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Paper short abstract

QR codes function as visible portals—gates to other realms (surveillance, the supernatural, the social). Using ostension, risk perception, and technological imaginaries, the paper shows how scanning performs encounters that negotiate group worldviews and contest institutional knowledge.

Paper long abstract

Once imagined as simple tools for convenience, QR codes have taken on a stranger cultural life. Their sudden ubiquity has made them more than inert links: they are increasingly read and enacted as gateways to other realms. Online and offline, a code may appear in expected contexts (restaurant menus, official notices) or suddenly out of place (a sticker on a lamppost, a stencil on a wall). In these moments, QR codes invite speculation and generate legend-like narratives. They are seen as portals to surveillance or phishing, as doors to uncanny or “cursed” content, or as cryptic markers that divide insiders from outsiders.

These vernacular readings show how a mundane technical sign becomes a threshold to “the other.” Framed through ostension, technological imaginaries, and symbolic boundaries, scanning emerges as a performative act—an embodied test that can confirm, resist, or reshape belief, describing a group’s nature.

Drawing on digital ethnography (viral posts, comment threads) and human–computer interaction (HCI) research on QR trust, this paper identifies three processes sustaining QR-code legends: (1) symbolic inscription — portal-like meaning ascribed to the matrix; (2) enacted verification — ostensive scanning, avoidance, and warning; and (3) institutional friction — vernacular readings that contest official assurances of safety. Together, these processes show how ordinary technologies generate contemporary legend forms, staging encounters with “other natures” while amplifying collective anxieties about surveillance, digital mediation, and institutional authority.