Wingding Conspiracy Theory

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There are many crazy and wacky conspiracy theories that are contrived every day. Conspiracy theories can be made up by anyone, especially in today’s technology driven society. It all becomes questionable when proof is bought into the matter. Although they are not always true, people will go out of their way to think up silly things that may prove it correct. There are loads of theories that are proven to be false. Carefully dissecting each detail within the theory is the only way to be for sure whether it is true or false. Among all of the interesting conspiracy theories, are the sinister messages found in the Wingdings font. When NYC is typed in the Wingdings font in Microsoft Word, a skull and cross bones, a Star of David, and a thumbs-up hand gesture appear. Many believe this signifies the approval of killing Jewish people from or in New York. There is also a theory that Microsoft planted a hidden message of the September 11, 2001 attack on the twin towers in their Wingdings font. There are claims of this being true, and many of it being false.

The NYC acronym in the Wingdings Microsoft font raises concern and has many people worrying. Microsoft denies there was any intention, or credibility to the anti-Semitic message. They issued a statement which included the following: “the conclusion was that the sequence in the Wingdings character set is coincidental and that there was no malicious intent” (Glasner). With the amount of characters in the Wingdings font, it is almost impossible not to come across some acronyms or words that may appear to have underlying meanings. Microsoft also claims:

“Using the example of the alphabet, what would happen to existing documents and applications if we switched around a handful of letters?...

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...s. It is proven false that Q33NY has anything to do with September 11th, the Twin Tower attacks, the planes involved, or the bus route used for the airport from which the planes were hijacked. It is very easy to take any bit of information and twist it and turn it into a completely different story or piece of information. Once a theory is made public, everyone jumps on the band wagon and does everything they can to make it true, even if it isn’t. If common sense and careful time is taken to actually think about the silliness of this argument, it will be very clear to most people that this is a false conspiracy theory.

Works Cited

Glasner, Joanna. "MS Denies Wingding Thing, Again." Wired.com. 22 Sept. 2001. Web. 05 Dec. 2011. .

"Wingdings." Squidoo : Welcome to Squidoo. Amazon, 2009. Web. 05 Dec. 2011. .

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