Interesting. I think you're on to something here. The wikia stuff seems to have been created in August 2013. The subreddit /r/cicada appears to be 11 month old, but the article implies that Eriksson discovered it in the beginning of 2012. And it's virtually empty. Hmmm...
Edit: oh well, nevermind. A google search between 1/1/2010 and 1/1/2012 returns plenty of stuff, for example a discussion [1] on the xkcd forums from January 2012.