Polite Type

Beth Fileti (she/her), a multidisciplinary designer exploring art and technology. I specialize in systems thinking, communication strategies, and design solutions.

What Ice Can I Get You

Short story

|

2025

A short story written as a Wikipedia page.

Read live version
A cropped image of a wikipedia page that reads "What ice can I get you"

An imagined version of Wikipedia created by a writer to document their own life and experiences. This page explains the history and importance of a phrase that arose from a conflict within the writer's marriage.

For the full experience of the interactive piece, please read it live here: https://bettyfileti.github.io/wiki-What-ice-can-i-get-you/


//-----

This piece was developed during April Soetarman's Narrative Constellations class at SFPC. Many thanks to April and Lee for the support!

//-----


Process Work

Released Version!
An earlier iteration

Working with Chrome Dev Tools
I realized that instead of a 404, page not found, Wikipedia generates an "entry not found" page, which was a nice little mechanism for me to add in some verisimilitude to the links

Tooltip Glitches

I really enjoyed some of the process work/glitches that arose from trying to get the tooltip functionality how I wanted it to work.

Glitchy image of a wikipedia page, where all of the tooltip content is visible and chaotic
Glitchy image of a wikipedia page, where all of the tooltip content is hiding most of the article content, line by liner
Glitchy image of a wikipedia page, where hovering over a tooltip creates a glitchy unreadable visualv
Glitchy image of a wikipedia page, where all of the tooltip content is visible and chaotic
Glitchy image of a wikipedia page, where all of the tooltip content is visible and chaotic

Some of the Wikipedia Pages I Referenced

Screenshot of the wikipedia page for Gish gallop
Screenshot of the wikipedia page for Die hard (phrase)
Screenshot of the wikipedia page for Catbird seat
Screenshot of the wikipedia page for Seeing the elephant
Screenshot of the wikipedia page for 23 skidoo (phrase)
Screenshot of the wikipedia page for Hot take
In July 2016, Best uploaded 3,471 issues of TIME Magazine from 1923 to 2014 to be freely available online. This may have violated TIME's terms and conditions. Best released a statement that included a quote the magazine's founder, Henry R Luce: "Journalism is the art of collecting varying kinds of information (commonly called news) which a few people possess and of transmitting it to a much larger number of people who are supposed to desire to share it".
Screenshot from Emma Best's Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Best_(journalist)

Image Gallery

No items found.
Polite Type
© 2025, Polite Type