Yes, I was kind of hoping you'd pick up on that. Now finish the paragraph.

Assume she's aware.

Nah, I love doing "happy-place" age regression hypnosis, fun as hell and educational for them, no charge. It takes like 15 minutes and usually gets a very emotional reaction. I do it for the same reasons I make video games; to share a cool experience with someone. I have yet to have someone cry and hug me and tell me they'll never forget me over a video game I made, but it's probably just a matter of time. Just because someone is speaking "hypnotically" doesn't instantly mean their motives are bad. If a person knows how to communicate effectively and doesn't on purpose, they aren't being good, they're just being stupid.

Now, hypnotizing the same person over and over is no fun, because I've gotten all the experience I can from them and they've become so conditioned that it's too easy. Now say they enjoy it so much they just want to stay in a blissful peaceful state, and they're willing to do my chores or something if every time they obey my suggestions they feel really good. Explain how this, in and of itself, is bad. Yes, advertisers and mass-media talk to us in subliminal ways, but that's how most communication is done anyway. And if you know anything about how the subconscious processes info, you know it ignores negatives, so trying to get people to not think like this is a losing battle. Teach people how to manage their lives properly (ie: make a positive change), and what the commercials say won't matter anymore.

Guy has a hypnotism interest that kicks up every few years, finally does something about it and gets some training and certification? Is this going to be one of those straight-to-video dealies? I'm not going to be played by Kirk Cameron, am I?

I didn't know you were a hypnotist. I was turning it into a metaphor.

You're right, it doesn't. The opposite is also true. It doesn't instantly mean their motives are good either. There are groups from both sides. There are folks like David Allen, Stephen Covey and Anthony Robbins who seem genuine and are very good. However, there are folks like Barack Obama and Glenn Beck that I can't be so sure about their good intentions, yet they have a larger audience. The things they say are hypnotic, and you can easily tell from the chanting in Obama's campaigns. "Yes we can! Yes we can!" (creepy)
Yes we can... what?
Not to mention the FOX News rallies and insane Glenn Beck support.

I think hypnotism, when it's called hypnotism and the person being hypnotized is aware that it is hypnotism, is fantastic. It's something I was very interested in for a while. However, that interest turned dark when I realized it was everywhere and that people were falling for it, especially people very close to me.

I don't find that is true, and I have people around me who are examples of this. When people say things like "I can't", which is a negative, it gets ingrained in their mind that they cannot do those things. "I can't go without my coffee. I can't stop smoking. I can't find a job.", etc. These things are hypnotic in a sense as well. If you repeat them as mantras, you continually make copies in your mind and, if it becomes severe enough, you will believe them to a point where you consider it useless to even try to do those things... because you cannot do them. If it's really bad, and someone tries to tell you otherwise, you may get upset and angry at them even though they're offering sound advice. They know that you really can find a job, even though you're claiming you cannot.

As I mentioned, the scenario you explained is not bad. It is good, and that is proper usage of NLP, really. What I don't agree with is that mass-media talk is how communication is done. We don't have intro animations when we talk to each other, we don't have musical scores inducing the emotion of fear, and we don't speak to each other with the tones and wording used. It's designed as one big advertisement, and a fair portion of what they're selling is lies, fear, and greed. I'm not saying that every single person who watches it is affected by it at the highest level, but I am saying that it is ridiculous that we allow this to continue. Other than the guy selling it, who really wants it? It's just a bunch of hypnotic garbage, but we're not told it's hypnotic ahead of time of course.

True. A lot of what I'm saying is "big picture" stuff and not personal. I do believe the if we all were trained to make positive change everything that I'm talking about would eventually just go away because it would be ineffective... but I don't think that it's going to be easy with all the shit out there trying to pull people in the opposite direction.

Tsk. Someone's not reading my Facebook updates.

Neither is true, honestly. It's like saying "Someone who reads isn't bad. Sometimes, the opposite is true." It's a non-point. You might as well just say "Some people are bad", but don't expect awards for your insight.

Dwelling on it constantly makes it conscious too, and you can't tell me there aren't positive suggestions mixed in ("I need my coffee", "I need my cigarette", etc). This is why people use reverse psychology, or advise that you don't speak in negatives to children (ever tell a kid "Don't touch that!", only to have them touch it two seconds later and then tell you "I dunno ..." when you ask why they did it?)

Even when talking to someone face to face, a good 80% of your communication is subconscious. Don't hate the media guys just because they know how to do their jobs. What they're saying might be bad, taken on a case-by-case basis. How they're saying it ... well, if they didn't sell their message they way they do, they wouldn't be doing their jobs.

There was a list of things! It filled up a whole speech!

Anyway. Here's a real pepsi logo:
{"name":"dlb-pepsibloat.jpg","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/e\/e\/ee7cd81803ba0a13bdd62540bb531f17.jpg","w":550,"h":388,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/e\/e\/ee7cd81803ba0a13bdd62540bb531f17"}

[edit]
"I have a dream..."
"That's a dumb thing to say! What was your dream!? Goh! That's senseless mind control!"

It's profitable, and that's as much the fault of the buyers as the sellers. if they didn't do it, they'd go out of business, honestly. Remember the quote about the universe and human stupidity? If you got in a tizzy over everything stupid people fell for, you'd never get out of bed in the morning.

Oh come on lets just do the fight club idea... We'll bring world peace through underground fights and blowing up credit buildings... I'll call Brad

Ring ring...
"Hello."
"Hey Brad, It's me.  We're going live and making it real."
"What?  Who the fuck is this?"
"Come on Brad it's me."
"Is this the asshole that knocked me off my motorcycle?  I'm going kick your ass!"
"Uh... Uh....."
"I am going to..." Click

Ok... I think we're on our own... We'll have to do it without Brad.

Who's in?

Hey wait... I'm getting a call... It's Brad

"Hey Brad what's up?"
"You dumb ass mother fucker! Yeah I know who you are now! You wrecked my bike and
 now I'm coming down there to kick your fucking ass.  I'm going..."
"Yeah!  Yes!"
"... beat your fucking brains in! Do you"
"Alright... I'll let everyone know."
"... hear me? Do you hear me!?!?  I'm gonna fuck you up..."
"Yes! Awesome! Be there at 8pm ok..." Click

Ok... I think Brad is in too...

I can't seem to think of a way to say that positively. Anyone?

So you have a problem with popular media, etc., but you don't have a problem with Facebook? Now I know you're a fraud. Facebook is the biggest spam engine on the planet right now. Almost everyone trusts it and have no idea just how accessible their information is. Facebook applications routinely SPEAK FOR USERS. <so-and-so> sent you X! Respond back with a Y! Meanwhile, <so-and-so> only "installed" some application that took it upon itself to spam every friend <so-and-so> has in <so-and-so>'s name. I think I've installed one third party Facebook application when I first started using it. I immediately identified how STUPID they were and never again installed one. I also quickly identified that it wasn't friends sending me things at all, but third party applications claiming to be acting on the behalf of friends when in reality they aren't.

I'm not sure what that was all about, but I liked it. Well done.

Humans were created by nature... By a natural process. So by being a product of nature they are natural. All products of humans are also natural.

So, Tuesday and December are natural, because they were created by a being that was created by nature and is natural.

Hah.

Huh? Didn't I say I had a problem with facebook?
I even said I couldn't find the "BLOCK ALL APPLICATIONS" button, but you quoted that and responded about applications speaking for you. Why do you think I want to block them? Ahhh!

You apparently totally misunderstand the difference between reality and fiction. Fiction is just thought up and written down, reality exists. An apple is in reality, a Tuesday is fictional, even if it is fiction that almost all humans are aware of. If an alien came down to Earth and wiped out all of civilization, all of the technologies and calendars and fictional things, then Tuesday's gone. Gone, gone, gone... never to be heard of again. The apple still exists.

The only reality of time is the position of the entity telling the time relative to it's surroundings -- the Earth, Sun, Moon and Stars.

And that's right, I said almost all humans are aware of Tuesday. Many groups do not have the same 7 days. I'm not being existential, because Tuesday really doesn't exist for some people. It's just an idea... but thanks for playing the Pot card again just because you don't get it.

The expression can be negative as long as individual words aren't negations. It's why when you tell someone "Don't think about itching" over and over, they start itching. Conscious mind accepts it, because it seems smart. Subconscious discards the "don't", assumes everything else is okay since the conscious approved it, and away they scratch.

Pretty sure we started counting from his birth, not his death. Just saying ...

Didn't you hear? Every year is one day, and every day is Birthday. It just passed legislation, though I understand it's being appealed by Pradeepto and the Mad Hatter ...

Like I said in my last post, 2009 is a fictional representation of time. 2009 doesn't truly exist as time, it is only an aspect of the Gregorian calendar (and related calendars) which dates it as such. The point is that it was designed, and I think it was designed to serve a purpose further than simply telling when certain events and things happened. It was designed from a fictional idea and became a very contagious one indeed.
We don't need this at all. We can come up with any fiction we choose. However, I would like to use something that instead makes sense, such as the Moon and the stars to tell time. You can figure out what the moon/star time is from the Gregorian calendar, but the terms, order and numbering systems used in the Gregorian calendar are what most people are familiar with. They are not familiar with the real earth/star/moon time, but with the (mostly) nonrepresentational fiction instead.

I'm only spreading awareness of this idea and looking for criticism. I'm getting lots of the same bad criticism that has nothing to do with the idea itself, which is sort of good -- it proves nothing. I'm not suggesting we all switch to some other calendar tomorrow. I think the idea will become more popular in the near future, though.

Under a new calendar we would still say that Jesus was born 2004 years ago, but we would would not say that it is 2004.