Markovian Parallax Denigrate is a series
of hundreds of messages
posted to
Usenet
Usenet () is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it was ...
in 1996.
The messages, which appear to be gibberish, were all posted with the subject line "Markovian parallax denigrate".
The posts are often mentioned in conjunction with other bizarre and/or unsolved internet mysteries, such as
Sad Satan,
Cicada 3301, the
Publius Enigma
The Publius Enigma is an Internet phenomenon and an unsolved problem that began with cryptic messages posted by a user identifying only as "Publius" to the unmoderated Usenet newsgroup alt.music.pink-floyd through the Penet remailer, a now defu ...
, and
Unfavorable Semicircle. In 2012, Kevin Morris of ''
The Daily Dot
''The Daily Dot'' is a digital media company covering the culture of the Internet and the World Wide Web. Founded by Nicholas White in 2011, ''The Daily Dot'' is headquartered in Austin, Texas.
The site, conceived as the Internet's "hometown ...
'' satirically referred to the messages as "the Internet’s oldest and weirdest mystery".
In 2016,
Susan Lindauer
Susan Lindauer (born July 17, 1963) is an American journalist and former U.S. Congressional staffer who was charged with "acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government" and violating U.S. financial sanctions during the run-up to the 20 ...
was mistakenly identified as a possible source of these posts; when contacted, she denied being the author.
The ''Daily Dot'' article covering the event states that an e-mail account belonging to a
University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point student coincidentally named Susan Lindauer was
spoofed to cover the identity of the poster.
Proposed explanations for the texts include an early experimental chat bot or text generator,
an
internet troll
In slang, a troll is a person who posts or makes inflammatory, insincere, digressive, extraneous, or off-topic messages online (such as in social media, a newsgroup, a forum, a chat room, a online video game), or in real life, with the int ...
or prankster posting forum spam,
or a programmer experimenting with
Markov chain
A Markov chain or Markov process is a stochastic model describing a sequence of possible events in which the probability of each event depends only on the state attained in the previous event. Informally, this may be thought of as, "What happe ...
s.
A later article on the subject published by ''
The A.V. Club
''The A.V. Club'' is an American online newspaper and entertainment website featuring reviews, interviews, and other articles that examine films, music, television, books, games, and other elements of pop-culture media. ''The A.V. Club'' was cre ...
'' proposes the event only became a mystery due to later media coverage, having not been widely reported prior to the 2012 ''Daily Dot'' article.
The same article notes that YouTuber Barely Sociable made a video about this topic in 2020, opining that the messages were most likely simple spam with no hidden message.
Example
This seemingly nonsensical
message was posted to the board "alt.religion.christian.boston-church" in 1996:
See also
*
List of famous ciphertexts
*
Numbers station
A numbers station is a shortwave radio station characterized by broadcasts of formatted numbers, which are believed to be addressed to intelligence officers operating in foreign countries. Most identified stations use speech synthesis to vocal ...
*
Webdriver Torso
Webdriver Torso is a YouTube automated performance testing account that became famous in 2014 for speculations about its (then unexplained) nature and jokes featured in some of its videos.
Created by Google on 7 March 2013, the channel began upl ...
*
Unfavorable Semicircle
References
{{reflist
Usenet
Works of unknown authorship
Internet mysteries
1996 works