Were you driving through western Pennsylvania in the mid-nineteen-nineties, with the radio on? Was the music interrupted by two adolescent male voices jabbering trucker lingo? Or, several years ago, did you come across an online tourism video for the city of Milwaukee? Did it seem a little strange, in that the city shown was very obviously Manhattan, and that the video suggested that the entire Milwaukee area had been contaminated by an industrial accident? Or, sometime during the past few years, did you notice an account on Twitter called Horse_ebooks that spewed peculiar, mantralike messages such as “You’re not alone in your passion for tomatoes!” and “Demand Furniture”? Around the same time, did you happen upon a YouTube channel called Pronunciation Book, which consisted of videos of words in black lettering on a white background, and a calm male voice pronouncing each word three times, with great deliberation?

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