masterWiki with Chef Ramsey
We've all seen the ads from Masterclass. Aaron Sorkin teaches us how to write a screenplay. Gordon Ramsey teaches us how to cook. Malcom Gladwell teaches us how to write and so on. Professional A-listers teach us their craft through a series of engaging lessons. These classes cost $180 each. Conversely, we've all seen a wikiHow, a delivery method for basic life skills that has been parodied a billion times over. What if the two were combined?
That's exactly what the socio-psychological rapscallions at MSCHF have done with masterWiki, a combination of both sources of knowledge that rips the lessons of Masterclass and the presentation style of wikiHow and mashes them together in a delightfully entertaining format, feeding our growing sense of boredom, complacency and brokeness. We want to learn from the masters, we just generally can't afford it. Plus, who has got the time for that when the world is on fire?
A regular, legitimate Masterclass (the entire class) runs anywhere between two to five hours. A lesson within that class might run for five minutes or thirty minutes or anything in between. These masterWikis can be digested in the time it takes between sitting down on the toilet and getting up from the toilet and are completely free. They fit within the world of wikiHow; easily consumable, simply drawn with each lesson boiled down to its bullet-pointed core.
As with its Blue Donkey project and The Office in Slack projects, MSCHF fully expects masterWiki to be shut down (the former by Grubhub, the latter by Slack) with cease and desist orders, since there is no digital access to deny. Even though this reproduces actual Masterclass lessons that were bought and paid for (then open sourced) and it mimics the visual presentation style of wikiHow, it still might fall under parody.
The masterWiki lessons are unfortunately not downloadable, which seems like a detriment to the project. Making them downloadable would have made any copyright enforcement nearly impossible to enforce, as after this inevitably goes viral, these images could be everywhere. Regardless, a simple print screen should suffice, at least to turn some of them into memes.
Since I've never paid for or watched a Masterclass I can't tell if some of this has been bloated for additional jokes that follow the standard wikiHow meme template (memes that use wikiHow art styles but present ridiculous situations or jokes). For instance, at the end of the Gordan Ramsey masterWiki on making the perfect scrambled eggs, it suggests "train as a chef in France" and "plate your eggs with more sea urchins" as optional steps. These seem too over the top for Masterclass, but again, I can't confirm that.
Each masterWiki fully credits the author of the Masterclass, as it should. The artists are left anonymous but have done a competent job reproducing the look and feel of wikiHow pages. The lessons are organized by their category (film & TV, writing, etc.) and there is a premium version of the site that is just a lolz because there is no premium — it's all free so enjoy masterWiki while it lasts.
Update: after talking to a copyright lawyer, masterWiki would likely violate not only usage rights for Masterclass itself, but of the celebrities as well. MSCHF will surely get its wish in the form of a cease and desist.
