You’ve probably heard of subliminal advertising — the idea is that behaviors can be elicited by flashing extremely brief messages on a movie or TV screen. “BUY POPCORN NOW” is the canonical example, with movies containing such subconscious messaging supposedly experiencing dramatic increases in popcorn sales.
Did it work? Maybe, maybe not, but the idea is intriguing enough to at least explore using this subliminal tachistoscope. [Roni Bandini] seems to have taken this project on as a sort of cautionary tale about brainwashing techniques, not only in motion pictures and TV but in printed media too; he goes pretty hard on the Peronistas’ use of not-so-subliminal messages to mold young Argentinian minds back in the 1940s and 50s.
The tachistoscope [Roni] presents is a little more sophisticated than those ham-fisted propaganda attempts. The Raspberry Pi-powered device downloads a video from YouTube and automatically replaces random frames with a propaganda message inspired by those used by the Peronistas, with the modified video piped to a composite video output for display on a TV.
A digital counter on the tachistoscope keeps track of the total time viewers have been propagandized. For extra fun, the machine has a switch to enable ChatGPT-created political messages to be inserted into the stream; we shudder to think what those might look like. Watch the video below for a sample of the brainwashing, but don’t blame us if you fall in love with [Evita].
We understand that this is more of a statement on the power of propaganda than an actual tool for mind control, but if [Roni] is serious about his brainwashing, some small mods might make it more effective. Thanks to the full frame of text on a black background, the subliminal messages aren’t very subliminal; they might be more subtle if the text was overlaid on the target frame rather than replaced completely. Seems like that should be possible with ffmpeg or something similar.
Subliminal.
Below a sensory threshold. Below perception.
Any message unable to be perceived by the target audience is by definition subliminal messaging.
Subliminal messaging is alive and well, and is likely the most used social engineering hack today.
Just look at who’s cast as heroes and villains in the popular teleplays.
Look at how corporations portray events and their actors, then go watch raw footage from those events.
It’s even used in text as this “regime’s” actions are “troubling” for the future of ____.
There are many ways to influence people without their awareness, however flashing an image for less time than the conscious brain can see is not one of them. This has been tested many times and found ineffective. If it worked, even a little, every ad and movie and tv show would be full of them.
Yup just waiting for ChatGPT etc to start including subtle ads in their output, or maybe just “bias” towards their owning tech giant companies.
Is this a subtle disclosure that Hackaday may have been brainwashing us all along?
Brainwashing using video techniques is pretty hard – the 60 (-ish) frame rate is right at the edge of perception, and it’s almost impossible to flash something faster using standard video. (Apropos of nothing, this is why speed reading apps don’t work – you can’t smoothly speed up the presentation of letters or words, and any attempts to get around this, such as word flash readers, feel chunky and “sharp” to the reader.)
Brainwashing using priming effects is very real, however. There’s a good video of Derren Brown doing this, search for “Derren Brown Subliminal Advertizing” on YouTube to see how it works.
Much of the basics are laid out in books by Robert Cialdini, such as “Presuasion”.
So for example, people who see a “Vote!” icon online are more likely to go out and vote (by over 20%, IIRC). Elon Musk could easily sway an election by showing such an icon only to right-leaning subscribers on X the day before and day of an election. Or left leaning. Or this could be done by Facebook, or Google.
It would be almost impossible to detect.
Additionally, stable diffusion can now make images with a subliminal message, such as a group of people whose postures collectively spell out “obey”:
https://www.reddit.com/r/StableDiffusion/comments/16m5hcr/subliminal_advertisement/?rdt=41113
The message is hard to notice, but you step back a bit it’s right there.
Scary stuff.
Indeed. #CTIL-files
Social media posting a vote icon to one political side can be detected if you collect daily “ephemeral” content from many users, and a group led by Dr. Robert Epstein claims they’ve detected Facebook doing this exact thing. Pay attention to the “suggested search” drop down in your favorite search engine next election cycle. That dropdown is an example of a subliminal flash that we all see every day.
Also there’s children’s Youtube videos that have bizarre content that may seem suitable for children at a passing glance, but if you watch it you notice these bizarre things. Often using recreations of popular cartoon characters.
I don’t understand why the “vote” thing would be difficult to detect. The same data that’s used to target the efforts can be used to detect it. Even if the actual data is kept private, it doesn’t take a genius to create an account, click “like” on a bunch of Fox news links, and see how the advertising changes.
Reminds me a bit of the alien invasion movie They Live staring the late Canadian wrestler Roddy Piper. Wearing special glasses the subliminal messages the aliens were feeding the humans would appear everywhere. One was a billboard that with the glasses said OBEY. I don’t believe this is happening these days but excuse me I suddenly need to turn off the TV and go buy a new car….
“And I’m all out of chewing gum.”
Blipverts!
Ni siquiera el consumo compulsivo de todo el maiz inflado del mundo en los cines, sería tan perjudicial como lo fue la doctrina de Peron y Evita. Saludos desde BS.AS.