I feel like I’ve stumbled upon a giant prank that everyone is in on but me. Are “subliminals” real? Do they actually work? Or is everyone just delusional and people are lying to themselves by the thousands in various threads and YouTube comment sections?
In: Biology
Subliminal messages are messages that are hidden in a piece of media, like a single frame saying “Buy McDonalds” or something.
The idea was that while you wouldn’t be conscious of having seen it, your unconscious mind would and that you could be influenced to buy something/believe something.
Covert mind control basically.
It doesn’t work.
If you can’t even tell what it was you saw then you aren’t going to remember what you didn’t see. It’s way more effective to just show someone eating a Big Mac in a commercial or as product placement, because then you can actually process what it is you’re looking at.
Here’s the [snopes article](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/subliminal-advertising/) going more into detail about its history and stuff. Short version is some guy faked research results claiming it worked and the idea got embedded in pop culture.
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