“Webdings vs. Wingdings”

There's nothing as satisfying as writing a follow-up to a story that nobody cares about, right? ;-)

Last week I mentioned the incredible goofiness that is "Q33NY" in the Wingdings font from Microsoft. Some knucklehead claimed that it was a prophecy of the terrorist attack, blah blah blah.

About.com has a much longer story on this subject, and mentions that way back in 1992 the New York Post ran an article which actually claimed, "Millions of computers carry secret message that urges death to Jews in New York City!" Why? Because the letters NYC in the Wingdings font show a skull-and-crossbones, Star of David, and a thumbs-up.

Man, and I thought the Q33NY idea was lame.

Microsoft jumped all over it, vehemently denying any anti-semitism. I'm sure they were as surprised as anybody else. However, years later they released webdings. What does NYC look like in webdings?

That made me laugh out loud. The wingdings thing was a coincidence, but there's no way this was.

Unfortunately this did little except convince the conspiracy theorists that Microsoft had been doing this intentionally, all along.