A TIME magazine cover from the 1980s featured Libyan leader Gaddaffi packed with subliminal image embeds. Gaddaffi had “Kill” on one cheek and three “SEXs” on the other. One qualified researcher, a cognitive Psychology PhD with early experience in advertising, Wilson Bryan Key, published hundreds of examples of subliminals in mainstream advertising and editorial media content. Key wrote three books in the 80s and 90s for which he was subjected to an extensive campaign of personal vilification as a crackpot professor with a dirty mind and had the honor or being denounced as a charlatan who made up salacious nonsense to sell books. The industry response is characteristic, it’s usually effective.
Since that innocent Gaddaffi era the use of by legacy media outlets of subsonic and subliminal influence tactics and technologies has increased, in addition to subliminal embeds, we see hypnotic induction, memory holing, gas lighting, and a host of diverse tactics to exploit cognitive biases and blind spots without being perceived and influence people’s future choices. The power of the covert influence tactics and the depth of their reach has been enormously enhanced by the advent of nonlinear networked media technologies. If the same corporate complex continues to control US media, and VR and Mixed Reality technologies are widely adopted, their control of human consciousness and course of future development will be absolute.