5 People Who Run The World (You Had No Clue Existed)

5

Steven Pruitt Has Contributed To A Third Of Wikipedia

There are countless unsung heroes responsible for preserving the knowledge of humanity. The scholars of Alexandria. The dedicated employees at the Library of Congress. And Steve.

Steve Pruitt has spent an altogether unhealthy portion of his life behind a keyboard, plinking away at Wikipedia articles. Despite the shortcomings that they themselves admit to, Wikipedia is undoubtedly the most influential collection of information in the world today. And "prolific nerd" Steve Pruitt has volunteered his time to help provide about a third of that influence. He is responsible for around 3 million Wikipedia edits and 35,000 original articles. Time declared him one of 2017's most influential internet users, which sounds like hyperbole until you realize that, with an average of 540 edits a day, his fingers have been on a volume of information that would make scholars of previous generations apoplectic with jealousy.

And Pruitt's not just an obsessive cut-and-paster. His three-plus-hour-a-day hobby includes efforts to streamline Wikipedia's format to improve its ease of use, and to correct the dearth of articles about women (by writing tons of them himself). Beats our daily three hours of whisky-soaked League Of Legends rage.

Steven Pruitt/Wikipedia"What have you done with your life? ... No, seriously. Let me know and I'll meticulously record it for worldwide distribution."

Working for no paycheck doesn't bother Pruitt. It's actually part of his inspiration. In his words: "The idea of making it all free fascinates me. My mother grew up in the Soviet Union ... So I'm very conscious of what it can mean to make knowledge free." His reward for all of this selfless hard work is, of course, his very own Wikipedia page. It's 2,500 words shorter than Batboy's, but still.

4

John Harrison Controls Your Ice Cream

"Ice cream taster" sounds like the dream job of an eight-year-old who eventually grows up to be an accountant. But someone does have to test new flavors and perform quality control on existing ones. Otherwise there's a risk that a batch of French vanilla goes out tasting like American vanilla. And for ice cream giant Nestle, whose brands include Edy's and Haagen-Dazs, that someone is John Harrison.

Harrison's job is to take a gallon of ice cream, sit down, and taste it with his golden spoon. No, literally. Silver tarnishes, while wood, steel, and plastic all have a mild aftertaste. Besides, if you were a professional taster, you'd take any excuse to pimp out your spoon too. Harrison tastes around 60 batches a day over the course of four to five hours, following his rule of "swirl, smack, and spit." And to keep the decadent Roman Emperor theme going, he gives whole batches a thumbs up or thumbs down. Around 100,000 gallons of ice cream are rejected annually and given to food banks, like a gift from a chubby Caesar, for being too icy, not fluffy enough, or sorbet in disguise. You don't count, sorbet. You will never count.

3

Robert Parker Changed What You Drink

If you feel like uncultured swine for not understanding the complexities of a fine wine, Robert Parker is your worst nightmare. He's considered the most influential wine critic in the world. Receiving a coveted high score on his 100-point scale (which only goes as low as 50, because wine ratings are even sillier than video game reviews) can make or break a wine's fate.

Parker holds many titles, including the incredibly lame "His Bobness." But he's best-known for his newsletter, The Wine Advocate, which decides what wines are deemed classy enough for luxury restaurants and which are destined to be chugged by sorority girls looking to get trashed on the cheap. Taste, despite what the average internet user will tell you, is subjective, but what Parker says can be industry gospel, to the point where prices are affected by what he thought of a vintage.

2

Natasha Wagner Is The Woman With The Perfect Butt (For Jeans)

Fashion trends change with time, but blue jeans became eternal the moment people realized that you can wear the same pair for three straight months without anyone noticing. But how do you manufacture a good pair of jeans when the butts that are destined to be contained within them range from borderline nonexistent to generously enhanced by decades of fried chicken and beer?

1

Kevin MacLeod Has Written Music For Tens Of Millions Of YouTube Videos

When you're making a YouTube video about Toy Story 4 that's longer than the actual movie, you need some pleasant but unremarkable background music. You can license tracks, but that can be expensive. You can make your own, but that's hard. You can throw in some known song and hope for the best, but YouTube will likely pull the video for copyright infringement. What you probably want is royalty-free music. And if you search for some, there's a good chance you'll end up with something by Kevin MacLeod.

MacLeod releases a new album of royalty-free music every three weeks. His work is cheap, or free if you attribute it. And so a lot of the internet uses his music. He estimates that his work can be found in as many as 90 million videos, while searching for his name in Google Video produces 37 million results, which is especially impressive when you consider that no one even uses Google Video.

MacLeod's music is also licensed for commercials. And porn. And all Target stores. And movies, giving a guy you've probably never heard of over 3,000 IMDb credits. Most of these are indie movies (major productions hire their own composers), but there are exceptions. The producers of Hugo licensed MacLeod's work as temporary tracks, with the assumption that they'd later be replaced. Then, at the last minute, someone realized they'd left some of his music in there and they had to make it official.