Well, frankly, there’s quite a bit. In his gallery — which is very explicit — there’s not only his dick and balls several times over, but also his ribs, thighs and semen. And yes, possibly this is some form of exhibitionism, but I’d like to think that Emptybone is just really dedicated to informing the world about anatomy. Unfortunately, though, unless he decides to reveal himself (poor choice of words, perhaps), I don’t have a way to ask him about his motives. All I know for sure is that he really, really wants his balls up on Wikipedia, and after 11 years of supremacy, who are we to argue?
Brian VanHooker
Brian VanHooker is a staff writer at MEL specializing in pop culture, food (especially pizza) and long form oral histories. He is the co-creator of the comic book "Barnum & Elwood" and "The Tramp," a comedy pilot starring John O'Hurley. He also hosts a TMNT interview podcast called "Turtle Tracks" and was once called a "Good Guy" by Mr. T.
