"The Music made me do it"

[Korian]

Subliminal messages in Music causes kids to commit violent acts or hurt themselves or become sexualy active. Truth or Urban Legend?

I have seen and heard lyrics like from a Ozzy Osbourne claiming hidden words like "Get The Gun" "Shoot" "Shoot" I guess maybe you could maybe interpret something like that bu to me I don't see it being put there unpurpose.

Britney Spears had a recent song that supposedly says something along the lines of "I want to have sex with you"

Tupac albums also had some hidden messages.

Believe it or Not?

Korian

[Green]

Pearl Jam's album Yeild made me really like music...

[APC]

Word.

[arjue]

I know that music can convey or even induce different emotions and feelings, but I don't believe that subliminal messages have been used in songs, and If they have, it would have been advertising.

[Rick]

Does it even matter? Subliminal messages don't even work.

If I were to go to my school tomorrow and shoot up everyone, it wouldn't be the band I listen to pulling the trigger, it would be me.

Just one of the many reasons people piss me off.

[CynicalSphere]

If you're referring to backwards masking (that is, playing something in reverse and finding a hidden "message"), then that was invented by conservative Christian wackos in the 60s and 70s to give the impression that popular music is the tool of the devil.

Psychological studies indicate that backwards masking does not work, and from a logical standpoint, CAN NOT work because the meaning of a message being played backwards cannot be percieved by the listener. If the message cannot be percieved, then the whole "subliminal message" hypothesis is dead in the water as it abandons both the meaning and the nature of the term...

REAL subliminal messages do have some effects on people (yes, they DO work in certain ways, but they don't have anywhere near the extent of influence that some people act like they do), but in the end, they haven't been shown to drive people to violence or sex.

It doesn't help that most of the people who use the term "subliminal message" have no idea what the fucking term encompasses anyway, and that most of the things people call "subliminal messages" aren't subliminal at all...

[Rick]

What is a real subliminal message anyway? Would it even be possible to achieve on a CD or is it more complex than that?

[CynicalSphere]

Originally posted by Rick
What is a real subliminal message anyway? Would it even be possible to achieve on a CD or is it more complex than that?

Well, I'm not entirely clear on what all types of subliminal messages there are (that work, anyway), but to be subliminal, the message has to enter the mind without being consciously acknowledged.

The only type that I know of that has been shown to work is to flash an image on a screen (during, say, a film or slideshow), but flash it for only a few milliseconds - so fast that the person cannot really conciously percieve it. This will affect the viewer in some way (movie theaters used to flash pictures of food like this before a movie began, and in some cases it made people think of food (or become hungry). Of course, theaters were forced to stop when they were found out. It has also been shown to slightly and temporarily change people's attitudes towards certain things (ie, they responded more negatively to a picture of a person when a picture of, say, a catastrophic event was flashed beforehand).

I'm not really certain how this particular type of subliminal message would be done on a CD, if it could at all. I'm not sure about other possible methods or even if they would work (such as messages being hidden or "buried" in the music), but I do know that a message that cannot be percieved at all cannot have a sumbliminal effect. Therefore, backwards messages do not work at all.

To my knowledge, subliminal effects do not have such an effect that they would make someone wig out and start carving up old ladies. I could be wrong on that, but at this point I really think that the effects of subliminal messages are sort of like the effects of hypnotism. They're not nearly as powerful in most cases as some people act like they are, and we're not certain that they even work on everyone (although they certainly do work frighteningly well on some people!).