WIll CERN Allow the PINKS to See the FNORDS? PRAISE BOB! ILLUMINATI WATCH YOUR OVERCOATS.

Fnord
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Fnord is the typographic representation of disinformation or irrelevant information intending to misdirect, with the implication of a conspiracy. The word was coined as a nonsensical term with religious undertones in the Discordian religious text Principia Discordia (1965) by Kerry Thornley and Greg Hill, but was popularized by The Illuminatus! Trilogy (1975) of satirical conspiracy fiction novels by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson.
Contents

Definition and usage

The Illuminatus! Trilogy

Main article: The Illuminatus! Trilogy

In these novels, the interjection "fnord" is given hypnotic power over the unenlightened. Under the Illuminati program, children, while still in grade school, are taught to be unable to consciously see the word "fnord". For the rest of their lives, every appearance of the word subconsciously generates a feeling of uneasiness and confusion, and prevents rational consideration of the subject.

In the Shea/Wilson construct, fnords are scattered liberally in the text of newspapers and magazines, causing fear and anxiety in those following current events. However, there are no fnords in the advertisements, encouraging a consumerist society. It is implied in the books that fnord is not the actual word used for this task, but merely a substitute, since most readers would be unable to see the actual word.

To see the fnords means to be unaffected by the supposed hypnotic power of the word or, more loosely, of other fighting words. The phrase "I have seen the fnords" was famously graffitied on a railway bridge (known locally as Anarchy Bridge) between Earlsdon and Coventry (U.K.) city centre throughout the 1980s and 1990s, until the bridge was upgraded. The bridge and the phrase were mentioned in the novel A Touch of Love by Jonathan Coe. Fnord was also graffitied all over the state of Maine and New England.[1]

In the John Carpenter movie They Live, the main character discovers a similar conspiracy when hidden conformity messages appearing on billboards, magazines, television, and currency are revealed to those wearing special sunglasses.

[edit] Discordianism

"Fnord" is a popular word with followers of Discordianism. It is often used in Usenet and other computer circles to indicate a random or surreal sentence; coercive subtext, or anything jarringly out of context (intentionally or not), can be labelled "fnord".

Other subcultures

The term is also commonly used by hackers and programmers as a metasyntactic variable. It appears in the SubGenius Recruitment film Arise! and has been in use in the SubGenius newsgroup alt.slack.

A well-known fnord also occurs within the text of part of the High Energy Weapons Archive website [2]

Popular culture

In the online parody role playing game the Kingdom of Loathing, when one acquires 23 of one item at a time, the word FNORD appears in white text after the game message. As the browser background is also white, it is invisible unless highlighted, adding to the joke of the "conspiracy".

GURPS material also uses the term, usually coupled with "You're not cleared for that!" E.g., [link to www.sjgames.com] on their website.

In the Steve Jackson game Illuminati, a card for the Fnord Motor company (a reference to Ford Motors) is included. Also, in the game's first expansion set, a chip with the words "Fnord" written on it was included with instructions to "Hide this chip someplace your friends will never find it".


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From _The_Golden_Apple_ by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson
[as extracted from pp.438f of _The_Illuminatus!_Trilogy_ compilation]

``Very nice,'' I said. ``But why did you bring me up here?''
``It's time for you to see the fnords,'' he replied. Then I woke up in bed
and it was the next morning. I made breakfast in a pretty nasty mood, wondering
if I'd seen the fnords, whatever the fell they were, in the hours he had
blacked out, or if I would see them as soon as I went out into the street. I
has some pretty gruesome ideas about them, I must admit. Creatures with three
eyes and tentacles, survivors from Atlantis, who walked among us, invisible due
to some form of mind shield, and did hideous work for the Illuminati. It was
unnerving to contemplate, and I finally gave in to my fears and peeked out the
window, thinking it might be better to see them from a distance first.
Nothing. Just ordinary sleepy people, heading for their busses and subways.
That calmed me a little, so I set out the toast and coffee and fetched the
_New_York_Times_ from the hallway. I turned the radio to WBAI and caught some
good Vivaldi, sat down, grabbed a piece of toast and started skimming the first
page.
Then I saw the fnords.
The feature story involved another of the endless squabbles between Russia ad
the U.S. in the UN General Assembly, and after each direct quote from the
Russian delegate I read a quite distinct ``Fnord!'' The second lead was about a
debate in congress on getting the troops out of costa Rica; every argument
presented by Senator Bacon was followed by another ``Fnord!'' At the bottom of
the page was a _Times_ depth-type study of the growing pollution problem and
the increasing use of gas masks among New Yorkers; the most distressing
chemical facts were interpolated with more ``Fnords.''
Suddenly I saw Hagbard's eyes burning into me and heard his voice: ``Your
heart will remain calm. Your adrenalin gland will remain calm. Calm, all-over
calm. You will not panic. you will look at the fnord and see the it. You will
not evade it or black it out. you will stay calm and face it.'' And further
back, way back: my first-grade teacher writing FNORD on the blackboard, while a
wheel with a spiral design turned and turned on his desk, turned and turned,
and his voice droned on, IF YOU DON'T SEE THE FNORD IT CAN'T EAT YOU, DON'T SEE
THE FNORD, DON'T SEE THE FNORD . . .
I looked back at the paper and still saw the fnords.
This was one step beyond Pavlov, I realized. The first conditioned reflex
was to experience the panic reaction (the activation syndrome, it's technically
called) whenever encountering the word ``fnord.'' The second conditioned reflex
was to black out what happened, including the word itself, and just to feel a
general low-grade emergency without knowing why. And the third step, of course,
was to attribute this anxiety to the news stories, which were bad enough in
themselves anyway.
Of course, the essence of control is fear. The fnords produced a whole
population walking around in chronic low-grade emergency, tormented by ulcers,
dizzy spells, nightmares, heart palpitations and all the other symptoms of too
much adrenalin. All my left-wing arrogance and contempt for my countrymen
melted, and I felt a genuine pity. No wonder the poor bastards believe anything
they're told, walk through pollution and overcrowding without complaining,
watch their son hauled off to endless wars and butchered, never protest, never
fight back, never show much happiness or eroticism or curiosity or normal human
emotion, live with perpetual tunnel vision, walk past a slum without seeing
either the human misery it contains or the potential threat it poses to their
security . . . Then I got a hunch, and turned quickly to the advertisements. it
was as I expected: no fnords. That was part of the gimmick, too: only in
consumption, endless consumption, could they escape the amorphous threat of the
invisible fnords.
I kept thinking about it on my way to the office. If I pointed out a fnord to
somebody who hadn't been deconditioned, as Hagbard deconditioned me, what would
he or she say? They'd probably read the word before or after it. ``No _this_
word,'' I'd say. And they would again read an adjacent word. But would their
panic level rise as the threat came closer to consciousness? I preferred not to
try the experiment; it might have ended with a psychotic fugue in the subject.
The conditioning, after all, went back to grade school. No wonder we all hate
those teachers so much: we have a dim, masked memory of what they've done to us
in converting us into good and faithful servants for the Illuminati.


Subliminal messages
Audio

* Backmasking
* Reverse speech
* Spectrogram

Numeric

* Numerology
* Theomatics
* Bible code
* Cryptography

Visual

* Fnord
* Paranoiac-critical method
* Pareidolia
* Psychorama
* Sacred geometry
* Steganography

See also:

* Anagram
* Apophenia
* Easter egg (media)
* Clustering illusion
* Observer-expectancy effect
* Pattern recognition (psychology)
* Paradox
* Palindrome
* Unconscious mind