Skeptophilia (skep-to-fil-i-a) (n.) - the love of logical thought, skepticism, and thinking critically. Being an exploration of the applications of skeptical thinking to the world at large, with periodic excursions into linguistics, music, politics, cryptozoology, and why people keep seeing the face of Jesus on grilled cheese sandwiches.

Tuesday, October 15, 2024

Top secret message

There's a strange tendency in some humans to want to stir things up -- if life is boring or mundane, to create a flurry of interest for no reason but to sit back and watch it happen.

This was part of the plot of the lovely Norwegian film Elling (which, if you haven't seen it, you must put it on your list).  The titular character is a chronically anxious, reclusive man who is released from a mental institution and, while trying to find his way in the outside world, decides to become the Rebel Poet.  He writes short inspirational poems and then hides them in all sorts of unlikely places, including food boxes in grocery stores.  After a short time, his new vocation succeeds beyond his wildest dreams -- and he hears on the national news that the entire country is trying to figure out who the Rebel Poet is, and people are searching everywhere to be the finder of one of his poems.

Closer to home -- well, my home, at least -- we have the (real) mystery of the Toynbee tiles, which in the 1980s appeared in two dozen cities in the United States and four in South America.  They were tiles made of linoleum, sealed to road and sidewalk surfaces with asphalt-filling compound, with bizarre messages:

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Erifnam at English Wikipedia., Toynbee tile at franklin square 2002, CC BY-SA 3.0]

What the messages mean isn't clear; who Toynbee is, for example, isn't certain.  There's speculation it refers to British historian Arnold J. Toynbee, or that it has something to do with Ray Bradbury's short story "The Toynbee Conveyor," but there's no particularly good logical reason for either one.

Well, we have a modern example of the Toynbee tiles phenomenon happening right now.  They're called the "Schuylkill notes" -- Schuylkill County, in northeastern Pennsylvania, seems to be the epicenter, although they've also been found in Tennessee, Missouri, Kansas, and North Carolina.  They're small, typed notes, often prominently featuring the word "LIES," and touching on New World Order conspiracy theories and governmental coverups.  There are lots of names mentioned, including Obama, Trump, and Biden (may as well include all three, I guess), the Pope, the Dalai Lama, Elon Musk, and Vladimir Putin, and a whole host of corporations -- Bayer, Astra Zeneca, Fox News, Pillsbury, Domino's, Nescafe, Toyota, and Aquafina, to mention a few.

The Lord of the Rings also makes an appearance in some of them.


The weirdest thing about the Schuylkill notes is where they've appeared.  They've been found not only in easy places like pinned to trees in state parks, but -- like the much more positive and inspiring notes that Elling planted -- in sealed boxes of foods and medications in department stores and grocery stores.  This might suggest that the person who planted the notes worked in the factory, except for the fact that they've been found in everything from boxes of MilkDuds to packages of Tylenol.  

The difficulty with these kinds of things is that once people see the notoriety something is getting -- Schuylkill notes now have their own subreddit (linked above) and their own Wikipedia page -- they want to cash in on the attention.  This invites copycatters, and the whole thing spreads.  I suspect that the first Schuylkill notes were planted by some conspiracy theorist nutter in Schuylkill County, but that a good many of the others from farther afield are imitations.

In any case, thus far, the origin of the Schuylkill notes is -- like that of the Toynbee tiles from forty years ago -- a mystery.  But a mystery is just an invitation for the other loonies to get involved with their own spin on what it all means, like the following comment I saw on Reddit:

I believe the elongated skulls found in Italy, Peru, etc he mention are about Denisovans.  A group like the Neanderthals.  They had elongated skulls and there are people who believe them to be signs of alien life in ancient times or mystical creatures that can move Earth with their minds and other "superpowers".  There's also a specific elongated skill [sic] found in China called the Dragon Man and a few more popped up and they think that it could be a "dragon man lineage" that could be another link in our evolution.  If I understand right, I believe he is saying that the elongated skulls are actually another race of intelligent life forms called the Dragon King's [sic].  They worship the Roman God Saturn.  They rule the Illuminati and the Illuminati orchestrates dividing, controversial events to control the population.  I guess in the goal to please the Dragon King's [sic]and in turn please Saturn?

Sure!  Right!  I mean, my only question is, "What?"

Somehow, I don't think prehistoric Asians would be likely to worship the Roman god of the underworld, nor would they have anything to do with Peru.  But maybe I just don't have the superpowers to understand.

In any case, I'm guessing that like the Toynbee tiles, the Schuylkill notes will die down once the perpetrator gets bored and moves on to other hobbies, like picking at the straps of his straitjacket with his teeth.  At that point it will just be another subject for an episode of Unsolved Mysteries, and the rest of us can go back to our boring, mundane existences, untroubled by finding out about conspiracies between the Dalai Lama and Domino's Pizza from a note in a box of PopTarts.

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