Nightmare scenario: alarm as advertisers seek to plug into our dreams

Man, big advertisers want to get into your dreams.

When brewing giant Coors launched a new advertising campaign earlier this year, the format came as a surprise to many. The company was planning to infiltrate people’s dreams to get them to buy, and presumably drink, Coors beer.

Coors encouraged people to watch a short online video before bed, then play an eight-hour “soundscape” through the night. If successful, this “targeted dream incubation” would trigger “refreshing dreams” of Coors, according to the company.

It’s unclear how many people took part in the dream manipulation – the top Google search result for “Coors dreams” is currently the song Dreams, performed by the Irish pop-rock band the Corrs – but experts warn that the Coors campaign is not just a gimmick, and may have opened a door to a troubling future.

news.yahoo.com...

This is troubling and it's no different than when you might watch a movie then parts of the movie are incorporated in your dreams.

“They’re trying to push an addictive drug on people who are naive to what’s being done to them. I don’t know if it can get much worse than that,” Bob Stickgold, a cognitive neuroscientist and professor of psychiatry at Harvard medical school, said of Coors’ efforts, which he believed could potentially be replicated by other companies.

“Anything you could imagine an advertising campaign for, at all, could arguably be enhanced by weaponizing sleep,” Stickgold said.

Stickgold was one of the co-authors of a recent open letter which sounded the alarm over companies using targeted dream incubation in June. The letter was signed by 35 sleep and dream researchers from around the world.

“TDI-advertising is not some fun gimmick, but a slippery slope with real consequences,” the letter warned. “The potential for misuse of these technologies is as ominous as it is obvious.”

news.yahoo.com...

Here's a video about Dormio a technology that influences your dreams. It's the same TDI(Targeted Dream Incubation) tech. In this case, they're showing this tech can be used to treat PTSD and reduce nightmares.



Here's more on Dormio:

Dormio: Interfacing with Dreams

Inspiration Sleep is a forgotten country of the mind. A vast majority of our technologies are built for our waking state, even though a third of our lives are spent asleep. Current technological interfaces miss an opportunity to access the unique, imaginative, elastic cognition ongoing during dreams and semi-lucid states. In turn, each of us misses an opportunity to use interfaces to influence our own processes of memory consolidation, creative insight generation, gist extraction, and emotion regulation that are so deeply sleep-dependent. In this project, we explore ways to augment human creativity by extending, influencing, and capturing dreams in Stage 1 sleep. It is currently impossible to force ourselves to be creative because so much creative idea association and creative incubation happens in the absence of executive control and directed attention. Sleep offers an opportunity for prompting creative thought in the absence of directed attention, if only dreams can be controlled.

www.media.mit.edu...-can-this-be-used-for-evilauthoritarian-mind-control

Like with most things, there's a good and bad. This glass sitting in front of me can be used for good or bad. I can use it to smash someone over the head or I can use it to drink out of.

This tech has some really good uses to help people with sleep ailments. It should be regulated for use only in a clinical setting and not to advertise or try to sell your service.

Could you imagine you rube gurus in your head trying to sell their latest course? Let me advertise in a million people's dreams for x amount of dollars or 5 million people's dreams for x amount of dollars. You would have targeted dream ads like you have targeted facebook ads.

No pseudo-psych mumbo jumbo from a crappy beer company is EVER going to make me buy crappy beer. You're just going to have to lobotomize me, I don't touch the national junk no matter what. Sorry Coors, I got standards you missed by a wiiiiide margin.


Edit: That is not to say hypnotizing people via their sleep patterns isn't a Blood Eagle worthy fail, just not seeing how it's going to do much when one is at the mockery ready on the name drop. You kinda have to be at least a willing sheep here, this kind of thing doesn't work reliably on the skeptical. In other words, stupid people gonna be stupid.

They said I was crazy when I said I could hear the GD radio through certain electric fans at night.

They're probably already doing this- have been for years.

I finally ran into someone who remembers this from the 90's- someone across town was broadcasting with too much wattage on his radio- over too wide a frequency so his message would be heard.
I even have a cassette tape somewhere of him talking over a local radio station.

Apparently the people next door to where I grew up had a full height freezer that played his radio broadcast inside, too.

"These are not the dreams you are looking for."

They did it on futurama.

I think the writers can sue them.

If they can make every advert they send me star scarlett johansson and natalie portman then it sounds ok.

But if they don’t do that then this is clearly evil and must be stopped.

a reply to: neoholographic

Reminds me of what Samsung did with its Hypnosis website. Claiming that you can binge watch your favourite shows again because the websites hypnosis will make you forget the series.

a reply to: neoholographic

Sad part is the only country not to outlaw brain washing television/advertising was the US. The UK have strict laws against it..


You can find out more info if you follow up on the mk ultra research and why it was implemented. Back in the 1980s they wound up banning all forms of subliminal messaging and "earworms" from their broadcasting. Because it started having an effect on a wide scale. However, with the internet there isn't much for protection against that.

a reply to: lordcomac

Ever have a song pop in your head, say in the car, and when you turned on the radio or changed the station that song was playing?

It's happened to many, and most brush it off, that's what the human mind usually does when it witnesses a phenomenon because it doesn't want to address or admit there's more to this world than we've been taught by other humans.

Are we capable of picking up radio signals without the aid of any device?

"Science" knows very little about the brain. I know even less but I do know electricity, frequency, and gravity play a part in the human brain but to what extent and is it capable of being manipulated by using the three.

Electricity & the Brain

"Because electrical charges are responsible for brain activity, electrical stimulation can in turn be used to change the brain’s functioning. Brain stimulation has been used to treat mood disorders and stress, and it can even help people to solve problems, memorize information, and pay better attention."

High frequency brain activity.

"Evidence suggests that electroencephalographic (EEG) activity extends far beyond the traditional frequency range."

Gravity and brain function.

"Does a lighter head makes thoughts fly high - or are we smarter down to Earth?"

The more we learn about ourselves the more people that try to manipulate and hack our minds.

My dreams are already insane idk if I can imagine them being weirder

a reply to: neoholographic


People will buy these experiences, eventually.

You'll be a superhero in your dreams, alongside whatever they implant.

a reply to: neoholographic

Advertising agency's had to be stopped from using Hypnotism and subliminal messaging at one time (at least in some country's and I believe mine Britain was one that did something about this evil practice), this is no different.

We know that the intelligence services of the world definitely did pursue the same science for sleeper agent's, mind control and all manner of nefarious purposes such as for example the MK ultra project.






There are nations that TRIED to put a stop to this but given how much power there is behind it, how much those in power want to control there population and keep them under control, compliant and obedient, pacified well it is easy to see why it is definitely being used.

You have of course seen the very informative video made by Jesse Ventura called the Brain Invaders which goes over technology that has been implemented in society.

Some even claim the real reason for the shut down of Analogue TV and Radio is not about bandwidth but about clearing the air waves for some of this OTHER technology to become truly affective and to not be interfered with by these other frequency's.

Despite the bit of light relief and pythonesque humour I included the subject is actually very serious.

a reply to: neoholographic

I have a lot of THC and CBD in my blood and I dont remember my dreams because of it
so hopefully ill be spared

I used to get "illegal" unpasteurized Coors here in Michigan before they went national, just to give the finger to the federal government. I had relatives in Colorado at the time and had drank it there. I was young, rebellious and hadn't developed a mature taste for beer yet, so please forgive me.

However, the idea of an induced dream about refreshing beer sound appealing to me. Somehow I doubt that I'll be dreaming of Coors though.

a reply to: EdisonintheFM

I remember back in the earlier days, I would have bad fm radio or the reception, that as would approach my tv or radio the reception would improve.

I think Tesla was onto something, with electrical transmissions, and the connection to the universe.

a reply to: 5ofineed5aladder

I prefer watching porn before bed. The dreams are definitely better.

Made me dream I was driving blocker in a Trans-Am for a truck hauling 400 cases of the stuff to Atlanta.......

Seriously though, that's some creepy tech.