In Windows XP, typing “bush hid the facts” (without quotes) into Notepad and then saving and reopening the file would result in a series of strange characters. This odd behavior was due to Notepad’s attempt to interpret the text in a different encoding (Chinese), leading to a garbled display.
(If you had East Asian language support installed the issue would not be present)
This bug, often considered an Easter egg or even a conspiracy theory by many, was actually just a quirk in how Notepad handled certain strings of text.
Why Was It Considered a Conspiracy?
Timing and Political Context: This bug was discovered in the early 2000s, during George W. Bush’s presidency, a time when political tensions were high, especially after events like the 9/11 attacks and the Iraq War. The phrase “bush hid the facts” seemed politically charged, suggesting that President Bush was concealing information, which resonated with existing suspicions and theories at the time.
Mysterious Nature: The fact that the text changed into gibberish upon saving and reopening the file made it seem like there was something deliberately hidden or altered by the system. People who stumbled upon this behavior found it bizarre and unsettling, especially since the phrase itself seemed to suggest secrecy.
Confirmation Bias: The bug was purely technical, but it fed into the idea that there was something shady going on, and so it was easy for some to believe that the bug was more than just a technical glitch.
The Technical Explanation
The issue was not actually specific to the phrase “bush hid the facts.” It could happen with any string that fit a certain pattern of characters and spaces. Notepad tried to guess what encoding to use based on the text you typed. However, certain combinations of letters and spaces, like “bush hid the facts,” made Notepad guess wrong. It thought the text was in a different language or format, so when you reopened the file, it showed the text as strange symbols instead of regular letters.
In fact no matter what you wrote as long as the construction of the sentence was 4-3-3-5 characters, you would get this error.
For instance: “Cute cat ate pizza” would also result in the same error, and so will “1111 111 111 11111“
If you try this out remember that the notepad file NEEDS to be new. You cannot just erase the text in a previous file and expect it to happen. The encode detection only seem to run once on new notepad files.
While the phrase and the behavior were suspicious, there was no conspiracy. It was simply a bug in the software related to text encoding. However, the phrase’s content and the timing of its discovery led many to speculate and connect it to broader political narratives.
