So let me tell you a little story.

Way back in the early 1990's, I was subscribed to Sears's Prodigy service, which was a lot like America Online, which was a lot like pay-by-the-month Facebook. *smirk*

And I was on a bulletin board for They Might Be Giants fans. And one day out of the clear blue sky, somebody posted a long breathless rant about how they'd "proven" the song "Spider" ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmQYICF7ExU ) was about WW2.

Their theory was absolutely airtight: "Spider" was the Nazis. The second voice was the Japanese saying they"d "get rid of" their enemies. The voice saying "must stop" was the victims of the Holocaust.

And the TMBG board went WILD. It dominated discussion for days. People were shocked they'd never thought of it before. They filled in the rest of the story to show where Italy and Russia figured in. They found further clues in other songs. One guy, who had innocently picked the handle "SCHPIDER!" apologized all over himself for his insensitivity towards the victims of genocide.

Except, of course that this whole theory was all complete bullshit. I have NEVER seen anyone seriously espouse this theory outside of Prodigy, and the composers are on record as saying: "Spider is the product of an idle afternoon messing with the sampler." It's just a spy-jazz riff with a bit of pulp comics action.

All I'm saying is... false pattern-matching is a real thing that happens. It doesn't mean that every dog whistle or easter egg you find is unreal nor unintended. But you should be real, real careful what patterns you trust, and you should always consider the possibility that the five-pointed star you see is nothing more than five dots. (See page 00053 [84/121 on pdf]: http://www.principiadiscordia.com/downloads/Principia%20Discordia.pdf)

Or that the 666 you see is nothing more than 13 stars. ( https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trademark-of-the-devil/ )

This is a real big deal for me guys. I'm not trying to pick fights with anyone, but I will not shrink from using the word "triggering" here. This kind of apophenia is exactly the tactic that the vile folks at the Trinity Broadcast Network used to convince me of Biblical inerrancy and the Fundamental Evilness Of The Queers And Commies when I was a teenager.

I was real, real lucky to get out, and when I see any signs of similar thinking on my own current side, my first impulse is always to run away screaming in self-defense. It genuinely scares me. And maybe my threshold for it is too low, but... that's what happened to me, that's what I am, and dammit, I am never looking for Numbers Of The Beast nor faces in tortilla shells ever again.

@zebratron2084 wow seriously that’s what happened? I thought it was intended thought out Spider Man references to the extent I thought “I promise not to kill you” was Doctor Doom and “Step on Spider” was Rhino or possibly Hulk.