The Federal Communications Commission has banned subliminal messages in broadcast media since the 1970s, when controversy erupted over a TV ad for a memory game called Husker Du that displayed the words, “Get it,” on the screen for a fraction of a second. And the relative ease with which messages can be inserted into computer code, combined with the increasing hours people are spending in front of computer screens, leads some psychologists and media experts to believe that the potential for mind control-voluntary or involuntary-is greater in the new media than in any that came before it. Like all forms of media, subliminals are taking new shape in the digital age. By inserting 100 sub-audible messages in the background music, Endorfun’s programmers and its publisher, Time Warner, say they hope “to uplift the heart and mind of its users.”Īnd if, after subliminally absorbing such notions as “I am powerful,” “I am at peace,” “I am in harmony,” “I love being alive,” players are uplifted to the point of telling their friends to run out and buy the game-so much the better.īut the concept of subliminal suasion caught hold of America’s cultural psyche, serving through the decades as a flash point for consumer suspicion of mass media even as it was embraced as a tool for self-improvement. Now, into the murky, quirky nether world of the subliminal, where information is conveyed below the threshold of conscious perception, enter the video game Endorfun.Ī puzzle game that aspires to be the next Tetris, the goal of Endorfun is to match the colored sides of a moving cube to the corresponding squares on a series of grids. Then the pronouncement, “It’s OK for you to be relaxed,” its endless reprise on a self-help cassette tape masked by the lapping of waves. First came the command, “Eat Popcorn,” flashed on a movie screen too fast for the naked eye to see.
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