6 Brainwashing Techniques They're Using On You Right Now

Full Article - Cracked.com

#6. Chanting Slogans -- Every cult leader, drill sergeant, self-help guru and politician knows that if you want to quiet all of those pesky doubting thoughts in a crowd, get them to chant a repetitive phrase or slogan. Those are referred to as thought-stopping techniques, because for better or worse, they do exactly that.

#5. Slipping Bullshit Into Your Subconscious -- The rise of the internet news portal has given birth to a whole new, sly technique of bullshit insertion. What They (and from here on, "They" with a capital T means anyone who draws a paycheck by manipulating your opinion) have figured out is that most of you don't read the stories, you just browse the headlines. And there's a way to exploit that, based on how the brain stores memories.

#4. Controlling What You Watch and Read -- Restriction of reading and/or viewing material is common to pretty much every cult. Here on the internet, we've all heard horror stories about Scientology, which goes as far as filtering members' internet access. Obviously the idea is to insulate the members from any opposing points of view, to keep them marching in line.

#3. Keeping You In Line With Shame -- I won several formal debates in college using my patented technique of simply repeating my opponent's argument in a high-pitched, mocking tone while wiggling my fingers in the air. There really is no defense. They call this the appeal to rididcule fallacy. You can thank evolution for that. Way back when humans started forming groups and tribes, social status was everything. It's what guaranteed you food, protection and ladies (that is, a chance to pass on your genes). Mockery developed as a "conformity enforcer" to keep people in line.

#2. Black and White Choices -- Listen to an argument between your friends. Any argument. Listen to one guy say John McCain is a Fascist, while his opponent says Barack Obama is a Communist. Watch as even fans of the same football team bitterly divide themselves over whether the new quarterback is going to be "awesome" or "garbage."
Never anything in between. Everyone is a friend or enemy, every band either rules or sucks, black and white, nothing in the middle. They (capital T) love this, because They can convince you that you must choose either their way, or the most utterly retarded option on the opposite extreme.

#1. "Us vs. Them" -- Sure, we know about the obvious examples, they're written across the history books in blood and bullet holes. Racism, genocide, horrifying caricatures on propaganda posters. But They have figured out that the same technique that works so well for getting people whipped into a murderous apocalyptic frenzy, can be used sell you cars, or hamburgers, or computers.

Mind Control by Cell Phone

Scientific American

Brainwaves change with a healthy person's conscious and unconscious mental activity and state of arousal. But scientists can do more with brainwaves than just listen in on the brain at work-they can selectively control brain function by transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). This technique uses powerful pulses of electromagnetic radiation beamed into a person's brain to jam or excite particular brain circuits.

Although a cell phone is much less powerful than TMS, the question still remains: Could the electrical signals coming from a phone affect certain brainwaves operating in resonance with cell phone transmission frequencies? After all, the caller's cerebral cortex is just centimeters away from radiation broadcast from the phone's antenna. Two studies provide some revealing news.

The first, led by Rodney Croft, of the Brain Science Institute, Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia, tested whether cell phone transmissions could alter a person's brainwaves. The researchers monitored the brainwaves of 120 healthy men and women while a Nokia 6110 cell phone—one of the most popular cell phones in the world—was strapped to their head. A computer controlled the phone's transmissions in a double-blind experimental design, which meant that neither the test subject nor researchers knew whether the cell phone was transmitting or idle while EEG data were collected. The data showed that when the cell phone was transmitting, the power of a characteristic brain-wave pattern called alpha waves in the person's brain was boosted significantly. The increased alpha wave activity was greatest in brain tissue directly beneath to the cell phone, strengthening the case that the phone was responsible for the observed effect.

Alpha Waves of Brain

Alpha waves fluctuate at a rate of eight to 12 cycles per second (Hertz). These brainwaves reflect a person's state of arousal and attention. Alpha waves are generally regarded as an indicator of reduced mental effort, "cortical idling" or mind wandering. But this conventional view is perhaps an oversimplification. Croft, for example, argues that the alpha wave is really regulating the shift of attention between external and internal inputs. Alpha waves increase in power when a person shifts his or her consciousness of the external world to internal thoughts; they also are the key brainwave signatures of sleep.

Cell Phone Insomnia

If cell phone signals boost a person's alpha waves, does this nudge them subliminally into an altered state of consciousness or have any effect at all on the workings of their mind that can be observed in a person's behavior? In the second study, James Horne and colleagues at the Loughborough University Sleep Research Centre in England devised an experiment to test this question. The result was surprising. Not only could the cell phone signals alter a person's behavior during the call, the effects of the disrupted brain-wave patterns continued long after the phone was switched off.