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The word originated in the Principia Discordia, by Kerry Thornley and Greg Hill as a nonsense word, but was popularized by the Illuminatus trilogy of books by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson. In these novels, it is claimed that the interjection "fnord" possesses hypnotic power over readers. A conspiracy of the world's controlling powers conditions everyone from a young age to be unable to consciously see the word "fnord"; instead, every appearance of the word will unconsciously generate a general feeling of uneasiness and confusion. 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; it is a substitute since the actual word would not be able to be detected by most readers.
Use of the word "fnord" has become a popular catch phrase with followers of Discordianism.
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 graffitoed on a railway bridge (known locally as Anarchy Bridge) between Earlsdon and Coventry city centre throughout the 1980s and 1990sCenturies: 19th century 20th century 21st century Decades: 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s 2020s 2030s 2040s Years: Events and trends Computers, technology Explosive growth of the Internet; decrease in the cost of computers and other techn, until the bridge was upgraded. The bridge and the phrase were mentioned in the novel A Touch of Love by Jonathan CoeJonathan Coe born 1961 in Birmingham, is an English novelist and writer. His work usually has an underlying preoccupation with social issues, although this is often expressed humorously in the form of satire. For example, What a Carve Up reworked the plot.
Fnord is a word used often in UsenetUsenet or Unix User Network is a communications medium in which users read and post textual messages (called "articles") to a number of distributed newsgroups (incorrectly called bulletin boards because of their similarity for the unaware observer). The m and other computer circles to indicate a random or surreal sentence. Anything out of context may be considered or described as Fnord.
Famously these can be generated by the Steve Jackson Games Fnorder which generates a random sentence. As it is an open source program, one can find its wordlists.
Drop the Pink Elephant by Bill McFarlan , BooksEnthsiast.com
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