What is a Devil’s Triangle? Kavanaugh’s testimony inspires real-time Wikipedia edits

By Melissa Locker

Brett Kavanaugh’s testimony in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee (October 01, 2018) took a detour through drinking-game history—and Wikipedia was on it.

 

Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse asked Kavanaugh a serious of questions about something in his high school yearbook: the term “Devil’s Triangle.” Kavanaugh claimed it was a drinking game played with “three glasses in a triangle.”

When Whitehouse asked Kavanaugh to define the term, Kavanaugh asked the senator, “You ever played quarters?”

“No,” said Whitehouse, unamused. “Okay, it’s a quarters game,” said Kavanaugh, referring to the popular frat house drinking game where players bounce 25¢ pieces off a table into cups of beer.

After Kavanaugh recounted his childhood memory, someone added a new definition of Devil’s Triangle to the Wikipedia: “A popular drinking game enjoyed by friends of Judge Brett Kavanaugh.” The entry was later removed, and at least one revision appears to have been removed from the public archives. USA Today notes that there was yet another entry on the Wikipedia page showing a history of revisions that read: “Do not add the hoax about a ‘drinking game,’ especially as related by Brett Kavanaugh.”

What remains on Wikipedia now is a list of other Devil’s Triangles, including an NCIS episode, a Primitive Radio Gods song, and a sexual arrangement, which is definitely not what Kavanaugh was referring to in his high school yearbook.

 
 
 

 

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