Today’s On the Media was all about mind control.
A segment on subliminal advertising opened with Bob saying “The word sex written in Ritz Crackers. Naked women in ice cubes.” That’s not subliminal advertising. That’s what Carl Castle calls “Monday”.
Bob interviews Mark Crispin Miller, who is a professor of media ecology. Though I’m not entirely sure what that means, I kind of want to be one. Apparently, when you’re a media ecologist, you are informed enough to go on NPR.
So you can forget what your pervy college psychology teacher told you, kids. Subliminal advertising isn’t real. Bob’s Brookelust, however, has never been subliminal.
Somehow, the fact that subliminal advertising doesn’t work doesn’t deter our radio Romeo. To quote Bob, “It doesn’t matter if they were able to seduce us subliminally. They were certainly willing to try.” Bob is all about getting the maximum amount of information. He’s taking an approach that’s usually only seen on Mythbusters. Sure, it doesn’t actually work, but Bob wants to know exactly what the conditions have to be in order for it to work.
If, you know, it could.
That could be why Brooke’s follow-up story is on advertisements that can talk to you in your head. I’m going to type that out one more time, in case you didn’t notice how scary the concept is. There are people who are making advertisements that, though the miracle of wireless transmission and radio waves and the transmitting power of the human skull, can talk to you IN YOUR BRAIN.
This technology can be used so that advertisers can direct highly focused messages to specific consumers. I can understand that. Other possible uses for this technology is in law enforcement and crowd control or in search-and-rescue situations. It can also be used in a fun way - kids could talk to each other in their brains! There are a lot of ethical implications here, most importantly that one’s thoughts are intensely private and this technology is has the most brazen potential for invasion of privacy.
Brooke is interested, and she wants to know more. This could be her cat-like journalistic prowess. Or, it could be her way of trying to find an effective combat weapon for Bob’s subliminal advances.
How will the mind control battle of the sexes turn out? Will Bob’s use of something that doesn’t exist be able to best Brooke’s ability to bend completely creepy new technologies to her will? Tune in next week, for more from the Radio Sweethearts.
This post was written by Kerry, and edited…by Matthew.
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