Fnords

Since the two of you seem to be enjoying the use of the term, allow me to expand upon its meaning beyond your repetitive yet limited uses, Mule Man, who’s allowed it to slip into his writing seemingly without being totally aware of its history and proper usage, and Dupe, who I believe simply pulled it out of his ass.

We will start where I know Mule Man started: the writings of Robert Anton Wilson, specifically, his and Robert Shea’s Illuminatus Trilogy (Dell, 1975). It is here where we receive the infamous line “I see the fnords.” What is literally seen, the author purports, is the word ‘fnord’ placed haphazardly in newspaper and magazine articles through which the article’s author would hope in startling or scaring the reader (RAW and Shea expound greatly upon the physiological symptoms associated with the sighting of the word). ‘Fnord’ acts as a stimuli, whose conditioned response is fear, a response conditioned, as Wilson and Shea state, by elementary school teachers, much as our most basic fears are indeed conditioned at an early age, not necessarily by our elementary school teachers, but often times, yes, by our elementary school teachers.

Simply put, a fnord could best be described, in regards to news media, as stories which instill fear or, at a minimum, anxiety. But the key distinction between RAW’s use of the word and yours, Mule and Dupe, is that RAW has certain articles acting as fear stimuli, that is some articles have fnords, while others may be able to instill fear and anxiety without any fnords, simply by their subject matter (though RAW never states this overtly).

And now we have the Mule Man using ‘fnord’ to represent ANY stimuli that would instill fear.

Allow me to make a distinction:

Use fnord only when the stimuli is administered with the intent of instilling fear.

Who’s intent? The hell should I know.

It’s my job to bitch.

Goodbye.