SCP-4998

scpHAB

The Incident HABSPA SCP-4998 instantiation (detailed below).


Item: SCP-4998

Object Class: Keter

Special Containment Procedures: Foundation influence is being utilized to socially engineer the artistic preference for interrupted, angular geometries in architecture so as to minimize the size of SCP-4998 instances. Comparative influences are being propagated in the use of mosaics, murals, and arabesques upon pre-existing structures. Agents embedded into localized urban subcultures are to covertly generate graffiti upon offending advertisements on-sight, per Operation Banksy.

Wherever possible, events that coordinate the aggregation of uniformly-colored clothing or signage are to be stymied by planted agents or by other means of civil disruption.

Description: SCP-4998 is the designation for a group of advertisements that spontaneously manifest in spaces previously unutilized for commercial marketing. Potential habitats for SCP-4998 include both physical and digital negative spaces. The advertisements house potent visual and/or auditory memetic agents that disproportionately increase the desirability of the featured product or company.

Instances can be either static or dynamic, and most often appear in areas where the possibility of exposure is relatively high (e.g. highly-urban environments or websites with significant traffic). Physical mediums typically involve building materials, but instances have been observed on the superficial layers of biological tissues, such as the skin and other organs.1 Investigation regarding the origin and dissemination of SCP-4998 persists.

Manifestation occurs via ill-understood means over the course of approximately 30 seconds to twelve minutes, irrespective of size or location. Adverts can appear on parchment that is attached to surfaces2 or be directly upon surfaces by means of paint, ink, etchings, or unexplained pigmentation of the native material. SCP-4998 occupies digital spaces by incorporating itself into the source code and can adopt a multitude of known and unknown languages.

Attempts to efface the advertisements have been met with unexpected difficulties; physical instantiations are either indelible or anomalously affixed to the affected structure while digital ones do not respond to editing the code. SCP-4998 instances upon physical surfaces can be managed either by applying concealment such as paint or by demolishing the involved structure entirely. Both are considered temporary, as recurrence rates are high and there are currently no known means to prevent SCP-4998's ongoing annexation of negative spaces.

Companies linked to SCP-4998 instances consistently deny placing or contracting the advertisements. Despite a recognizable motive for such companies, no tangible evidence has yet to be established in a court of law.3 The Foundation has inserted auditory and visual memetic components within the presentations of involved judicial practitioners to discourage the consideration that the etiology of the advertisements may be preternatural. The majority of cases resolve without official litigation, the most likely explanation considered to be the work of highly-skilled stencil-graffiti artists.


Instance: 6
Location: Taj Mahal - Agra, India
Size: 40m x 40m
Notes: An advert for a Japanese car manufacturer, etched into the structure by unknown means. The mausoleum has been coated with memetic nanotechnology to make the advert virtually undetectable and will need to be demolished for definite removal.4

Instance: 8
Location: www.██████.com5
Size: 200p x 250p
Notes: An advert for consolidated financial solutions. Embedded code identified as XHTML. Attempts to remove are unsuccessful. Site's services not interrupted due to projected financial loss, advert remains.6

Instance: 9
Location: Target Import Warehouse - Savannah, Georgia, USA
Size: 27 square acres
Notes: An advert for Wal-Mart. Was painted and appeared on the roof, which is the most identifiable structure from an aerial perspective in the region. Was painted over with significant cost and labor.

Instance: 14
Location: PoI-4998-2
Size: 15cm x 8cm
Notes: An advert for Cola-Cola was spontaneously inserted onto the forehead of child movie star ██████ ████, now PoI-4998-2. Complete removal necessitated surgical excision and grafting, as the advert extended onto the subdermal and dural tissues. The incident was caught quickly enough to quell potential public and familial exposure. This resulted in cosmetic changes that ended the career of the child. Cover-story regarding a motor vehicle accident distributed.

Instance: 16
Location: 45°58′35.0″N 7°39′31.0″E
Size: ~700m x 675m
Notes: Advert for a purified, bottled water product with dynamic images depicting individuals hiking with the product prominently displayed. Corporealized upon the South-facing slope of Matterhorn and in the presence of several onlooking hikers. The possibility that SCP-4998 is "learning" to target certain demographics is now being investigated as legitimate.

Instance: 21
Address: ███████████
Size: 154p x 192p
Notes: The first of several advertisements that appear upon digital documentation on the SCiPNET server and the database's files, including files with up to Level 5 Security Clearance. Adverts combated with real-time suppression of algorithmic A.I.

Instance: 23
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Size: 14cm x 14cm
Notes: Several adverts for McDonald’s appeared at various locations on players’ jerseys over the course of the second quarter of an NBA game. The event was broadcast to an estimated audience of 1,180,000 viewers. Engineered countermemetics were promptly displayed in place of commercial inserts. Neither the percentage of viewers who noticed the manifestation nor the success of the counterinnocuoation can be accurately estimated.

Instance: 25
Location: Penn State University
Size: 54m x 28m
Notes: Several hundred were killed at a football game wherein a “white out”7 was being performed. An advertisement quickly manifested over the reported area, crushing and/or bisecting the civilians as it incorporated into their collective mass. The internal “logic” of SCP-4998 likely misinterpreted the collective as a negative space. Class-naught amnestics distributed via agricultural aircraft, cover-story developed around stadium structural collapse.

Instance: 30
Location: Igualada, Spain
Size: ~20m x 20m
Notes: See “Incident HABSPA”

Instance: 34
Location: 22°S 17°E
Size: ~3000m x 3000m
Notes: An inordinate advertisement promoting travel to the USA appeared across the visible sky above Namibia, Africa. The number of individuals exposed is unknown, however local airports were soon thereafter overrun with individuals wishing to travel to the USA. They were treated with class-naught memory impairment, which proved vital to information containment, and were subsequently redispersed. Their numbers were estimated in the 1.5 millions. The advertisement vanished shortly after a storm system arrived in the area 2 days later.

Instance: 45
Location: Site-49, Weaponry Annex, East wall
Size: 3.2m x 3.2m
Notes: See “PoI-4998-1”

Instance: 51
Location: Thoracic cavity of Agent Belopolsky (right upper lobe, right lower lobe, left upper lobe, left lower lobe of lungs).
Size: 3cm-10cm in diameter (4 total).
Notes: Advert for home health nursing services. Resulted in the respiratory arrest and sudden death of Agent Belopolsky. As of instance 51, SCP-4998 is assumed to be capable of complex forethought.

Instance: 54
Location: Office wall of O5-5.
Size: 1m x 1m
Notes: Advert for Liberty Life Insurance. Was taken as a deliberate threat, O5-5 evacuated and taken to ████. Security threat level for O5s escalated and protocols initiated.

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