A general increase in gibberish? And how could we tell?

I kept thinking it was just my imagination. But it has felt like there has been a gradual increase in live broadcasters slurring and slipping into gibberish even outside of the very noticeable, famous cases, and I'm curious if anyone else has been thinking the same and afraid to say it too.

Tonight on BBC Radio 5, all night long, literally every host of every program has screwed up a line more than once, sometimes in very strange ways -- inserting a word that doesn't belong and then repeating it in confusion, as with aphasia, or flubbing a piece of news they've already read out several times in live updates. I listen all the time, so I know it's not normal. It's possible I began to notice it more once the stories appeared, but that would only explain why it might jump from being invisible to apparent to me, not why it seems to be gradually increasing until it's finally happening consistently.

Please don't get all agitato internet tough guy on me -- I know it could just be my imagination. That's why I'm asking other people rather than just the inside of my head. Have you noticed any more subtle increases in transient gibberish or unusually tangental slurring, anything like that? What would be a way of testing for it that would be more reliable than anecdote? I can't work that out either.

I guess I can't really say much about noticing anything on TV. I haven't really watched TV for years now. I think I still own one, but wherever it is (back of a closet somewhere I think), I don't think it would even work any more since they switched over to digital.

Having said that though, I do work in the medical field and my work involves multiple different hospitals throughout the country. And it seems to me that there have been quite a lot more neurology patients lately. And of those neurology patients, quite a few of them seem to involve some type of either aphasia or dysphasia (which are language dysfunctions of the brain). I obviously can't give a lot of details due to medical privacy laws, but I was just thinking about this the other day and wondering why there seems to be such a recent increase in these types of hospital admissions. It could also just be a coincidence I suppose and maybe I'm just noticing it more.

I've noticed this - it's happened to me a few times over the past several months. The thoughts are there but it is like the nerves don't fire correctly to produce the sound. It's gotten to the point where I'm going to experiment with broadcasting from (don't laugh) a Faraday cage. The question is, if this is indeed increasing, is the cause external (caused by an external influence) or internal (ingestion of chemicals/drugs)?

To be honest, other than those cases highlghted on youtube, I have not noticed any marked increase on underboosh happenong in thet which people ar sawning, even on the welivision or in other plodoids. So I would soy that it isn't not at all in all of your immaginations.

reply to post by sepermeru


well, as a person who talks for a living 8:30am to 5:00pm, mon thru fri.....and not just talkin.... I have to be clever, erudite, witty, personable, persuasive and upbeat every mininute of everyday. I can tell from personal experience I do wander off in my mind sometimes only to come back wondering if I had already made the point I was trying to make or was I even speaking intelligently. I just go off on auto matic pilot sometimes and hope no one notices.
Could that be what's happening here. For a brief moment while you're talking you suddenly think of something else that's been in the back of your mind and next thing you know you've lost your train of thought.
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Strange you should mention this, and I'm another who rarely watches TV these days, but sometimes turn the news on and I swear every time theres a slip up by the newsreader. I just put it down to how dumbed down language has become over the past few years (have you listened to teenagers speak lately?) and that the newsreader was so unnacustomed to speaking English properly they were struggling with the autocue.

I kind of noticed one, the other day... But I might have noticed it because of the other events.

I think that to know the real scope of this, if it has any scale, or design, would be to put up a team of dedicated people and look at many many old news clips accessible on the net, see if this happened before, compile statistics about it, and compare to a same analysis of news AFTER the first gibberish event happened.

That's how I would approach this idea.

neff eres top mock pock.

Here is a gibberish generator for $hits & giggles

thinkzone.wlonk.com...

Originally posted by NowanKenubi
I kind of noticed one, the other day... But I might have noticed it because of the other events.

I think that to know the real scope of this, if it has any scale, or design, would be to put up a team of dedicated people and look at many many old news clips accessible on the net, see if this happened before, compile statistics about it, and compare to a same analysis of news AFTER the first gibberish event happened.

That's how I would approach this idea.

You may be right, or at least, it occurs to me, you may be right in 1998, but now I suddenly wonder if computers have done or could do a great deal of that collecting and analyzing for us already, as with Google's little word analysis dealie. Just musing -- I think you're right, to really test for it would be daunting. That said, what we're looking for is not just any slip or slur, but a specific unusual kind unlike the ones we're used to hearing, so the field would at least be narrowed from infinite to merely extremely huge.

reply to post by sepermeru


Without going as far back as 1998, there must be archives from television stations on the net since they are putting everything online once it has been shown on television. A few years back would be a good start.

You should try and make a call to ATSers to help look for this.

I have always been good at thinking about 3 things at once and doing a 4th with no problem. But in the last 3 or 4 months I have caught myself "zoned out" more than a few times and I find it very unsettling. I almost hit the front porch the other day pulling into the front yard and as I snapped back from where ever I was it scared me a bit. I have seen it im my co-workers as well. Some of them forget things they have done countless times before and have to stop and think about it for a minute. It almost as if the whole word is getting a bit of brain damage from something. I find the whole mess verying odd and unsettling to say the least. If this is some world wide event then we are all done for. Is the world going mad?

Has anyone esle notice this hitting them. If so tell us your story and maybe it will help find an answer

Can't say I have noticed anything as I don't watch or listen to the news unless it's Democracy Now (& they're always slipping up with their words. I do however think that all this gibberish talk is just alien/multi-dimensional beings trying to communicate with us... & who better to do that through than news casters?!

I've had some cases of it, but I've caught it and corrected it. That's unlike these poor newscaster, some which are said to be having seizures, did. I don't believe I've had this issue until lately, also, have not heard of it until lately with TV personalities/news reporters.