SCP Foundation

Wait, what? How did we get here? Hold on, lemme just—

No fucking way. I can't believe–Er, I can and can't believe it.

Did someone access this file while we weren't looking?

Hello?

Well, this is the best possible outcome, considering.

…Right, we should complete the report and append it to this document for review. Normally we would hand it off to our Semiotics liaison but… yeah.

Where does one even begin with this?

Typically—ah—Well, here's the thing. The Department of Deletions has dealt with infohazards of all kinds, from what we know. Anything, really; cognitive, linguistic, kinetic, ontokinetic, ectoentropic, conceptual, noospheric, hell, even semiospheric hazards, are not out of our purview. If you need something gone that can kill a dead person, you go a step farther and get the agent that never dies. When that doesn't work, you pick up their surviving pieces and build a soldier from those scattered remains.

We've seen that semiohazards are a pain in the ass to manage, even to us; semantic systems affect the gestalt in unique and terrifying ways every now and again, and it puts you in your place. Brings you down a few notches. A few Omega-Zeds kick the bucket and we laugh to ourselves about how this-or-that anomaly killed the unkillable. But what do you do when it erases the untouchable? Where does that which cannot cease go when erased? None can't say for sure, only that it doesn't end the Assignment, and so, they're still out there, somewhere.

Naturally, semiotic hazards of the legalese variety are the easiest for us to deal with, most of the time; we don't really need to abide by rules or laws established by governments or lawyers, for that matter. Still, we don't go out of our way to expose ourselves. If you fuck around, you will eventually find out.

We got stuck with this thing that could only be tamed if no one believed anything about it, we instantly knew it was semiotics. Foolish thing was assuming it was a bureaucratohazard—a failure of communication, most likely; we described it as an "antisemiomic complex that vectors through contradictory systems of belief." Basically, it holds both a birth and death certificate and neither of them are valid until one of them is. When one of them is, both are. Systems break down.

On the surface, it sounds just like another one of those legalese joints. After all, what is law and order but another system of belief?

Well, that's the thing about iconohazards—they run on belief and lack thereof. Not hard rules, no notaries required. Faith and trust, the abstract counterpart. If you believe in them or not believe in them, at all, you are cooked. We reckon most don't really have a choice in what they decide. But you're supposed to never decide. 'Cause once you've seen them, or not seen them, or whatever, and have unconsciously made the choice to believe in them or otherwise, they've already done their thing. Foolishly, we believed that not choosing to believe in the anomaly—that one whose existence or nonexistence cannot be determined—was sufficient. It was not. Still, it's a wonder how we even made it out of this mess….more-or-less intact. Almost said "alive", but we all know that's not necessarily true.

Obviously, this is assuming that, by reading our report and being completely unharmed, you at least see the account as hard to believe, yet detailed enough to not have any reason to doubt it, other than that. We really don't know—By this point you've already made up your mind about them.

They are so effective at what they may-or-may-not do, the Administration has already utilized iconoclastic hazards in some retrocausal slots, and most of us never even noticed. Doubt you did, either. The mild ones turn you away from classified content out of sheer disbelief, which is usually enough for the average use case. The mind throws away more junk data than you might realize, and you forget about it naturally, no amnestic needed.

The more potent ones you don't walk away from. Suffice it to say most beings that come into contact with SCP-7079—were it to exist, which, who knows, Christ—leave with even their most fundamental of belief systems shattered; the belief in reality as inherently meaningful phenomena, the belief in sensory data being connected to reality, belief in the self as representative of being, stuff like that. You might wonder why Semiotics didn't send anyone to help and, well, that's why. They're not quite catatonic, but not really conscious, either. It's like they're all going through their own personal ZKs. It doesn't look comfortable.

Regardless, we're thinking that most rogue iconohazardous anomalies can probably be controlled if you never form any hard opinions on them, or perhaps if you have an equal body of believers and nonbelievers simultaneously—Maybe. Shit, does discussing containment methodologies make them less effective?

None of us know, and couldn't tell you even if we did, which we don't. I think it's best if we just stop here. You get it. Just never decide whether or not to believe in them, because they may or may not exist. And being wrong makes you look stupid, but being right is worse.