I Just Got Here. Do I Have Any Subliminal Messages? by Mike Schmutter

I am beginning to suspect I've been brainwashed. Not that it really matters, though, because I have not yet done what I was brainwashed to do. And I don't plan to. On the other hand, I'm not exactly sure what it was I was brainwashed to do, because if I did it wouldn't be called brainwashed. But I suspect it has something to do with shopping.

And it's not even like I can blame anybody. I was the one who volunteered for the brainwashing study.

It all began one Thursday night, when I was sitting on the couch watching my favorite television program, which is called "Whatever Is On When I'm Sitting On The Couch", when I got a phone call from someone conducting a study. Recently I'm getting a lot of phone calls from strangers trying to sell me stuff, because they have no one else to call now that everyone in the country besides me is on the "Do Not Call" list. I myself am not on this list, because I am too lazy to register and I excuse it by saying that I am supporting our economy by taking these calls, even though I am not actually buying anything. So who knows what I'm supporting. Probably the phone industry.

So, as a result, anyone and everyone who is trying to sell something over the phone calls my number, often several times a day. It's getting so I don't even have time to watch my program. But this caller wasn't trying to sell me anything.

"I'm not trying to sell you anything," was one of the first things he told me.

I was very skeptical, because when a caller you don't know who does not have the wrong number tells you that he is not trying to sell you anything, the truth is that he is trying to sell you something, but he doesn't want you to hang up right away, because he is going to need a certain amount of phone time to convince you that you would be pretty stupid not to buy his product. Even if it means giving your credit card number over the phone to a complete stranger who cannot pronounce your name. So he told me he was taking a survey, which is phone solicitor code for, "I'm really really not trying to sell you anything; I'm just getting information from you so that I and some of my telemarketer friends can call you back later to sell you the products you just told me you liked."

The truth is that the call wasn't really much of a survey, either. He asked me what my favorite program was, and I told him, and he said that wasn't really what he was looking for. Then he asked me what type of shows I liked. So I told him I liked situational comedies, because I wanted to get back to watching my situational comedy, which I will not name here except to say that it involves six friends who spend a lot of time in a coffee house hogging the only couch there and often not even ordering anything, but the manager of the coffee house says nothing to them, because, let's face it, he's Gunther.

So, the entire survey being done at that point, the man asked me if I would like to be part of a test audience for a show they were producing. And what a coincidence - this show was also a situational comedy! So I said ok.

Two weeks later, I got a video tape in the mail. The instructions on the tape were that I had to watch it on precisely a certain day, so that the "survey" people could call me on the next day to ask for my opinions. It also said that this was a very special tape, in that it erased as it played, meaning I could not rewind or fast forward at any time, and I had to watch it all in one sitting. I should point out here that it's very hard to laugh at the jokes in a situation comedy when you are constantly afraid that you are going to accidentally hit the remote button or a telemarketer is going to call and you will have messed the whole thing up. And then the survey people will never call you again, because you can't follow simple directions. And you will be part of a negative-sounding statistic.

The tape came with two booklets, the first of which was to be filled out immediately before viewing the tape, and the second of which was to be viewed immediately afterward. The idea of the booklets was that, as a thank you for watching the tape, the survey place was going to have two drawings, in which I could win up to seventy-five dollars worth of grocery products!

The first, or "yellow" booklet, was not especially difficult to figure out. It basically gave lists of similar products by different companies, and asked which products of each category I would want if I won. For instance, they would give a list of different brands of soap pads, such as "Brillo", "S.O.S.", "Scotch-Brite", and "Store Brand", and the contestant would pick one (in this case, "Store Brand". You figure, once you're getting it for free, right?)

The second, or "green" booklet was exactly the same as the first booklet - same idea, same categories, and same products. This made me wonder: What exactly made them think I would change my mind in between filling out the first book and filling out the second? The sitcom? Not to mention that they seemed to be putting a lot more emphasis on this survey than on the actual show we were supposed to be rating.

The show itself involved a trio of single dads who have been friends since kindergarten. Apparently, they got together and decided to all get married at around the same time, all have one child who will be in the same grade as the other two children, and all get divorced. The jokes were not especially funny, even though the laugh track tried desperately to emphasize that they were by going off whenever one of the children said anything - often even before they said anything, because they're just so darn cute and that's funny, at least to the people who are related to the kids personally. I don't know who the target audience was for this show. I suspect that the guys decided to make the show together so they could broadcast it to their ex-wives. Although apparently they were not succeeding, because the show was filmed four years ago, and the kids are no longer cute. I tell you all of this because I have to tell somebody, and the survey guy who called the next day only asked me a total of maybe three questions about it before admitting that he'd never seen the program and moving on to my prize choices.

So let's put all of this together: I tell these people I like sitcoms and they conveniently come up with an old pilot whose stars are now too old for their parts, but, to thank me for rating this show which is obviously never going to air anyway, they want to give me a chance in two drawings of the same products, but I have to pick one set of products immediately after I watch the show.

Which raises the question: Was this a study in subliminal advertising? Was this whole "sitcom" thing a front so that I would not be aware that they were actually flashing my subconscious with images of products throughout the show? If that was it, they should have flashed an image that read, "There are no subliminal messages on this tape," because I was awfully self-conscious while filling out the second booklet. I was trying very hard to want different products, because I didn't want to mess up their whole statistic just because I was aware of what was happening, but I honestly just wanted the same things as before. So the truth is I have no idea whether the subliminal cues even worked.

So basically, I'm writing to warn you of the dangers of participating in these studies, just in case they do work. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have an overwhelming urge to personally call the telemarketers and order things they're not even selling yet.