Subliminal messaging technology now being sold to people?

Mind Master
www.youtube.com...

I saw advertisements for this product and I thought it would be interesting to see what you all might think about it.
I do not endorse this product. No spam here.
It was not on my radar screen that this kind of thing could be used for good.

Is this a breakthrough idea? possibly dangerous? or complete bogus and a scam?



[edit on 3-2-2010 by Before2017Victor]

Oops, maybe this should be under "general conspiracies". I guess it doesn't matter does it?

[edit on 3-2-2010 by Before2017Victor]

reply to post by Before2017Victor

Is this a breakthrough idea?

Not really.

The Silva Method has been in the commerical market since the 60's. Anthony Robbins was putting subliminals in his cassette tape sets in the 80's. I remember seeing a text based computer subliminal message program with flashing lights in the 90's. Five or six years ago I remember finding a website full of mp3 downloads that people had made containing their own subliminals that they wanted to share.

In one form or another, the basic idea has been around for a long time.

possibly dangerous?

...well, assume for the moment that it works. What would be the result of an unhealthy subliminal? I mean...if you can stop smoking by exposing yourself to subliminals telling you that you don't smoke, is it reasonable to think you could pick up bad habits by listening to subliminals telling you that you have them? Probably.

It's like any tool. A hammer can be dangerous too, if you smash your foot with it.

or complete bogus and a scam?

I've never seen this particular product in use, but from my own experiences with similar products...it can work...but not usually as well as the marketing claims. I've generally found speaking affirmations to myself with deliberate intent to be more effective, more quickly. But that does require you to be able to sit down and talk to yourself for an hour at a time for weeks to months. Different people are more or less susceptible to suggestion. Your mileage may vary.



[edit on 3-2-2010 by LordBucket]

I agree with lordbucket in the sense of the word that they are tools. Luckily they have not combined a few others with it to make it deadly.

It can be very powerful but they have a few items to make it tick for you. My curiosity is more on the reasons you asked.

Self help or domination of others?

Either way, the answer would be enlightening.

Ill answer your question if you answer mine.

A teaser..

Think of you interactions with others...

One Mas 2 go till I create my first thread

Just as a side note I appreciate how the posters above responded to me. I get surprised when people try to talk with some decency on the internet. Thanks.


In the ads for this product I thought that anybody could make something similar at home. It's a great concept...if it works.

It looks like both of you are wondering what I am thinking in terms of how subliminal messaging can be used for something "bad" or let's just say something unhelpful.
I could get into manchurian candiadates, but that's more to do with hyponosis and torture. I don't know enough about the inner workings of the mind--maybe most people don't.
Hmm if this is something that you take as a suggestion does that mean that people would really be open to acting on suggestions?
That's a scary thought.

Is subliminal messaing more effective if a person knows it's their own suggestion?

I agree with lordbucket too. It is a tool, and anytime you give a person something that can be used to help them they find a way to make it so it's harmful. Funny how humans do that.
I hope this technology isn't as powerful as what this website is saying.

Here's a couple things I thought of when I see this product:

1) People making little wish lists all kinds of things they probably don't need into this product. And this personalized technology feeds into people's obsessions/worries. The consumer may end up buying more because they were told "subliminally". The underlying issue does not get dealt with and the person just wants more "STUFF" and that in turn will do more damage.
But, corporations are not complaining.

2) Someone who's sick in the head (or someone with harmful intentions) and uses this technology and filld it with hateful/negative things. Hurting themselves or possibly others.

3) There looks to be loss of control with this kind of thinking. Subliminal messaging as self help is like saying "I don't have to work for anything" kind of deals "I just listen or look at a couple of images and all the sudden everything is better." You're not responsible for your actions.

4) The consumer thinks that a product like "MindMaster" is what subliminal messaging is, and if it fails "therefore subliminal messaging doesn't work on me when in reality I bet many people who watch tv or are on the internet get subliminal messages without their knowledge.
Or maybe the consumer will think "subliminal messaging does work on me" and then they're okay with that.


I am skeptical at this supposed 'ban' that advertisers had to keep them from using subliminal technology. Advertisers still use subliminal messaging don't they? Although in a different style, it's got to still be there on some level with jingles, symbols, use of celebrities, etc.

6 Subliminal Messages You Never Noticed in Your Favorite Disney Films
Published in Animation by Hannahhhhhhh, on October 6, 2008
Is it just in your head, or were these naughty images found in Disney movies intended to be there?

Aladdin, The Little Mermaid, The Rescuers, The Lion King, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame

cinemaroll.com...

There was a big controversy about this a few years back, I don't know if it was true or not, more at the above link.

reply to post by Before2017Victor

Is subliminal messaing more effective if a
person knows it's their own suggestion?

This question is more complex than you probably intended...and in answering it I'm disadvantaged by not having a very large sample group. I have some experience with hypnosis, some with nuero linguistic programming, and I've experimented personally with both visual and audio subliminals...but I've never tried explosing someone else to subliminals. So, it's difficult for me to answer you.

However, from what I do know...people vary highly in receptivity to suggestion. Some people accept suggestion easily, while others may even experience fight-or-flight response to it. Or anywhere in between. Generally speaking, trust is an extremely important factor is how well a suggestion will be accepted and acted upon. If a target does not trust you, and if they know you're trying to implant a suggestion, it's far less likely that they'll be receptive to it. So, with that in mind...if you, for example, buy a tapeset that supposedly has a set of subliminals on it, but you cant hear them so you don't for certain know what they actually say...immediately that creates the possibility of distrust, and some people may tend to naturally resist the suggestions simply based on that distrust. For those people, their own subliminals are probably far more likely to be a "trusted source" than somebody else's subliminals, and thus more likely to be effective.

However...from my own experience...generally it is more difficult to hypnotize and implant suggestions in people who have more awareness of the process. For example, I was once asked to hypnotize a girl but before she allowed it she insisted that I intricately describe to her the entire process in detail. So I basically taught her how to hypnotize someone, told her everything I was going to do, and then sat down to hypnotize her. It didn't work very well. If she hadn't known what to expect, if she hadn't been anticipating every step...but still managed to be trusting, it would probably have been much easier. So, from that angle...it's possible that by creating one's own subliminals, one might tend to anticipate them rather than allow them to work. For some people, subliminals made by others may be more effective simply because they don't know what's in them. However...generally speaking I would expect that merely not knowing what's in the subliminals would be far less effective than applying them to someone who does not know they're being subjected to them at all. It's very difficult to anticipate something you're not even aware of. And if you don't even know it's happening, obviously trust isn't much of an issue either.

Finally, from everything I've worked with, subliminals are generally by far the least effective method for inducing change. I have seen NLP in ten seconds on an unaware subject cause more change than weeks of self-applied subliminals.

Ultimately, I suspect it comes down to what I said to begin with: people vary highly in receptivity. You can see this in action simply by going to see a stage hypnotist. They will generally pick many people out of the crowd, and then ask half of them to sit back down. They only keep the ones who are receptive to their method.

manchurian candiadates, but that's more to do with hyponosis and torture

I think it's more about compartmentalizing the mind. Torture is just one means to accomplish that.

if this is something that you take as a suggestion does
that mean that people would really be open to acting on suggestions?

Some people might be. But again, if you really want to see powerful and immediate results on unaware subjects, don't use subliminals. Go to an NLP seminar. It probably won't get you any manchurian candidates, but in terms of most result for least time and effort...NLP is probably far more efficient than either subliminals or hypnosis. But, as mentioned, in my experience NLP isn't nearly as effective when applied to one's self. It's generally more effective on unaware others. If you want to use this for yourself, hypnosis, something like Silva, or deliberate conscious repetition is probably more appropriate.

"MindMaster"

After taking a second look, the only thing I see they're doing that isn't pretty much standard, apparently their software runs in the background while you're doing other things. So, you could be reading this post and have it exposing you to a subliminal message every 60th flash of your 60hz monitor refresh rate. Since you would be focusing on what you're doing, reading posts, writing email, watching porn, whatever...you wouldn't be paying conscious attention to the fact that you're on the receiving end of subliminals, and would therefore probably avoid most of the trust and awareness issues described above. It's not an unreasonable approach, and is probably effective for some people. And since it doesn't require you to sit down and do it deliberately until you get bored...it's probably easier to receive a lot of exposure time. Some of us sit in front of a computer several hours every day. Even if subliminals are relatively inneffective, a couple hours every day for months is likely to generate some cumulative effect.

It does, of couse, beg the question...how many people have something like this running on their computer already, who don't know about it?

It would be a very interesting thing to incorporate with an email virus.



[edit on 4-2-2010 by LordBucket]

^ Fascinating response. I appreciate that.

Would you say that the human mind is fairly easy to control then?
That's more an open question.

I bet there's many things that go on without our knowledge.
Could there be images, words, symbols, or number that we're shown each day and we have no idea?

Take that we have a person that subliminal messaging works on;
wouldn't the person need to have an understanding of what an image meant before it could effectively do anything to them?

This isn't the best example, but you wouldn't show prehistoric man a subliminal message of a wrist-watch and a boxed DVD set in hopes that he's buy them because he wouldn't know what that is.
So if a person is shown an image subliminaly, that they didn't understand in the first place, would they feel like they wanted a lot of something, but didn't know what it was? or would it have no effect?

From what you are saying it looks like a person with anxiety, trust issues, closed off to suggestion, and/or awareness (depending) can make subliminal messaging uneffective. That's also true for hypnosis too is it?

This is all really interesting.

I'll look more into that NLP you speak of. I've never heard of that before.

[edit on 4-2-2010 by Before2017Victor]

Would you say that the human mind is fairly easy to control then?

Well, again...people vary highly in their receptivity to suggestion, but look closely at how I've phrased that: "receptivity to suggestion." That's very different than "susceptibility to control." Control is out of the bounds of this discussion. Nothing we've discussed will give you control. But under the right circumstances it can be very simple to convince a human mind to eagerly cooperate with your intent.

For example...you've probably heard of the adage that it's "not possible to convince someone via hypnosis to do something they're morally inclined to not do." And loosely speaking, that's fairly accurate. But totally misleading. For example, if you have a woman hypnotized, and you tell her to cheat on her loving husband and destroy her marriage by having sex with you. It's very likely she won't do it. But...if you tell her that you are her loving husband, that you've been happily married for years, and that you routinely have fantastic sex that gives her mind-blowing orgasms, and by the way...how does right now sound? It's not unlikely that she might. After all...in her mind, you're her husband. You have wonderful sex. She's been having sex with you for years. Of course she'll have sex with you. Or...let's say you plant a suggestion to visciously murder someone they care deeply for. Again...odds are good they're not going to do it. But...plant the suggestion that someone is evil and will become the next hitler and tell your subject that they're the only person in the whole world who can stop the next genocide...or tell a suitably religious person that god has personally chosen them to destroy a demonic fiend masquerading in human form...and so long as these things are compatible with their world view, they're far more likely to accept them. The trick is to simply frame things in a manner that they're individually and personally receptive to.

All a hypnotized person has to do is simply say no. But...all a fully conscious person has to do is say no, and look at how many people can be manipulated in fully conscious states with no hypnosis at all to do things that you might think they would be "morally inclined" to not do. For example...the military. People in the military regularly travel to distant lands and murder complete strangers. No hypnosis required. Why do they do this? Because they have beliefs and ideas in their mind that "those people are bad" or "I'm protecting my family and nation." This is no different, and these are exactly the sort of pathways that can be used by hypnosis.

So is it easy to control the human mind? No. But by altering beliefs and sensory input, it's often not difficult to get the result you probably want.

I bet there's many things that go on without our knowledge.

Allow me to share a wonderful and scary idea with you.

There is nothing "magic" about subliminals, hypnosis, NLP or anything else we've discussed. These things simply make deliberate use of mental pathways that exist and are used in daily life anyway. For example, let's say a person belives that they are ugly and unlovable. So they go to a hypnotist who convinces them to belive that they are beautiful and lovable. And now they believe that they are beautiful and lovable.

...why did they believe they were ugly and unlovable in the first place?

Have you ever seen a father pick up his baby and tell her "Oh, what a beautiful little girl you are!" "How's my precious darling today?" "Is there anything I can do for my angel?" Guess what? The baby doesn't understand the words. The father is applying a subliminal message. He's teaching a subconscious mind to believe that it is beautiful. And while she probably won't remember the words...she'll definitely remember the feeling.

You suggest there may be things that go on without our knowledge. But I ask...if hypnosis in ten minutes can make a person think they're a chicken...if NLP in five seconds can make someone fall in love...if subliminals over a few weeks can make someone perceive themselves and strong, and beautiful and lovable...what can an entire lifetime of experience do to one's perceptions of the world around them?

How much of the way you perceive yourself, others, the world...how much of that is the result of mental filters that you learned without any awareness that you were being taught?

Take that we have a person that subliminal messaging works on;
wouldn't the person need to have an understanding of what an image meant
before it could effectively do anything to them?

Yes, and no. It's not "understanding" of the image so much as what the image means to them. A red rose might mean a happy valentines day to one person, or a failed marriage to another. And even an image that a person can't consciously give a name to may evoke a response. Rorschach images being an obvious example.

if a person is shown an image subliminaly, that they didn't understand in the first place, would they feel like they wanted a lot of something, but didn't know what it was?

No, that's not how it works.

Let's back up and address what might happen even if they do understand it. Seeing an image of something doesn't necessarily translate into a feeling of "I want that." Oh, sure...it might. Or it might not. Showing someone a picture of popcorn and hoping they'll want to buy popcorn is a longshot. If they happen to really like popcorn, and have emotionally rich memories of having movie popcorn with their family as a child and feeling loved and happy while munching and reveling in yummy, crunchy, happy popcorn goodness...sure, they may feel the urge to have some popcorn. But without that sort of connection, they might just loosely think "Popcorn. Ok, next." in some dark recess of their mind that never manifests in any meaningful way. But what if instead, they got lost in a movie theater as a child, and were left in a dark corner for an hour, eating popcorn while their child mind was terrified that they'd never see their family ever again, and that they'd live out the rest of their sad, miserable life alone and unloved in a dark, dusty movie theater, until eventually they starved to death, with popcorn as their tragic last meal. If that's the kind of association their mind has with popcorn, showing a popcorn subliminal is not going to generate an "I want that" reaction.

So...in the case of a person who doesn't even understand what an image is...the odds of there being any meaningful reaction at all are fairly slim.

From what you are saying it looks like a person with anxiety, trust issues,
closed off to suggestion, and/or awareness (depending) can make subliminal
messaging uneffective. That's also true for hypnosis too is it?

It can be. But a clever hypnotist can often work around those issues. It's just a matter of understanding how to appeal to a particular mind. Fear and love can be powerful motivators. To give the most classic example...there are many people who insist they cannot be hypnotized because they're convinced that they're "too smart" or "too strong willed" to be "controlled" in such a manner. So...you simply apologize to such a person up front, and explain to them (while in a fully conscious state) that hypnosis doesn't always work, and that many people are naturally resistant to it. You explain that hypnosis requires use of some of the higher functions of the brain, and that very many people aren't sufficiently developed to be able to be hypnotized.

Bam!

Now things have been reframed. Now their subconscious believes that only smart people can be hypnotized. And as someone who feels pride and joy in being smart, they now have an opportunity to prove that they're smart and feel that joy...while simultaneous feeling fear that if they can't be hypnotized...clearly they must be "one of the dumb ones."

You now have cooperation because you've attached fear to failure to be hypnotized, instead of fear of being hypnotized. Identifying and fulfilling emotional needs makes for powerful incentive.

But on the other hand...if you have a person who belives that they're very average, and that rich, powerful, smart people are the evil devils who bring misery upon the middle class...that kind of approach is more likely to alienate them. You create a disincentive to hypnosis, because if they can be hypnotized, then obviously they're smart and therefore they must be evil. They don't want to be evil, so they resist hypnosis.



[edit on 4-2-2010 by LordBucket]

1) The Coca-Cola and Corn experiment on movies was a hoax and was demystified by his own author on Advertising Age, according to the author of Buyology.

2) Most of things people talk about NLP is not true. You cannot cast a spell on someone and make them love you in just 5 minutes everytime, even using patterns of speech.

NLP is just good communication with yourself and others. And Don Juan de Marco never read a NLP book.

3) Hypnosis does not bypass freewill.

[edit on 5-2-2010 by infobrazil]

reply to post by Before2017Victor


This stuff does work. I was a severe stutterer until the age of 27, when I engineered my own subliminal tape to address the problem. I was a songwriter at the time, and recorded my tracks, then sped them up using a pair of multiple speed decks and then used open reel sound-on-sound recording to mask the affirmation tracks with simple white noise I recorded from a radio with no antenna. This recording, which I played through headphones each evening before bed, streamlined the process of adopting a work-around procedure that I'd developed for myself.

Anyone who knows, will tell you that stuttering is a physiological condition that must be aggressively managed with a work-around procedure if the individual wants to be able to speak normally. It can't be "cured". The subliminal programming enabled me to directly program my subconscious (right-brain) reaction to catch words as they appear in the mental queue, and work around the stutter response that would normally occur.

Once developed, it can take years to shift a work around from the left (deliberate) side of the brain to the right (instinctive) side, but subliminal programming made it happen in a relatively short period of time, and without effort on my part. I know that subliminal programming works.

Originally posted by NorEaster
reply to post by Before2017Victor

 

This stuff does work. I was a severe stutterer until the age of 27, when I engineered my own subliminal tape to address the problem. I was a songwriter at the time, and recorded my tracks, then sped them up using a pair of multiple speed decks and then used open reel sound-on-sound recording to mask the affirmation tracks with simple white noise I recorded from a radio with no antenna. This recording, which I played through headphones each evening before bed, streamlined the process of adopting a work-around procedure that I'd developed for myself.

Yes, creating your own subliminal tapes with your own voice is very powerful. You really can brainwash yourself.

I believe using your own voice is alot more powerful than anything else. Its the same voice in your head that you use all day when you're walking around thinking. I suppose its just much easier for the subconscious to listen to a voice it's familiar with.

Peace