Editing Fnord

{{Short description|Neologism coined in 1965}}
"'''Fnord'''" ({{IPAc-en|f|n|ɔr|d}}) is a word coined in 1965 by [[Kerry Thornley]] and [[Gregory Hill (writer)|Greg Hill]] in the [[Discordianism|Discordian]] religious text ''[[Principia Discordia]]''.  It entered into [[popular culture]] after appearing in ''[[The Illuminatus! Trilogy]]'' (1975) of novels written by [[Robert Shea]] and [[Robert Anton Wilson]]. Here, the interjection "fnord" is given [[hypnotism|hypnotic]] power over the unenlightened, and children in [[grade school]] are taught to be unable to see the word consciously. For the rest of their lives, every appearance of the word subconsciously generates a feeling of unease and confusion which prevents rational consideration of the text in which it appears.

==Other uses== 
The word has been used in [[newsgroup]] and [[hacker culture]] to indicate irony, humor, or [[Surrealism]].<ref name=Ray>Raymond, Eric S. (1996) [https://books.google.com/books?id=g80P_4v4QbIC&pg=PA196 ''The New Hacker's Dictionary.''] MIT Press, p. 196. {{ISBN|9780262680929}}</ref> Placement at the end of a statement in brackets (''fnord'') explicitly tags the intent, and may be so applied to any random or surreal sentence, coercive subtext, or anything jarringly out of context, intentional or not. It is sometimes used as a [[metasyntactic variable]] in programming.<ref name=Bautts>Bautts, T., Dawson, T. & Purdy G. (2005) [https://books.google.com/books?id=T8V02u2jDP0C&pg=PT86 ''Linux Network Administrator's Guide''.] [[O'Reilly Media|O'Reilly]], p. 64. {{ISBN|9780596005481}}</ref> Fnord appears in the [[Church of the SubGenius]] recruitment film ''Arise!'' and has been used in the SubGenius newsgroup [[alt.slack]].{{citation needed|date=April 2014}}

==Origins==
The word was coined as a nonsensical term with religious undertones in the [[Discordian]] parody of [[religious text]]s ''Principia Discordia'' (1965), by Kerry Thornley and Greg Hill, but was popularized by ''[[The Illuminatus! Trilogy]]'' (1975) of [[Satire|satirical]] [[conspiracy fiction]] novels, by [[Robert Shea]] and [[Robert Anton Wilson]].<ref name="illuminatus_website">[https://web.archive.org/web/19970703082257/http://www.rawilson.com/illuminatus.html#fnord FNORD] (archived from [http://www.rawilson.com/illuminatus.html#fnord the original] on July 3, 1997), excerpt from [[The Illuminatus! Trilogy]] by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea. 'Suddenly I saw Hagbard's eyes burning into me and heard his voice: "Your heart will remain calm. Your adrenaline gland will remain calm. Calm, all-over calm. You will not panic. You will look at the fnord and see 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 ...'</ref>  ''Illuminatus!'' was produced, in the United Kingdom, as a cycle of plays by anarchic theatre director [[Ken Campbell#Theatre director and playwright|Ken Campbell]] and his [[Jungian]] Science Fiction Theatre of Liverpool. The plays further popularized the term.

In the novel trilogy (and the plays), the interjection "fnord" is given [[hypnotism|hypnotic power]] over the unenlightened. Under the [[Illuminati]] program, children 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 unease and confusion, preventing rational consideration of the text it appears in. The uneasiness and confusion create a perpetual low-level state of fear in the populace. The government acts on the premise that a fearful populace keeps them in power.

In the Shea/Wilson construct, fnords—occurrences of the word "fnord"—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 [[consumerism|consumerist]] society. The exclusion of the text from rational consciousness also enables the Illuminati to publish messages to each other in newspapers, etc., without fear that other people will be aware of them. 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 term may also be used to refer to the experience of becoming aware of a phenomenon's ubiquity after first observing it.  The phrase "I have seen the fnords" was graffitied on a British railway bridge throughout the 1980s and 1990s, until the bridge was upgraded. The bridge, located between Earlsdon and Coventry city centre, is known locally as "Anarchy Bridge".<ref>{{Cite web|title=Anarchy Bridge|url=http://www.earlsdon.org.uk/history/anarchybridge.html|website=Earlsdon Online}}</ref> The bridge and the phrase were mentioned in the novel ''A Touch of Love'' by [[Jonathan Coe]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Coe |first=Jonathan |year=2008 |title=A Touch of Love |publisher=Penguin Books |chapter=Part One: The Meeting of Minds |isbn=978-0-14-191690-3}}</ref>

==Usage==
[[File:Fnord logo.JPG|thumb|right|A parody of the [[Ford Motor Company]] logo]]
The lack of a clear definition of the word, and its popularity among certain groups on the internet, allowed it to be appropriated as a [[Placeholder name|placeholder word]] (a [[metasyntactic variable]]) in computer programming,<ref name=Bautts/><ref name="Deckard2005">{{cite book|author=Jason Deckard |title=Buffer Overflow Attacks: Detect, Exploit, Prevent |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NYyKhOqOCF8C&pg=PA283 |date=29 January 2005 |publisher=Syngress |isbn=978-0-08-048842-4 |page=283}}</ref> particularly by those with ties to [[Discordianism]] or the [[Church of the SubGenius]].<ref name=Ray/> It has also been found useful as the name for a "techno cultural" conference,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.knowafest.com/2014/02/fnord-2014-northern-india-engineering-college-techno-cultural-festival-delhi.html |title=FNORD 2014, Northern India Engineering College, Delhi, Techno Cultural Festival, Delhi, March 5-7 2014 |publisher=Knowafest.com |date=2014-02-13 |access-date=2014-04-26}}</ref> computer programs,<ref name="Raucci1997">{{cite book|author=Richard Raucci |title=A Windows NTTM Guide to the Web: Covering Browsers, Servers, and Related Software |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5f3mlM-JKUAC&pg=PA50 |date=1 January 1997 |publisher=Taylor & Francis |isbn=978-0-387-94792-1 |page=50}}</ref> and as a general placeholder word in computing literature.<ref name="Linnhoff-PopienHegering2000">{{cite book|author1=Claudia Linnhoff-Popien|author-link=Claudia Linnhoff-Popien|author2=Heinz-Gerd Hegering |title=Trends in Distributed Systems: Towards a Universal Service Market: Third International IFIP/GI Working Conference, USM 2000 Munich, Germany, September 12-14, 2000 Proceedings |url=https://archive.org/details/springer_10.1007-10722515 |date=1 September 2000 |publisher=Springer |isbn=978-3-540-41024-9 |page=[https://archive.org/details/springer_10.1007-10722515/page/n71 62]}}</ref>

Fnord! is the name of a (now defunct) freeware NT web server created by Brian Morin in 1995 and transferred to the care of Stephen Kazmierczak in 1997 when Morin was initiated into the summer Internet Server group at Microsoft. In his final transmission, Morin cites concern for potential legal backlash from the established tech giant as the reason for abandoning development of the free Fnord! server solution.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.wpi.edu/~bmorin/fnord/|title=Fnord has moved!|date=July 24, 1997|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/19970724145533/http://www.wpi.edu/~bmorin/fnord/|archive-date=1997-07-24}}</ref> Microsoft released Windows 95 and the accompanying Microsoft Network in the same time frame, which was seen as a play by the tech giant to monopolize the emerging online experience of dial-up users by introducing a toll road style business plan for accessing the world's information.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://archive.org/details/Discovery.Download.The.True.Story.of.the.Internet.1of4|title=Download: The True Story of the Internet: Part 1|date=March 8, 2008|via=Internet Archive}}</ref>

Paulo Goode, a typeface designer from West Cork, Ireland, created a serif font named Fnord in 2016 which contains 23 fonts in five weights.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://paulogoode.com/fnord/|title=Paulo Goode Fonts: Type Foundry & Custom Typeface Design » Fnord|website=paulogoode.com}}</ref> The geometry of the upper case 'O' is drawn on an axis of 23 degrees while the lower case 'o' falls on a 17-degree axis.  The 23 / 17 numerology is reflective of similar numerical themes from [[The Illuminatus! Trilogy]].

==See also==
* [[Apophenia]]
* [[Culture of fear]]
* [[Pareidolia]]
* [[Synchromysticism]]
* [[Synchronicity]]
* [[The Game (mind game)]]
* [[Thought-terminating cliché]]

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==Further reading==
* ''[[The Illuminatus! Trilogy]]'' by [[Robert Shea]] and [[Robert Anton Wilson]], {{ISBN|1-56731-237-3}} (hardback collected edition) and {{ISBN|1-85487-574-4}} (paperback collected edition)

==External links==
{{Wiktionary}}
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20131102203803/http://jubal.westnet.com/hyperdiscordia/fnording_dollar_bills.html "A Short Discourse on the Ancient and Accepted Discordian Practice of Fnording Dollar Bills" Ol' Sam, U:M, PS!, A/B.]
* [http://www.sjgames.com/misc/fnord.html Steve Jackson Games: Fnorder], a program for generating "fnord" sentences

{{Discordianism}}
{{Robert Anton Wilson}}
{{Hidden messages}}

[[Category:Computing terminology]]
[[Category:Satirical conspiracy theories]]
[[Category:Discordianism]]
[[Category:Neologisms]]
[[Category:Placeholder names]]
[[Category:Robert Anton Wilson]]
[[Category:Words originating in fiction]]