Care to provide a link? I'm sick of being told by my pot-smoking friends that smoking (weed) isn't bad for you. I try to tell them that any smoke being inhaled into the lungs is bad, but they refuse to believe it without concrete evidence that pot is bad...

Heh; you see NLP techniques friggin' everywhere once you learn it yourself. Advertisers are shameless.

Anyway, you're still nuts, Derezo.

EDIT: Just Googled the Pepsi logo since I didn't know it changed. Um, this has what to do with Obama? It's just a dumb change, I don't get it ...

Every time I see you I wonder why you're so mean looking and have a band-aid on your face.

Derezo, I think your wonderful x

Did you ever look at the back of a dollar bill....on weeeeeed

Do you have evidence to back that up? Why is my explanation not sufficient to explain the phenomenon?

Looks to me as if you're trying to create an association between the Gregorian calendar and the Matrix. The first is an albeit arbitrary standard that nearly everyone in the world follows, creating an efficient means to communicate and boosting productivity. The second is an extremely negative image most of us are familiar with because of the success of the film it came from. I'd like to suggest that you yourself are using mind games to manipulate people into disliking the calendar, and you're doing this because you, for reasons that are personal and perfectly acceptable, don't like it. If your association works, then every time someone sees a date on TV, in a newspaper, on a shop's seasonal opening hours or anywhere else, that person will be reminded that they live in the 'Matrix' - a horrible, soulless system they have no control over. What should they then do? Shirk the calendar, harm productivity, lose their jobs, lose their income, lose their friends, feel powerless to do anything about it?

(In reality, very few people will let this happen. At worst, they'll notice the very beginnings of such a thing, rationalise it back to what you said, and stop taking you seriously, hence the 'crazy' accusations. People are actually more aware of the world around them than you give credit for. They just don't bother thinking about stuff like this unless it becomes a problem.)

If you are using these mind games deliberately, then you are a sly old fox but you can't fool me, wink.

If you did it by accident, then perhaps you should cut the world a little slack and accept that, while I'm sure advertisers do study this and consciously use it for their own gain, it's actually something we all do naturally, usually for good causes, and it's much more important that people merely have good intentions, as I said before?

Incidentally, I'm fairly sure most people, no matter how common or chavvy, dislike adverts. On that point, you're preaching to the converted.

What the hell does the Pepsi logo have to do with Obama's logo? The only similarity is the colors, vaguely, and the fact that it's a circle (which was Pepsi's idea first).

Another point on the Pepsi thing by the way - no one would respond to the advertising tactics if they fundamentally didn't like Pepsi, would they? The net effect of the similarity is that more people are doing something they enjoy. It's not so immoral after all.

Shrinking? I think Bruce Ben Kenobi made Derezo's brain explode.

I don't know, but I'd love to find out! I'm pretty sure once everyone is aware of this stuff we'll have real progress, because it will all be eliminated. No more officials, no more lies and deception, harmony with nature, and time will be different. Don't get me wrong though, I don't think that this will happen without billions of people dying. The infection that's causing this crap is designed to be suicidal. It's the cheats and the suckers again, the cheats will cause their own demise.

I've never truly been "normal". I've always felt something was seriously wrong here, I just never knew what it was. It just happened that when I got into marijuana, a possible answer came into my awareness through experiences. Apparently you all think I just got brain damage, and it's a nice cover, but doesn't prove it wrong at all, even if it is true and my brain is 98% tumor. Afterall, Einstein's brain was unique in that the area responsible for mathematics had overtaken an area responsible for language. Does that mean his thoughts were wrong because they were formed with a brain that was different? How does your pot head / brain damage theory disprove these ideas?

Your explanation is that everyone is uncreative and thinks of the same tool every time because of common thought? How is that any better of an explanation?
There are hundreds of these little tests, like I said. You can find them all over the Internet. There's also stuff like the spinning girl -- is she spinning left or right? Ahh! -- or other illusions. These things work because of the way that our brains work, and there is plenty of evidence for that. It's not unexplainable. Videos like this one, or this one tell us a lot about how these things work. It's more complicated than "everyone thinks the same, so that's why it works". People do think differently. Saying that everyone just picks the color red for hammers or .. actually, I'm not sure what you're even suggesting. Why is even the color of the hammer specifically disproportionate in choice?
It's not "red hammer or X, or Y, or Z." It's 98% red hammer, 2% unknown. (though 48% of statistics are made up on the spot)

I'm not sure which part is considered crazy or why. I'd love to be shown what is wrong and why. Opinions are nice, but there's nothing to back that up.
Is it that the king of Catholics doesn't wear a sun crown, or that he doesn't hold a dead savior on a stick in front of the masses, as depicted in the photo evidence? Or do you mean "that's normal", and thinking of it as inappropriate is considered "crazy" just because "he's the pope"?

I'd love to hear about your mind game theory. Where was there a mind game? And if you're aware of the mind game, why not prove it wrong by solving it and winning the game?

The film does discuss things of this nature, but The Matrix in The Matrix is not The Matrix of reality (AFAIK) -- even if a Near Earth Object saving the day is in music prior to the movie and popular legends about "Nibiru", "Planet X", or the "repeating catastrophic disaster" theories... it's not what I'm proposing. I'm proposing the calendar causes us to be locked into a certain mindset, and have seen nothing to disprove that or even anyone saying that is incorrect. In fact, I would say that it is absolutely crazy to think that the calendar used does not alter reality -- whether this calendar or another calendar. If we all switched to the old 360 day jewish calendar we would see massive changes in psychology just the same.

Awareness of it and the adoption of a new system solves the problem. You don't immediately leave the matrix just by seeing a 13 moon calendar, just like you don't enter the Matrix just by seeing a Gregorian calendar. It's a mindset that's been developed over time and can be cured and an immunity can be built up, but it's something you have to want to do.. and I'm not even saying that you should do it. I'm saying that I feel I am just aware of it.

I think that it's akin to the story of the boiling frog. If you drop a frog in boiling water, it will hop out immediately. However, if you put the frog in warm water and slowly bring it to a boil, he won't realize the water is getting hotter and will die. This is a problem, but once it becomes a problem large enough for everyone to recognize (which I would say that it's showing promise of reaching that point with the year 2000 and 2012 nonsense), it will be too late for most.

I can provide little proof for this that I have readily available... I'm not going to upload an audio book, or copy out some of the books that I have. If you do think I'm wrong you should be able to tell me why you think that, rather than just asking for more proof, saying I'm playing mind games, calling the idea crazy, or whatever other nonsense. If I told you that wood was really made up of crystallized meth, you might quote "no it's not, wood is an organic material; in the strict sense wood is produced as secondary xylem in the stems of trees (and other woody plants)." and provide a link to wikipedia... but then, that's easy and what I'm talking about isn't so easy to grasp.

This becomes like describing a color, or a flavour, or another experience. I'm glad it's not so easily disproven though Nobody here has ever said "no, that's incorrect. Joe said that over here and they proved him wrong over here by showing that the calendar was a collaborative work mostly based on astronomy and that's why there are the 12 zodiac signs and 12 months. There's also this study which shows most people are immune to thoughts", or some other kind of proof that exists. Instead I get "You're just a crazy pot head!"

Which is why I'm fine with that response. It just seems to me that it's a cop out, and little else, which is acceptable for showing that it is a difficult problem. These words and these ideas are not seen as incorrect, but they are seen as crazy (by those who think they're crazy, of course).

I need a spiritual guru, not a psychiatrist (though a good psychologist might be able to help )

I dislike the common cold, but I can still catch it.

I must have missed the 'theory' in the volumes of all this jibber-jabber. Yes, the subconscious mind operates on pattern recognition, big f**king shock. The calendar doesn't "enslave" anyone; you can go invent your own calendar for all the effect it has on your life. Maybe I should make a one-day calendar so every day is my birthday and I can live into the quintuple-digits. Whoopie.

Fun example: I hypnotize someone into being completely happy and satisfied doing what I tell them for the rest of their lives. Would require the occasional reinforcement, but I could do it. Now you try to sell them on this "real progress" of yours as an improvement, that she has a problem you need to "eliminate".

I haven't read The Brothers Grimm stories in many years, but this isn't so much a fairy tale, or a belief. It's an observation and an idea, of course based on many other observations and ideas. I think there will be an event in our near future that everyone will cause everyone to say "We can't allow this to happen again."
And everything will change.

Indeed

That's more less what we're currently in

She may very well not have a problem, and nor do most of you or even me right now. It's where this is heading, in a visible trend, that is the problem. Just take a look at the Canadian and American governments. They do not work properly, and are headed in a very bad direction.