Negative99

The conspiracy theorists… they’re everywhere.

I can remember when one of the earlier versions of Microsoft Office came out, and it included a new font entitled Wingdings… there was much attention given to the fact that the letters NYC, when converted to the font Wingdings, appeared as a skull & crossbones (symbol for death), a Star of David (symbol for Jews), and a thumbs up (symbol for approval). Thus, Microsoft approves of the killing of Jews, at least according to some with too much time on their hands.

Of course hits was coincidental, but it didn’t stop the theorists. Although Microsoft did do quite a bit to squelch the rumors that this message was put in there intentionally, they definitely didn’t try and defuse the wild imaginations of the conspiracy theorists when they issued their Webdings font with the letters NYC appearing as an eye, a heart, and a city skyline…. I love NY.

Now just recently I got an email from a good Iranian chap who had a blog with the letters Q33NY spelled out in Wingdings, and apparently this depicts a plane flying into tower-imaginable objects with the symbols for killing Jews next to them. Oh yes, this fed MUCH fervor about the Wingdings font prophesying the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center. There were all sorts of theories that Q33 was the designator of one of the planes that struck the towers… or that Q33 was the air bus route… or that Q33NY was the model of the planes that hit. None of these are true.

Anyways, I had never seen this before (incredibly enough) so I had asked this fine Iranian fellow what it meant… and he, in his weak English, said that if I changed Q33NY to Wingdings it would “show me something nice”. *ahem* Needless to say it took a couple more emails for me to learn that he didn’t mean nice in the same way we would think, and that he indeed was sad about the whole event. And as an aside, he also said that the Iranian government totally doesn’t speak for the people… and that the people can’t stand their government and are waiting for it to fall so they can have freedom. Hmm…

Here is the Snopes article on the Wingdings stories.

Here is a website that you can use to test your own name, city, initials, or anything else in Wingdings to see if there’s another conspiracy brewing.