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Judging from the fact that there's been a lot of talk of venture capital being pumped into Stack Overflow lately, something hasn't been sitting well with me at all. Then I got to thinking.

Ever think about Jeff's user ID? It's 1. Seems innocuous, right? Like maybe he was the first user or something? But no, think about it. Jeff could have had any user ID he wanted. He could have had 1337 or 3735928559 or even -4. But those would have been too obvious for most conspiracy theorists. Jeff is a more subtle man than that.

For Jeff is even more devious than two Wilson Fisks. You see, 1 is the atomic number of hydrogen. And what is made of hydrogen? Well, a lot of things. So we need to narrow it down some more.

Fiddling with some more numbers, we come to realize that Jeff's name is "Jeff". But that's short for "Jeffry". That means he's missing two letters off of his name. His ID is 1, and he's missing 2 letters. Deuterium is hydrogen, having an atomic number 1 but an atomic mass of 2.

So what is the main use of deuterium? Nuclear fusion! Fusion is also the name of a chocolate bar. A really, really good chocolate bar. Oh man it's loaded with caramel and those little puffed rice things. Those little puffed rice things are sold in big blue boxes called Rice Krispies.

Unless I'm crazy (which I assure you I am not) Rice Krispies consort with marshmallows to produce the hybrid Rice Krispie squares. Now, how can marshmallows, which are round, be combined with Rice Krispies, which are cigar-shaped (not unlike UFOs), to form squares. Obviously it's the law of sines, which allows mathemagicians to create squares from circles and triangles.

Cosine and sine are abbreviated to cos and sin in mathemagical expressions. Clearly, then, it is a sin to create Rice Krispie squares. But more importantly, Wilson Fisk, the roundest man alive, is a sinner: The rounder the man, the more of a sinner he is.

Knowing this, we must conclude that Jeff is trying to use enormous amounts of deuterium to power a marshmallow-based graviton emitter to make himself look less round through gravitational lensing. By looking less round, people will mistakenly believe that he is not a sinner and therefore trustworthy. People will not stop and think that he is covering something up.

So what is he trying so desperately hard to cover up? The very fact that he is trying to cover something up. His devious self-referencing loop of lies has finally been exposed! No more will my fellows be confused by this convoluted web of mystery. I have prepared a graphical representation of this coding horror as my master stroke that will blow Jeff's plans out into the open:



locked by animuson Nov 23 '13 at 15:54


closed as not constructive by animuson, jonsca, Al E., Jim, Pops Aug 20 '12 at 14:45


I'll have whatever he is having!!! –  perbert Mar 5 '10 at 14:33
You need a hobby. –  squillman Mar 5 '10 at 14:33
@square: this is his hobby. –  perbert Mar 5 '10 at 14:36
@squid: I have a hobby: identifying conspiracies. –  XMLbog Mar 5 '10 at 14:37
Actually, there is a factual error here. Jeff is short for "Jeffrey" (or possibly "Jeffery"), which means he's three letters short. That in turn points us to tritium instead of deuterium; and on the Wikipedia page for tritium, I found this... interesting sentence: "cleaning tritium from the moderator may be desirable after several years to reduce the risk of escape to the environment." The precise meaning of that sentence I leave to you, but it's clear this runs much deeper than we'd thought. –  mmyers Mar 5 '10 at 15:26
@mmyers: My God... –  XMLbog Mar 5 '10 at 15:30
@Pek: I hope not! –  Ladybug Killer Mar 5 '10 at 15:56
+1 this is the best thing I've read on Meta in a while –  Kyle Cronin Mar 5 '10 at 17:14
WAIT! I'm user number 1337. I can't believe I've been a member of this conspiracy the whole time. –  Brad Gilbert Mar 5 '10 at 17:35
Hydrogen is not a noble gas, so I'm afraid your whole conspiracy theory is in tatters. You'll have to start again. –  Adam Davis Mar 5 '10 at 17:40
Hydrogen isn't noble -- and neither is Jeff! -- @Pollyanna is onto something! –  balpha Mar 5 '10 at 17:43
My user ID thing has really disturbed me, too. I'm not sure that it's a conspiracy, though I keep losing things ever since I started visiting this site. –  Chris Farmer Mar 5 '10 at 20:10
Could someone on Windows please see if holding down Alt while typing 108779348342750472702867132401906473960 gives us any special symbol? –  Arjan Mar 5 '10 at 20:30
@Arjan: Φ <- first try. Φ <- second try. Got the same one twice in a row. That's a capital phy, which is used in combinatorics to denote a generating function. It's also used in trans-real arithmetic to denote "nullity". Nullity is a horrible thing, just like Jeff. Coincidence? Doubtful. –  XMLbog Mar 5 '10 at 20:34
Oh, I see. You've started learning Python. –  Tim Post Mar 6 '10 at 3:53

8 Answers 8


See? Look how sinful he is. –  XMLbog Mar 5 '10 at 16:27
Nice one! He looks decidedly evil. –  Pëkka Mar 5 '10 at 16:29
Dude. This is disturbing. :) –  Chris Farmer Mar 5 '10 at 16:30
It looks fake 'cuz you forgot to add the rain to his face. -1 –  uɐɯsO uɐɥʇɐN Apr 28 '10 at 2:17
If you look closely, you can see it's fake. Or maybe Hollywood is failing with their special effects and Jeff is in front of the rain. Holy crap, it is a conspiracy! –  Cole Johnson Jun 1 '13 at 1:23

As for conspiracy: why does xkcd happen to mention the number 1 just today as well?

This is terrifying. –  XMLbog Mar 5 '10 at 20:20

He's not the only one...

enter image description here


Nah, what conspiracy?

User 1, aka user one, aka Neo.

6 uper U ser
6 erver F ault
6 tack O verflow


The Stack Overflow Conspiracy - don’t tell Jeff I’m on to him.

Dear Jeff,

He's on to you. Run!

-1! I said not to tell him! –  XMLbog Mar 6 '10 at 11:33
@NIfE - Hey, I know which side of the trilogy my rep is buttered on. –  Adam Davis Mar 6 '10 at 16:30

The Number ONE.


Wait, wait, that was the rationale of SO? !! oohh gee and I always thought trying to conceal he was Craig: http://images.google.com/images?q=David%20Anthony%20Higgins


Fear question 1 asked by user 1!


meta.stackoverflow.com/badges/1 is not too bad though! –  Arjan Mar 5 '10 at 21:43
@Arjan: that doesn't make sense... –  uɐɯsO uɐɥʇɐN Apr 28 '10 at 1:00

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