The Birth of a Myth

Now, up until now, we've only covered some dubious at best, outright false at worst, instances of subliminal messaging. I know, I know, this is a big letdown. You probably hoped for a conspiracy blog about a subliminal campaign by the government to cover up the 9/11 conspiracy. But, see, there’s a reason you have these high expectations. Once upon a time, subliminal messages were a very scary issue, one that even had the United States government banning subliminal advertisement.

1957. Recall the fifties were a bad moment for scientific rigor and experimental procedure. Just open up an old comic book and look at the promises of ridiculous strength and intelligence, just by mailing 20 dollars to this address! So, this guy, a fellow named James Vicary, considered himself a scientist. He arrived, after some observations, to ground breaking conclusions like the fact women blinked a bit less when in supermarkets. Real genius, this dude. Anyway, he did have one breakthrough, when he mounted a tachistocope one a film projector in Fort Lee, New Jersey. Every 5 seconds, and for a brief 1/3000^th of a second, he would flash two different messages, both “HUNGRY? EAT POPCORN” and “DRINK COCA COLA”. He reported that Coca Cola sales increased in almost 20%, and popcorn in more than 50%. When he started publishing these results, you can see why advertisers jumped at this idea. I can almost picture the scene where one advertiser is reading the paper and tells his coworker about this technique, and both their eyes turn into dollar signs.

Now, as you might have been expecting if you’re an avid reader of my blog, or if you just have a knack for foreshadowing, this study was a sham. Faker than Pamela Anderson’s knockers. Later Vicary admitted to the complete unreliability of his results. He then probably broke down crying wondering why his dad left him or something. But the man still left a mark on this world. It might have been fake and all, but he is the person that kick-started the entire subliminal message scare, and gave me a topic for my blog.

That’s it for today. Peace out.

Reference: http://www.snopes.com/business/hidden/popcorn.asp