The nerdiest Trump troll of all time is hiding on Wikipedia

Someone in Congress is using a Wikipedia Twitter bot to send us secret messages about Trump.
 By 
Rachel Kraus
 on 
The nerdiest Trump troll of all time is hiding on Wikipedia
Someone in Congress is having too much fun on Wikipedia. That, or they genuinely need our help. Credit: Shutterstock / turtix

We see you, rogue Congressional staffer.

It appears that someone (or several people?) accessing Wikipedia from IP addresses originating from the United States Congress has been editing Wikipedia pages to reveal secret messages on Twitter.

The secret Congressional troll is using the @CongressEdits twitter account, a bot that "tweets anonymous Wikipedia edits that are made from IP addresses in the U.S. Congress," according to the account's description.

Since Friday, Oct. 20, three clandestine messages have appeared in a succession of tweets -- all generated from changes to Wikipedia pages made from INSIDE the House of Representatives -- by someone who is apparently aware of the bot's auto-tweet function.

Read in order from oldest to newest, the first word of every tweet reveals the sender's transmissions to the Twitterverse. It is, without a doubt, the nerdiest troll of all time.

The first reads ... drumroll please ... "Trump -- Is -- Garbage."

An earth shattering, and very mature, critique.

But the second secret message gets even juicier. Using a deep knowledge of the British and American musical canon, on Monday, our inside man/men/woman/women dropped a major bombshell: "Help! -- The Gop -- They Will Kill Us All (Without Mercy)." (This message brought to you by Wikipedia pages for songs by The Beatles and punk rock band The Bronx.)

Hide yo wife, hide yo kids.

In the saboteur's final transmission (for now), on Tuesday, our mystery hero shed light on a hidden motive of Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, using the page dedicated to a Dostoyevsky novel: "Ryan -- Could not care less -- ABOUT -- Poor Folk."

Whoahh.

All Wikipedia edits are traceable via IP address, and you can see from this log page on Wikipedia that someone with the IP address 143.231.249.138 has been busy making encoded changes. An IP address lookup reveals that the active IP address is linked to the House of Representatives — so wiki-sleuthing shows that the the troll is literally coming from inside the House.

Original image replaced with Mashable logo
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Wikipedia edits from Congress are not uncommon, though. The Twitter bot shows 1,749 edits since July 2014 -- which comes out to an average of 45 changes per month. And from a read-through of the Twitter history, it looks like someone in Congress is very committed to the accuracy of Star Wars-related Wikipedia pages.

But considering the absolutely dire and thoroughly encoded nature of the Twitter phrases, these codes seem to be no coincidence. We'll be here waiting for your next message, intrepid Twitter user on Capitol Hill. Godspeed.

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Rachel Kraus

Rachel Kraus is a Mashable Tech Reporter specializing in health and wellness. She is an LA native, NYU j-school graduate, and writes cultural commentary across the internetz.

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