mr dave

actually bell aliant in eastern canada does this. they're a telecommunications company that started with land line phones, then moved into high speed internet, and recently branched off into satellite tv.

here's the kicker though, even if you have high speed internet with them (like the service i'm using RIGHT NOW to post this comment). if you want to get satellite tv they REQUIRE that you also get a phone line, nevermind that the tv service uses their internet backbone; nevermind that their long distance phone service sucks ass compared to the voip line we already have. if we wanted satellite tv in the apartment we needed to get another phone...

it's hard to say how this is being handled, my roommate filed formal complaints with the CRTC (Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commission) but they proved to be worthless and pussyfooted around his complaint.

as for the whole norway vs. the world, uhh yeah... WTF? i've always liked those scandanavian countries, plus jaga jazzist is from norway so the nation is an automatic yay! in my book.

idol worship and the cult of personality are not concepts that are native to any specific nation. it happens everywhere. tv just makes it far simpler to spread the shenanigans. so long as people continue considering their wants as needs they'll continue to allow themselves to be lead by the nose through whatever means available.

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i am the universe

midnight rain

Ah, good sir, but we were talking about USA! We were also talking about companies that require employees to have cell phones, not customers (I think)

Nonetheless, I'm sure there are some companies in the USA that require cell phones. It was simply an honest question I had as I haven't heard of any companies yet

mr dave

my bad, i took it as the necessity of paying for one media to get the other haha.

there are PLENTY of companies out there that require employees to carry cell phones or blackberries, they're always paid for by the company though. then again i'm still thinking in canadian terms here unless you're a cabbie or a pizza delivery guy, if cell phone use is a necessary part of your job then it's provided to you and paid for by your employer.

i get the impression yukon cornelius 'thinks' he needs a cell phone because he's constantly exposed to the idea of needing one on tv.

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Yukon Cornelius

Lets just say that at my job it is looked down upon if you dont have a cellular phone for work. They cant make you get one, however seeing as that I used the word virtually I guess that means that its ok to mentally strong arm someone into going against the grain. I think that yes the higher ups are paid for.

Either way it was an example of what I was talking about.

Honestly this day and people are very materialistic and very influenced by pop culture(provided to you by the mass media). People also will defend useless crap if they deem it important to them. Which is what makes this amusing to me.

I know that there are plenty of people who have made an impulsive buy me included, its just the ones that cant afford it. Yes even the ones that cant afford it have credit cards, seems like they were set up for failure.

Sleepy I am doing my research for you on the negative effects that many ppl have come into due to the overwhelming brainwashing that the media has implemented. I would just call these ppl stupid and irresponsible but I think that there is a lot more to it than that. Also to boot it is really hard to find something that certain people don't want you to know.

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sleepy jack

Okay that's great but first you have to actually explain how were being brainwashed. I don't feel like repeating myself so I won't but I've been asking you to do this for awhile.

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Yukon Cornelius

Read it here or go to the link posted below to read...



"The fact that TV is a source not actively or critically attended to was made dramatically evident in the late 1960s by an experiment that rocked the world of political and product advertising and forever changed the ways in which the television medium would be used. The results of the experiment still reverberate through the industry long after its somewhat primitive methods have been perfected.

"In November 1969, a researcher named Herbert Krugman, who later became manager of public-opinion research at General Electric headquarters in Connecticut, decided to try to discover what goes on physiologically in the brain of a person watching TV. He elicited the co-operation of a twenty-two-year-old secretary and taped a single electrode to the back of her head. The wire from this electrode connected to a Grass Model 7 Polygraph, which in turn interfaced with a Honeywell 7600 computer and a CAT 400B computer.

"Flicking on the TV, Krugman began monitoring the brain-waves of the subject What he found through repeated trials was that within about thirty seconds, the brain-waves switched from predominantly beta waves, indicating alert and conscious attention, to predominantly alpha waves, indicating an unfocused, receptive lack of attention: the state of aimless fantasy and daydreaming below the threshold of consciousness. When Krugman's subject turned to reading through a magazine, beta waves reappeared, indicating that conscious and alert attentiveness had replaced the daydreaming state.

"What surprised Krugman, who had set out to test some McLuhanesque hypotheses about the nature of TV-viewing, was how rapidly the alpha-state emerged. Further research revealed that the brain's left hemisphere, which processes information logically and analytically, tunes out while the person is watching TV. This tuning-out allows the right hemisphere of the brain, which processes information emotionally and noncritically, to function unimpeded. 'It appears,' wrote Krugman in a report of his findings, 'that the mode of response to television is more or less constant and very different from the response to print. That is, the basic electrical response of the brain is clearly to the medium and not to content difference.... [Television is] a communication medium that effortlessly transmits huge quantities of information not thought about at the time of exposure.'

"Soon, dozens of agencies were engaged in their own research into the television-brain phenomenon and its implications. The findings led to a complete overhaul in the theories, techniques, and practices that had structured the advertising industry and, to an extent, the entire television industry. The key phrase in Krugman's findings was that TV transmits 'information not thought about at the time of exposure.'" [p.p. 69-70]

"As Herbert Krugman noted in the research that transformed the industry, we do not consciously or rationally attend to the material resonating with our unconscious depths at the time of transmission. Later, however, when we encounter a store display, or a real-life situation like one in an ad, or a name on a ballot that conjures up our television experience of the candidate, a wealth of associations is triggered. Schwartz explains: 'The function of a display in the store is to recall the consumer's experience of the product in the commercial.... You don't ask for a product: The product asks for you! That is, a person's recall of a commercial is evoked by the product itself, visible on a shelf or island display, interacting with the stored data in his brain.' Just as in Julian Jaynes's ancient cultures, where the internally heard speech of the gods was prompted by props like the corpse of a chieftain or a statue, so, too, our internalized media echoes are triggered by products, props, or situations in the environment.

"As real-life experience is increasingly replaced by the mediated 'experience' of television-viewing, it becomes easy for politicians and market-researchers of all sorts to rely on a base of mediated mass experience that can be evoked by appropriate triggers. The TV 'world' becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: the mass mind takes shape, its participants acting according to media-derived impulses and believing them to be their own personal volition arising out of their own desires and needs. In such a situation, whoever controls the screen controls the future, the past, and the present." [p. 82, Joyce Nelson, THE PERFICT MACHINE; New Society Pub., 1992, 800-253-3605; ISBN 0-86571-235-2 ]

"Women are carefully trained by media to view themselves as inadequate. They are taught that other women—through the purchases of clothes, cosmetics, food, vocations, avocations, education, etc.—are more desirable and feminine than themselves. Her need to constantly reverify her sexual adequacy though the purchase of merchandise becomes an overwhelming preoccupation, profitable for the merchandisers, but potentially disastrous for the individual.

"North American society has a vested interest in reinforcing an individual's failure to achieve sexual maturity. By exploiting unconscious fears, forcing them to repress sexual taboos, the media guarantees blind repressed seeking for value substitutes through commercial products and consumption. Sexual repression, as reinforced by the media, is a most viable marketing technology.

"Repressed sexual fear, much like all types of repression, makes humans highly vulnerable to subliminal management and control technology. Through subliminal appeals and reinforcements of these fears, some consumers can be induced into buying almost anything." [MEDIA SEXPLOITATION, Key, 1976]





BRAINWASHING

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sleepy jack

It's kind of funny that you just copied and pasted the whole thing without any real discretion to what it says. The bottom half - Sexploitation - has nothing to do with Brainwashing and Jeane Kilbourne argued that entire point in a much more intelligent manner in Killing Us Softly.

Anyway as for the real argument you need to look up the difference between effective frequency and brainwashing (and there is a difference.) Effective Frequency, which is what that article specifically refers to, is a marketing technique and there are key variables in it that basically eliminate the idea that it's "brainwashing everyone." For instance if I were to see a commercial for Levi Jeans thirty times but never actually encountered Levi Jeans then there's no chance I will buy them regardless of how many times I see that commercial. There's also the chance I can have negative associations with the product, etc. It isn't a hook, line and sinker technique.

That aside that research ignores the simple human ability to think critically. Just because I see a commercial over and over doesn't necessarily mean I'm going to see the product and buy it. Even if I associate it with the pleasant commercial, which is what effective advertising would do, I could have other fiscal responsibilities or it could simply not be in my favorite color. Arguing that effective frequency, a marketing technique and only a marketing technique, is the mass media brainwashing and controlling us...is just being hyperbolic and childish.

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mr dave

that sounds more like discrimination, one of those HR words no one likes hearing when used seriously. dun dun dun

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Yukon Cornelius

Mr dave I have always respected your opinions... I just dont believe that people dont think there is a bit of brainwashing going on. Look at what woman have to go through for example, always being compared to the women of hollywood. Those misleading make up commercials with plastic faced women selling a product that they themselfs probably dont use saying it will make other women look just as good, though the results are not even close.

There is a constant comparison, and enough makeup to cover the planet that means money. This also leads to food disorders among other things...

I think its unsat, but the media does this all the time.

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Attempting to find a cure for Stupid...

joyboyo53

brainwashing is a type of mind control, they are not one in the same. i dont disagree that one could interpret competitive ad campaigns that target easily influenced minds as some form of 'brainwashing', although i think that is a bit extrapolated. some people are shepards and some are sheep.

your 'higher ups' didnt strong arm you into getting a cellphone anymore than they strong armed you into wearing clothes to work and not having tattoos on your face. to work in nearly any industry there are certain requirements, and if you want a job you have to meet those requirements. there is no conspiracy to cellphone usage, there is a ever increasingly competitive market place and to be have any success you must stay competitive. if that means everyone else gets cellphones to increase communitive capabilities, you must follow in suit or prepare to go out of business. the same thing happened with computers between 1980-1990, and the same thing happened with the internet between 1990-2000. although i dont know why people need to keep explaining this, as jibber did a decent job already.