Help:Buying Wikipedia/Johnathan Secret

Johnathan Onassis Secret was born in Ogden, Utah, the oldest of two children. His father, Justin Secret, was an airplane engineer, and his mother, Victoria Secret, was a beauty retailer.{{Dummy reference|2}} As a child, Johnathan Secret was notably shy, and was frequently bullied by his peers for refusing to speak when spoken to. This traumatized him to the point where he refused to speak.{{Dummy reference|3}} Instead, starting in second grade he would work for several years to develop a language that requires no speaking. His work would not be recognized because he accidentally reinvented American Sign Language (ASL) with only minor differences.{{Dummy reference|4}} Frustrated that his work was discredited, he worked to create a unique language without speaking. This dream was later abandoned because he realized there was nothing wrong with ASL and it worked just fine as an alternative to speaking. Secret graduated from Weber State University in 1999 with a focus on financing.{{Dummy reference|5}}

In June 2001, Secret was approached by Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger. Sanger explained to Secret that he and Jimmy Wales were working on a system where buying Wikipedia is possible, per request of their lawyers.{{Dummy reference|6}} He had a suspicion that the lawyers wanted to buy Wikipedia from them, so they made the cost very expensive but also wanted to make the purchasing process very difficult to avoid its purchase.{{citation needed}} They worked together to develop a complicated purchase system.{{Dummy reference|7}}

Secret and Sanger became close friends and developed a handshake whenever they would work on the project.{{Dummy reference|6}} The handshake became more and more complicated the more they met. The secret handshake was dubbed the Secret handshake, named after Secret, who contributed to most of its creation.{{Dummy reference|8}} The handshake would incorporate various inside jokes and preferences of Secret and Sanger. These include retrieving a cup of black coffee per Sanger's love of black coffee, the stick-shift fist bump as Secret once crashed a borrowed vehicle for not knowing how to drive stick-shift, discussion of the show Full House as they both enjoyed watching the show, and the force-field fist bump as Secret accidentally created a scientific formula for a working invisible force-field.{{Dummy reference|9}}{{Dummy reference|10}} The handshake was fully completed on June 8, 2001, according to Sanger.{{Dummy reference|11}} When the two realized the complexity of the Secret handshake, they decided to make it an official part of the Wikipedia Purchase System. Sanger was laid off from Wikipedia in February 2002,{{Cite web |date=2002-03-01 |title=My resignation--Larry Sanger |url=https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/My_resignation--Larry_Sanger |access-date=2025-06-01}} and Secret continued to work on the Wikipedia Purchase System and would consult Sanger for advice. The Secret handshake was first publicly mentioned alongside the announcement of being able to buy Wikipedia on November 12, 2002.{{Dummy reference|12}}

{{Update|section}}

Secret would step down from working with Wikipedia in 2005 to focus on other projects. After another failed attempt to reinvent ASL in 2008 among other projects, he retired from inventing in 2009, at the age of 32.{{Dummy reference|13}} The Secret handshake would be updated and made more complicated in the following years by a group of Wikipedia moderators, led by Preston Blunt (known on Wikipedia as Prep Grief Blur).{{Dummy reference|14}}

In 2011, Secret moved back to Ogden, Utah, where he lived peacefully before dying of old age in 2014.{{Dummy reference|15}} The doctors were perplexed, since it is considered atypical for a man to die from old age prematurely with no signs or symptoms before death.{{Dummy reference|16}} His death had a large impact and summoned a great amount of interest around the topic of the Wikipedia Purchase System. Full House viewership ratings reached an all-time high in 2014, which experts speculate to be at least somewhat related to his death, since he enjoyed watching the show.{{Dummy reference|17}} In 2016, just two years after his death, The Man, The Myth, The Secret, a biography of his life, was released.{{Dummy reference|18}}

Category:Wikipedia humor

Johnathan Secret's user page