Read this back in '92 or thereabouts. Utter, as they say, bollocks.

Oh sure, some advertising creatives may have tried to sneak something in somewhere, and during the 50s there were sufficient attempts at inserting frames into motion pictures that laws were enacted against this sort of thing.

But a) the techniques do not actually work, and b) the evidence that Wilson Key finds are as imaginary as the lyrics found by playing rock LPs backwards (using the ol' belt twist) during the great satanic cult scare of the early 80s.

See, here's the thing. There is no magic decoder in the subconsious mind that the conscious mind does not have access to. If the conscious mind cannot discern hidden lyrics because they are sung backwards, or hidden images that are stylized beyond recognition or hidden in a lot of visual noise, then the subconscious mind can't do it either.

Interestingly, the conscious mind's incredible ability to perceive words and images when surrounded by high-visual noise is being actively studied in attempts to differentiate between human and computer-driven users (e.g. in the "captcha" arms race). ( )

In fact, this book seduced me when I first read it. I was seeing subliminal messages everywhere. I think I completely bought it all until one day, looking out of a plane window my brain, now trained to see these subversively scribed messages of sexuality, imagined the word "sex" in the clouds below me.

"Ok. Now I get it", I thought to myself. ( )