[HN Gopher] SCP-055 is an "antimeme" - it erases itself from mem...
___________________________________________________________________
SCP-055 is an "antimeme" - it erases itself from memory when
observed
Author : rcpt
Score : 78 points
Date : 2025-07-13 09:02 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (scp-wiki.wikidot.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (scp-wiki.wikidot.com)
| tuatoru wrote:
| > All of these facts are periodically rediscovered, usually by
| chance readers of this file, causing a great deal of alarm. This
| state of concern lasts minutes at most, before the matter is
| simply forgotten about.
|
| So, not much different to most activist causes, then.
| nicbou wrote:
| The book "There is no antimemetics division" is about the team
| fighting an SCP antimeme. It's a really fun read and a bit of a
| mindf*. I strongly recommend it.
| Aaargh20318 wrote:
| Unfortunately it's no longer for sale. IIRC the writer has
| gotten a book deal for it, and the existing self-published
| version was removed from sale while the new version is being
| edited. According to Amazon the new revision is up for pre-
| order and will be available on November 11th.
| idbehold wrote:
| You can still read it for free according to the author:
| https://qntm.org/scp
| Aaargh20318 wrote:
| I'll wait for the re-release regardless. No need to jump
| through any hoops to get it on my Kindle plus the author
| gets paid for their work. Plus, I imagine it'll benefit
| from the work of an editor.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| You may want to read both, they are going to be pretty
| different. For starters, AIUI the new published version
| is not going to be an SCP story, probably because of
| rights issues. I assume it will be "SCP with the serial
| numbers filed off", but we won't know for sure until it
| comes out. I'd read the existing one and then decide if
| you like it enough that you want to preorder the new one.
| bee_rider wrote:
| "SCP is the the serial numbers filed off" is sort of a
| funny concept. Conventionally each SCP story is
| considered to exist within its own canon and the author
| is able to pick-and-choose which other stories "exist"
| from its point of view, right? So there are n SCP
| continuities, and after the book is published there will
| be n+1, but that +1 is special for copyright reasons,
| haha.
| deadbabe wrote:
| No you cannot. There is no such book.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| The author's page links to the original SCP Wiki page,
| where you can read it in parts, as it was being created.
| It's not a straight book download, but you can think of
| each red link as a chapter.
|
| Beware: SCP is as enthralling as TV Tropes.
|
| https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/antimemetics-division-hub
| deadbabe wrote:
| 404 not found
| Filligree wrote:
| The book exists. You just can't remember it.
| bmacho wrote:
| SCP is CC-SA-BY anyway, so you can download it from
| torrent, modify it, resell it, if you want to[0]. It's
| basically GPL, so you can do that with anything that has
| any relation to an SCP (derivative of a derivative of a
| derivative)
|
| [0] : https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/licensing-guide
| pyrale wrote:
| My favorite one from qntm is probably Miguel Acevedo [1].
| It is pretty spot on wrt. several topics related to the
| current AI boom ; for instance the licensing topic.
|
| [1]: https://qntm.org/mmacevedo
| senkora wrote:
| MMAcevedo, the TV series Pantheon, and the play The
| Summerland Project are all excellent treatments of the
| topic.
|
| If you enjoyed any one of those three, then I recommend
| the others.
| haiku2077 wrote:
| The original version is still within the SCP website.
| jasonephraim wrote:
| This sounds like an action by the antimemetics division IRL
| tetris11 wrote:
| Eh it starts off good, but then it delves too much into the
| love story between some scientist and her partner and then goes
| on a wild tangent related to forgotten members still existing
| as ghosts in the system.
|
| It makes the same mistake Steven King did when writing the Dark
| Tower; it over-explains the mystery and intrigue that made the
| initial story (The Gunslinger) so compelling, and leans too
| much on its characters to carry the story.
|
| I say the same thing about the SCP antimeme, as I say to Dark
| Tower readers: Read the first story, skip the rest or treat
| them as unrelated fanfics.
| iyn wrote:
| I'd say (agree?) that the 2nd half (roughly) of the book is
| much worse but IMO still worth reading the whole thing. The
| concept is really novel (at least it was for me) and so
| engaging with it can still be fun.
| garaetjjte wrote:
| It feels like overly forced sequel. "Your Last First Day"
| have definite ending, but then "Five Five Five Five Five"
| brings ghosts in order to have story with happy-end.
| haiku2077 wrote:
| The new version is removing the SCP universe integration, so
| I assume the subplot with the ghosts (a crossover with
| another SCP story during serialization) will be changed.
| tetris11 wrote:
| The SCP universe is what made the antimemetics so unique
| though - that you had an entire forgotten department, doing
| heavy lifting Slow Horses style, keeping the whole
| operation running.
|
| It's important because SCP is important, i.e. it borrows
| its greatness from the success of the normal day-to-day SCP
| operations.
|
| Without it, it's just a story about amnesia at a government
| facility, and those kind of books are a dime a dozen.
| joombaga wrote:
| I would think it would just be some other 3 letter org,
| like the FBC in the game Control.
| astrange wrote:
| I thought the ghosts were the strongest part because it
| showed the story had the confidence to continue introducing
| new crazier ideas, and that one was particularly crazy but
| still fit into the SCP world. Sort of like why people liked
| Three Body Problem.
|
| The weakest parts are when it focuses too much on the
| antagonist, where it tends to forget the actual definition of
| 3125 and just makes it something/someone that causes the
| world to end in random wacky crazy ways.
|
| When it gets post-apocalyptic the writing also tends to
| forget how travel times and geography work. (Pretty common
| problem with old SF, where you'd go to a "planet" and there
| are like, 3 people who live on the planet. In this case the
| remaining living protagonist somehow manages to walk between
| very far places on his own without needing food and such.)
| pantalaimon wrote:
| I disagree, this whole new plane of existence (basically
| heaven) was introduced out of nothing, without anything
| previously in the book hinting that something like that
| exists in this universe.
|
| Tbh it felt like the author had written himself into a
| corner and made this up ad-hoc as a way to keep the story
| going.
| rcxdude wrote:
| It felt like a tie-in to some other thread in SCP canon,
| TBH. It's a pretty chaotic mix of ideas and stories, so
| it's something that fits but might have well been written
| by someone else in some other part of the wiki (chasing
| all of these is a time sink and a half, almost as bad as
| tvtropes)
| astrange wrote:
| That's fine for SCP - part of the idea is that there's
| always something else out there and the Foundation is
| always more prepared than you thought.
|
| I thought it fit their ethos, eg these two older ones are
| similar.
|
| https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-963
|
| https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-2000
| Sharlin wrote:
| For those who didn't notice or didn't scroll far enough,
| there's a link at the bottom of SCP-55 that leads to several
| pages worth of extra fiction by qntm, constituting a prelude or
| introduction of sorts to "There is no antimemetics division".
| dunefox wrote:
| It drops off quite quickly after the first half. I almost
| didn't finish it.
| gitpusher wrote:
| That's because the book itself is an anti-meme
| lr4444lr wrote:
| Agreed. It got lost in plot holes and its own abstractions
| after a certain point, but I did overall enjoy it
| conceptually.
| pantalaimon wrote:
| IMHO it reads a bit too much like a Rick & Morty episode, the
| characters lack depth and it keeps pushing ever extremer events
| without taking the time to establish a baseline of normalcy.
|
| The 'anti-memetic antagonist' idea is interesting, but that
| seems to be the only idea that's in there - the constant
| amnesia get's old quick and it tears reality apart way too
| quickly to still care.
| alt187 wrote:
| A really solid concept and a strong start, that leaves you
| wondering "How can you defeat an antagonist that kills you when
| you learn about it?".
|
| Sadly, the answer is that you can't.
|
| Qntm's other works are criminally underrated.
| Cheyana wrote:
| Reminds me of this...
| https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Somebody_Else%27s_Proble...
| dylan604 wrote:
| An SEP is one of my favorite takeaways from the series. It's
| one of those that's not as well known like the babel fish or a
| towel, but as a teen it just really stuck with me when I first
| read it.
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| same! i think about SEP fields more than almost anything else
| from the trilogy. of all the clever human observations Adams
| made, i think that one might be one of the most damning,
| relevant and enduring.
| xg15 wrote:
| This reminds me of the strange way that memories of dreams
| behave:
|
| Sometimes you still remember bits from a dream right after you've
| woken up - but this memory somehow vanishes rapidly and is gone a
| few minutes later. This despite you already being awake at that
| time and consciously _having a memory of having had that memory_.
| Only the memory itself is gone.
|
| (Unless one had training and could capture the memory, e.g. in a
| dream journal)
|
| Makes me wonder if this hints at some interesting neurological
| processes: It seems there is either some process in the brain
| that actively erases dream memories, or that dream memories are
| somehow stored differently in the brain than regular memories and
| only appear as the same thing to the consciousness. (Sort of like
| some part of the directory tree being mounted on a different file
| system)
| wpm wrote:
| I experience that but then I also experience the somewhat
| opposite effect, where randomly, spurred on by almost nothing
| at all, a memory of a dream that I knew that I had but had
| forgotten about, bubbles up out of nowhere. It's like some
| pathway to that other filesystem exists, but only gets
| activated due to some random glitch that is then fixed
| immediately, as I still won't be able to recall the dreams
| later on, like something is forcing it to get cleared from my
| normal long-term memory. Not that I can't remember dreams, I
| can if they are vivid enough, journals help too, but _most_ of
| them get locked away in the "you'll watch the memory of this
| dream evaporate before your very eyes in the morning, and then
| years later while you're washing dishes you'll remember it
| vividly" box.
| praptak wrote:
| I remember having woken up from a dream where I recognised
| that a) I'm dreaming and b) It's the same dream I had years
| ago (a sequel maybe). I can't keep dreaming while being aware
| that I'm dreaming (supposedly you can train this skill but I
| haven't) so I woke up.
|
| Obviously I don't remember what the actual dream was, just
| that I suddenly realised it's a dream from the distant past.
| Sharlin wrote:
| It's difficult to know whether these memories are real,
| though. I sometimes have deja vu-like sensations of having
| experienced something before, _but_ in a dream rather than in
| a real life (probably something similar happens to people who
| think they 've had a precognitive dream). The feeling quickly
| subsides like in a regular deja vu.
| josh-sematic wrote:
| Deleted from your file system but the bits weren't zeroed on
| disk. Occasionally your brain reads a random sector.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Most of the time you have these dreams and are not woken up, so
| you never remember they exist at all...
|
| Occasionally my brain likes screwing with me and in the dream
| it goes "You're remembering this dream, you're about to be
| woken up" and then a loud noise or something external will
| happen an wake me up and leave me with a great sense of unease.
|
| Now, I don't believe my mind can actually predict the future. I
| can only assume my brain is doing this crap quite often and
| just happens to get it right every once in a while. Still a
| creepy feeling.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I've heard the theory somewhere that all dreams are more-or-
| less invented by the brain at the moment you wake up. So,
| your brain could just invent a narrative that ends with the
| loud thud that wakes you up.
|
| Not sure if this is actually the truth, or just some random
| speculation, so heap of salt and all that. Also, I have no
| idea how to test it.
|
| Sometimes I my significant other sleep-talks, and sometimes
| it is clear enough that I'll answer (misunderstanding it to
| be regular talk). It is quite rare (although not unheard of)
| for them to remember what lead to a sleep conversation, which
| leads me to believe that whatever their brain is doing at
| night, it doesn't have much to do with the dreams they
| remember. But that's pretty dang anecdotal!
|
| Edit: the sleep-talks they do remember could just explained
| by waking up in the middle of the night to find the memory of
| the sleep-talk in their short term memory, and then the brain
| retroactively spins up a dream to fit it, of course.
| Sesse__ wrote:
| > It seems there is either some process in the brain that
| actively erases dream memories, or that dream memories are
| somehow stored differently in the brain than regular memories
| and only appear as the same thing to the consciousness.
|
| There's a fairly simple model that is consistent with this:
| Nothing is committed to long-term memory while you are
| dreaming, so when you wake up from a dream, everything is in
| short-term memory only. Unless you make an active effort to
| commit it (which you're used to happening automatically), like
| writing it down or otherwise thinking hard about it, it will
| simply vanish once you use your short-term memory for something
| else, like moving around.
| munificent wrote:
| I had a similar but more intense experience. Last week, I had a
| minor medical procedure and they used twilight sedation with
| Versed (Midazolam). It causes anterograde amnesia.
|
| With previous anaesthesia experiences I've had, it's like a
| slice of time is cut out. I'm going into the procedure room and
| the next thing I know I'm in recovery.
|
| This time was different. When they wheeled me out to my wife, I
| was completely lucid (confirmed by her). I told my wife I
| remembered essentially the whole procedure. I can remember
| telling her this. But later, throughout the rest of the day,
| the memories faded out a piece at a time.
|
| Now, though I just _barely_ remember telling my wife that I
| remembered the procedure, I don 't remember the procedure at
| all. In fact, I can't even remember _where I was_ when I was
| talking to my wife. I don 't remember the recovery room or even
| leaving the hospital _at all._ I have a very faint memory of
| being in the car. Even my memories of the rest of the afternoon
| are vague.
|
| It is _so_ weird. It 's like the tape slowly degraded over
| time. I wonder if this is what dementia feels like.
| pndy wrote:
| Sounds like something influenced by Doctor Who's the Silence
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| I believe antimimetic SCPs predate that episode, but I could be
| wrong.
| zamadatix wrote:
| Seems so, this article started pretty strong in 2008, The
| Silence didn't appear until 2011 (2010 by reference alone).
| giingyui wrote:
| SCP was not interesting when this was first posted two days ago
| and it still is not interesting today.
| zettabomb wrote:
| Feel free to ignore it, it's interesting to other people than
| yourself.
| giingyui wrote:
| It is not, which is why it had to be manually reposted with
| faked timestamps.
| zettabomb wrote:
| You don't get to decide if other people think it's
| interesting. As it stands I see 56 people found it
| interesting enough for an upvote.
| tom_ wrote:
| The timestamp changes are apparently an artefact of the
| bumping mechanism:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41197775
| awaymazdacx5 wrote:
| memetics were dawkins pre-biologic introductions from the selfish
| gene
| JesseTG wrote:
| The link is a 404...
| xg15 wrote:
| ...and HN has forgotten that this thread was already posted a
| week ago, due to the second-chance logic. That's fitting,
| somehow.
| nhinck2 wrote:
| Wouldn't an antimeme be something that was non-communicable?
|
| It'd be the idea of something being perfectly memorable but when
| you attempt to describe it or begin in anyway to record or
| communicate about it your mind just goes blank, only for the
| memory to re-emerge some time later like a shower nightmare.
| Forever in your head but unable to pass onto anyone else.
| TheAceOfHearts wrote:
| The closest thing I've seen to an antimeme in real life is the
| explanation of a monad. Many people seem to lose the ability to
| explain what it is as soon as they understand it. Maybe tensors
| are a close second.
| pantalaimon wrote:
| FloatHeadPhysics has a pretty good explanation as to what
| tensors are
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2FP-T6S1x0
| ashleyn wrote:
| The best I can do for monads is "it's like Option and Result
| in rust"
| southernplaces7 wrote:
| But if you're able to tell me that a thing called a monad
| exists, then it's nothing like a pure antimeme, which to my
| mind would be self-removing from all perception in all normal
| contexts.
| astrange wrote:
| The word for this is "esoteric". An "esoteric ritual" is one
| that's easily kept secret because it's hard to learn even if
| you try to explain it.
|
| Like, you can't learn to drive a car or play a violin by
| reading a book about it.
| jjmarr wrote:
| An antimeme is something you forget. You can communicate about
| it fine.
|
| There are SCPs that affect communication:
|
| https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/taboo
| southernplaces7 wrote:
| Yes but if it were to be a pure antimeme, wouldn't being able
| to communicate about it be irrelevant, since it would remove
| itself from both your memory and that of whoever described it
| to you, as if nobody had ever described anything? I at least
| see it this way, and believe that if we were ever confronted
| with such a thing in the real world, all references to it
| would be imperceptible in any normal non-momentary context.
| jjmarr wrote:
| That is correct. I'm pointing it out because the "non-
| communicability" aspect is a whole genre called
| "infohazards", which is any SCP triggered by or involving
| communication. It's a very popular tag.
|
| You might contrast with SCP-2521 that attacks those that
| use written or spoken language to refer to it, so the
| documentation page is one giant infographic without
| text.[1]
|
| [1] https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-2521
| rcxdude wrote:
| The basic idea of an antimeme is an idea that doesn't want to
| be spread or perpetuated. A secret is an example of an
| antimeme that actually exists, so I would say communication
| of the idea would also in principle be resisted. But creepy,
| wild sci-fi needs to go with 'what if that, but even more
| so?'. (though, I would also say a pure antimeme would be
| completely self-extinguishing. Actually the way these sci-fi
| antimemes work is closer to how e.g. real-life secret
| societies operate(d). There's a secret, and it is perpetuated
| within the group, but it's carefully guarded from widespread
| knowledge. The sci-fi idea is that the knowledge itself
| basically does this, somehow, to any entity not in the in-
| group, where the in-group is frequently non-human, maybe non-
| organic/non-sentient)
| kevingadd wrote:
| Some more assorted interesting stuff by one of the authors of
| SCP-055:
|
| https://qntm.org/mmacevedo
|
| https://qntm.org/structure
|
| https://qntm.org/hatetris
|
| qntm is a fantastic writer & programmer I had the pleasure of
| working with on a project in the past. If you're looking for
| stuff to read that gets your neurons firing, there's a lot to
| find on their website.
| mattigames wrote:
| Slightly related: Given the lack of resources to prevent art from
| being absorbed by LLMs I suspect we will soon see art galleries
| where you cannot take photos or record anything, art strictly
| made to be viewed by humans only.
| sneak wrote:
| Art that can't be disseminated over the internet for
| consumption and discussion will be destined for obscurity.
| haiku2077 wrote:
| This already exists: https://youtu.be/6oqO3FXSecM
| zuminator wrote:
| For those like me who aren't familiar with this topic, SCP stands
| for Special Containment Procedures. The SCP Foundation is an
| online fictional shared universe hosted on https://scp-
| wiki.wikidot.com with various works of genre fiction in the urban
| paranormal/sf area, accompanied by various fake documents and
| bureaucratic procedures involving weird anomalies, artifacts, and
| creatures. SCP-055 is one such anomaly. More info on wikipedia:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCP_Foundation
| ppqqrr wrote:
| small correction, SCP stands for "Secure, Contain, Protect":
| the foundation's 3 priorities (in that order) for anomalous
| objects and locations.
| Sharlin wrote:
| Both are correct. The former is what the containment
| instructions are called, the latter is what the foundation's
| name stands for (perhaps derived backronymically?)
| Dilettante_ wrote:
| Vaguely related concept, and my personal all-time favourite:
| "SCP-____-J" https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-j
| gitpusher wrote:
| This is the 452nd time this has been posted on HackerNews. If you
| look for the older posts, you won't find them - and their authors
| have been erased from this dimension.
| waffletower wrote:
| While the acronym 'SCP' is in the spirit of the imagined
| organization and its tools of obfuscation, its presence dilutes
| and homogenizes the prose significantly, much like small beer.
| The mantra "secure. contain. protect." is much more effective
| when revealed and repeated instead.
| Salgat wrote:
| I'm curious how distantly related the information has to be
| before it is eligible for this effect. For example, if someone
| sees a WARNING sign on the container (with no specific
| information about the SCP on the warning itself), do people
| remember that warning sign?
| x______________ wrote:
| I'm sorry but maybe it's me just waking up after a rough day, but
| what unworldly rabbit hole did I just read and might continue to
| read? (serious question)
|
| ...a story about Epstein's prison cell? (/s again sorry)
|
| I'm going to wake up now, thanks in advance folks!
| ayaros wrote:
| Qntm is a great author and deserves the support of everyone here.
| The antimemetics division series is the primary reason I kept
| following the SCP wiki for years after it had long since peaked
| my interest (because I was waiting for him to finish 55555, which
| took forever). Fine Structure is also wonderful, as was Ed.
| antifa wrote:
| I forgot what SCP-055 was, but I do remember it was the one that
| really hooked me into the SCP world.
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(page generated 2025-07-15 23:01 UTC)