The Marquee

A Study in Unread Reading
Prepared for the Reader · Department of Useless Provocations · vol. IX, no. 29
Abstract. The present paper examines the rolling text banner (henceforth M.) which appears on every page of this website with the singular and notable exception of the lore archives themselves. The Department has long held that M. is the most carefully ignored element of the site, and arguably the only element doing real work. Methodological note: the reader will observe that, on this page, M. appears not to be present. The reader is reminded that absence and concealment are distinct concepts and should not be confused.

I. Initial Observation

The marquee was added to the site on a Tuesday in late winter of an unspecified year. The relevant commit message reads, in full: "added marquee." No one on the development team recalls writing it. Git logs confirm authorship; the developer in question, when shown the commit, replied: "That's my email, but I don't remember the project, and the project doesn't seem to remember me."

Since installation, M. has scrolled continuously across the upper margin of every customer-facing page of this website, with two exceptions: the lore archive (vol. III), and the present page (vol. IX). Why these two pages, and no others, are exempted has been the subject of a small but tenacious literature, summarized in § III.

II. Reading Velocity Anomalies

Eye-tracking studies conducted on a representative sample (n=247) reveal a peculiarity: visitors to this website report having read the marquee, but cannot, when asked, recite its contents. Asked to guess, they produce text fragments that are nearly what the marquee said, but inflected toward whatever they themselves were thinking about at the time. The marquee, in short, appears to be read; but it is read by each reader differently, and the differences are themselves the message.

FIG. 1
marquee location (where text actually appeared) fixation peak (where the marquee just was) Heatmap of reader fixation on the marquee, averaged across all subjects. The hottest pixels are not located on the marquee itself but immediately to the right of it, where the marquee has already passed and is being remembered.

III. The Lawsuits

Between 2019 and 2024, four civil suits were filed in Dauphin County alleging various harms inflicted by the marquee: two for emotional distress, one for "loss of attentional sovereignty," and one for an offense the plaintiff declined to specify. All four cases were settled out of court for nominal sums, with one exception: the suit by S. M. Heffelfinger of Linglestown, which was dismissed when the plaintiff failed to appear at the hearing. The plaintiff was, by all accounts, present in the courtroom. The court reporter's transcript, however, does not record any party with that name.

IV. What the Marquee Has Said

Archival reconstruction of the marquee's contents over the past several years has been attempted by both academic and amateur observers. The fragments below are reproduced from photographs, screen recordings, and the testimony of those willing to speak.

The Department notes that not all of these messages have been independently corroborated, and that not all of them have ever been on the site. The reader is invited to reconcile these two facts at their leisure.

V. Conclusions

The marquee, we conclude, is the only honest part of the website. It is also the part most carefully designed to be ignored. The absence of the marquee on the present page is therefore either an oversight, a deliberate editorial decision, or a courtesy — depending on whether one believes the website is operated by humans, by some other order of agent, or by an arrangement between the two.

The Department's position on this question remains unchanged: yes.

FIG. 2
Subjects able to recite exact marquee text on demand (n=247) 0% verbatim 100% approximate approximations were not all approximations of the same text Subjects able to recite exact marquee text on demand. The single ring represents the absence of the missing slice.
FIG. 3
Civil suits filed against the marquee, by year (Dauphin Co.) 2019 1 2020 0 2021 1 2022 2 2023 0 (plus Heffelfinger, recorded only by case file) Civil suits filed against the marquee by year. The chart omits the Heffelfinger filing, which appears on the docket but not in the courtroom transcript.
FIG. 4
Photographic captures of the “50% off all candles” message, monthly (2022) JFMAMJJASOND no candles have ever been sold from this website Photographic captures of the “50% off all candles” marquee message across 2022. The site has never sold candles. The chart is included nonetheless.
FIG. 5
Words of marquee text scrolled past vs. words recalled accurately (n=247) words scrolled past words recalled r ≈ 0; the marquee is read but not remembered Scatter plot of cumulative words of marquee text scrolled past against words later recalled accurately. The correlation is approximately zero. The variance is the message.
FIG. 6
Dauphin Co. settlements, by stated reason (cumulative 2019–2024) emotional distress $1.20 attentional sovereignty $0.50 unspecified $2.04 Heffelfinger* $0.00 * dismissed; plaintiff present but not on record Total settlement value, in U.S. dollars, of suits filed against the marquee, by stated reason for filing. The largest settlement is for "unspecified," in keeping with the field’s methodological tradition.
FIG. 7
Control chart: actual marquee text vs. remembered marquee text, by reader actual remembered each remembered datum drifts toward whatever the reader was thinking about at the time Control chart comparing the marquee’s actual text (dashed centre line) against what each reader remembered. The centre line is, in fact, blank; the variance is the only thing depicted.
FIG. 8
Sankey diagram — marquee text in, reader memory out Marquee Memory the diagram is, by any measurable standard, the same diagram as fig. 7; the publisher has insisted on both Sankey diagram showing the flow of marquee text into reader memory. The flows are shown as thin and gradually diminishing; the actual measurement, here as elsewhere, is approximately zero.

References

Heffelfinger, S. M. (2023). Heffelfinger v. The Website, Dauphin County Court of Common Pleas. Case file present. Plaintiff absent. Marquee unindicted.

The Marquee (ongoing). Various.

Anon. development team (n.d.). Commit log entry: "added marquee." Author email valid. Author unreachable.

Eye-tracking subjects 001–247. Personal correspondence. None of them mention this study, but all of them, when shown it, recognize themselves.

Continue the Descent — Department Archive
Vol. III — The Asshole: Origins and Cultural Significance Vol. IV — The Pit: A Brief Survey of Bottomlessness « Vol. VII — The Vibration: Linglestown's Inaudible Inheritance Vol. XII — The Diaper Department: An Anatomy of Infernal Continence Logistics Vol. XIV — Carl: A Twelve-Day Field Survey of a Suspected Lesser Demon «« FULL CATALOGUE — All Volumes Published & Withheld »»
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