Build Date: Thu May 1 05:40:52 2025 UTC
I don't care to belong to any social organization which would accept me as a member
-- Groucho Marx
Russians Broadcast Subliminal Messages
2000-08-20 13:35:26
"Sit and watch only ATN," came the command. A Russian TV network hid those words in every 25th frame of their advertisements...
Horrified Russian officials shut down the network for two months. Facing a fine which the Moscow Times identified as a whopping $450, the broadcasters disputed the government's response as "lawlessness."
Paranoid Russians are nothing new. The Moscow Times remembers detractors of Boris Yeltsin blaming his 1996 election victory on an election-eve broadcast of subliminal messages. More importantly, the Times noted subliminal advertising has never been shown to work after an initial six-week "Eat Popcorn" experiment in a New Jersey movie theatre in 1957.
The prospect of subliminal messages terrifies individuals already grappling with their powerlessness before huge corporations. (See "Canadians fear sexy Coke machine.") A grass roots group opposing the "Scientology" cult also warned that they'd received information that subliminal messages were concealed in "Battlefield: Earth."
But the truth is millions have already surrendered their minds to the corporate entertainment state -- willingly. Sure, I fear a world where broadcasters transmit secret messages like "Regis Philbin is not annoying" and "Stalk Blossom." But the master plan would involve harvesting mega-revenues from foisting their pap on an unsuspecting public.
And they've done that already....
Face it, to some extent we're all willing slaves to technology. I heard the news about Russia's subliminal messages from Ananova. The digital broadcaster rocked back and forth with faux-human motions, moving her head in imitation of blinks and nods, and told me that the polar ice caps were melting. That a woman had disrobed in front of Bill Clinton ("HE was visib-ly sur-prised when...she...DISROBED.") That a Russian TV network had subliminally commanded viewers to tune in...
As I stared into her decadent red lips, I had to wonder: how free are *any* of us?
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