Stupid Human Tricks

So, yesterday I came upon the following story: ​Mind Control, Subliminal Messages and the Brainwashing of America. Oh my gosh! So much dire! Yeah, except during my years of psychology study we went over the concept of subliminal advertising and the fact of the matter is...dire it is not. You see, the affects aren't consistent nor are they reliable. To explain, read this: Subliminal Messages: Do They Really Work? There's some great stuff there. Mind you, it's despicable to target marketing at nine-month old children, but largely, I think the marketing industry is creating more problems for itself than it's solving by doing so. You see, the human brain is quite plastic. It adapts--rapidly so. Targeting children with ads changes their response marketing. They grow more cynical. (Millennials respond less to TV advertisements, for example. They also require more sources to convince them.) I'm sure the research is correct regarding the affects on young children's sleep patterns and so on. But I'm not so sure that it's as dire as that first article makes it sound. In case you didn't watch the video--there are a few of them in the second article and they're all fun, but here's the significant one. It's about the Judas Priest court case:

The take away here is that the human brain is designed to recognize patterns--even patterns that don't exist. That's how conspiracy theories are born.