Hidden message

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A hidden message is information that is not immediately noticeable, and that must be discovered or uncovered and interpreted before it can be known. Hidden messages include backwards audio messages, hidden visual messages and symbolic or cryptic codes such as a crossword or cipher. Although there are many legitimate examples of hidden messages created with techniques such as backmasking and steganography, many so-called hidden messages are merely fanciful imaginings or apophany.

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Description

The information in hidden messages is not immediately noticeable; it must be discovered or uncovered, and interpreted before it can be known. Hidden messages include backwards audio messages, hidden visual messages, and symbolic or cryptic codes such as a crossword or cipher. There are many legitimate examples of hidden messages, though many are imaginings.

Backward audio messages

A backward message in an audio recording is only fully apparent when the recording is played reversed. Some backward messages are produced by deliberate backmasking, while others are simply phonetic reversals resulting from random combinations of words. Backward messages may occur in various mediums, including music, video games, music videos, movies, and television shows.

Backmasking

Backmasking is a recording technique in which a message is recorded backwards onto a track that is meant to be played forwards. It was popularized by The Beatles, who used backward vocals and instrumentation on their 1966 album Revolver. The technique has also been used to censor words or phrases for "clean" releases of songs[ citation needed ].

Backmasking has been a controversial topic in the United States since the 1980s, when allegations of its use for Satanic purposes were made against prominent rock musicians, leading to record-burnings and proposed anti-backmasking legislation by state and federal governments. In debate are both the existence of backmasked Satanic messages and their purported ability to subliminally affect listeners.[ citation needed ]

Phonetic reversal

Certain phrases produce a different phrase when their phonemes are reversed—a process known as phonetic reversal. For example, "Kiss" backwards sounds like "sick", and so the title of Yoko Ono's "Kiss Kiss Kiss" sounds like "Sick Sick Sick" or "Six Six Six" backwards. Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust" [1] backwards was claimed that the chorus, when played in reverse, can be heard as "It's fun to smoke marijuana" [2] [1] or "start to smoke marijuana". [3] The Paul is dead phenomenon was started in part because a phonetic reversal of "Number nine" (the words were constantly repeated in Revolution 9) was interpreted as "Turn me on, dead man".

According to proponents of reverse speech, phonetic reversal occurs unknowingly during normal speech.

Visual messages

The word "FAKE" hidden within an AI-generated image of a naval battle Hidden message AI illusion.png
The word "FAKE" hidden within an AI-generated image of a naval battle

Hidden messages can be created in visual mediums with techniques such as hidden computer text and steganography.

In the 1980s, Coca-Cola released in South Australia an advertising poster featuring the reintroduced contour bottle, with a speech bubble, "Feel the Curves!!" An image hidden inside one of the ice cubes depicted an oral sex act. [4] Thousands of posters were distributed to hotels and bottle shops in Australia before the mistake was discovered by Coca-Cola management. The artist of the poster was fired and all the posters were recalled. [4] Rival PepsiCo had a similar accusation in 1990 when their promotional Pepsi Cool Cans was accused of having the word "sex" hidden in their design if two of their cans were placed atop each other. [5]

Various other messages have been claimed to exist in Disney movies, some of them risque, such as the well-known allegation of an erection showing on a priest in The Little Mermaid . [6] According to the Snopes website, one image "is clearly true [and] undeniably purposely inserted into the movie": a topless woman in two frames of The Rescuers . [7]

PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) had an antipathy towards PETCO, a pet food retailer in San Diego, regarding the purported mistreatment of live animals at their stores. When the San Diego Padres baseball team announced that the retailer had purchased naming rights to Petco Park stadium, PETA was unable to persuade the sports team to terminate the agreement. Later, PETA successfully purchased a commemorative display brick with what appears to be a complimentary message: "Break Open Your Cold Ones! Toast The Padres! Enjoy This Championship Organization!" However, if one takes the first letters of each word, the resulting acrostic reads "BOYCOTT PETCO". Neither PETCO nor the Padres have taken any action to remove the brick, stating that if someone walked by, they would not know it had anything to do with the PETA/PETCO feud. [8]

Secretive design language is widely used on web sites as Easter eggs within products as hidden features, such as In-N-Out Burger's secret menu or the new Norwegian passport design for security. [9]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Steganography</span> Hiding messages in other messages

Steganography is the practice of representing information within another message or physical object, in such a manner that the presence of the information is not evident to human inspection. In computing/electronic contexts, a computer file, message, image, or video is concealed within another file, message, image, or video. The word steganography comes from Greek steganographia, which combines the words steganós, meaning "covered or concealed", and -graphia meaning "writing".

James McDonald Vicary was a market researcher who pioneered the concept of subliminal advertising with an experiment in 1957, later determined to have been fraudulent. Vicary was unable to ever reproduce the results of his experiments.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">New Coke</span> 1985 reformulation of Coca-Cola

New Coke was the unofficial name of a reformulation of the soft drink Coca-Cola, introduced by The Coca-Cola Company in April, 1985. It was renamed Coke II in 1990, and discontinued in July 2002.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Coca-Cola Company</span> American multinational beverage corporation

The Coca-Cola Company is an American multinational corporation founded in 1892. It produces Coca-Cola. The drink industry company also manufactures, sells, and markets other non-alcoholic beverage concentrates and syrups, and alcoholic beverages. The company's stock is listed on the NYSE and is part of the DJIA and the S&P 500 and S&P 100 indexes.

Kleptography is the study of stealing information securely and subliminally. The term was introduced by Adam Young and Moti Yung in the Proceedings of Advances in Cryptology – Crypto '96. Kleptography is a subfield of cryptovirology and is a natural extension of the theory of subliminal channels that was pioneered by Gus Simmons while at Sandia National Laboratory. A kleptographic backdoor is synonymously referred to as an asymmetric backdoor. Kleptography encompasses secure and covert communications through cryptosystems and cryptographic protocols. This is reminiscent of, but not the same as steganography that studies covert communications through graphics, video, digital audio data, and so forth.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fire On High</span> 1976 single by Electric Light Orchestra

"Fire on High" is the opening instrumental track from the 1975 Electric Light Orchestra (ELO) album Face the Music.

<i>More Power to Ya</i> 1982 studio album by Petra

More Power to Ya is the fifth studio album of the Christian rock band, Petra. It was released in 1982. This was the first album to feature Louie Weaver as the official drummer. It also features the vocals of bassist Mark Kelly in the song "Disciple". The album climbed to number 3 on the Billboard Top Inspirational Albums chart.

"Snowblind" is a song by Styx that appears on the Paradise Theatre album released in 1981. The song is about the helplessness of cocaine addiction, alternating between slow, brooding verses and a faster, harder-edged chorus, representing the addict's cycle of highs and lows.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dr Pepper</span> Carbonated soft drink

Dr Pepper is a carbonated soft drink. It was created in the 1880s by pharmacist Charles Alderton in Waco, Texas, and first served around 1885. Dr Pepper was first nationally marketed in the United States in 1904. It is now also sold in Europe, Asia, North and South America. In Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, Dr Pepper is sold as an imported good. Variants include Diet Dr Pepper and, beginning in the 2000s, a line of additional flavors.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Reverse graffiti</span> Method of creating images on surfaces by removing dirt

Reverse graffiti is a method of creating temporary or semi-permanent images on walls or other surfaces by removing dirt from a surface. It can also be done by simply removing dirt with the fingertip from windows or other dirty surfaces, such as writing "wash me" on a dirty vehicle. Others, such as graffiti artist Moose, use a cloth or a high-power washer to remove dirt on a larger scale.

Phonetic reversal is the process of reversing the phonemes or phones of a word or phrase. When the reversal is identical to the original, the word or phrase is called a phonetic palindrome. Phonetic reversal is not entirely identical to backmasking, which is specifically the reversal of recorded sound. This is because pronunciation in speech causes a reversed diphthong to sound different in either direction, or differently articulate a consonant depending on where it lies in a word, hence creating an imperfect reversal.

Backmasking is a recording technique in which a message is recorded backward onto a track that is meant to be played forward. It is a deliberate process, whereas a message found through phonetic reversal may be unintentional.

Hail Satan, sometimes Latinized as Ave Satanas or Ave Satana, is an exclamation used by some Satanists to invoke the name of Satan in contexts ranging from sincere expression to comedy or satire. The Satanic Temple uses the phrase as a sincere expression of rational inquiry removed from supernaturalism and archaic tradition-based superstitions.

Product displacement is the removing of trademarked products from primarily visual media in order to avoid the payment of licensing fees, if the trademark owner objects, or if the broadcaster would prefer not to publicise a product for free, if the owners have not paid for it to be included in a programme.

While the effectiveness of subliminal messages is often overstated in popular culture, its history in television shows, movies, music and novels have long led many cultural idioms that persist today.

These are instances of subliminal messages that have led to controversy and occasionally legal allegations.

Subliminal stimuli are any sensory stimuli below an individual's threshold for conscious perception, in contrast to supraliminal stimuli.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pepsi Cool Cans</span> 1990 promotional cola cans

The Pepsi Cool Cans are a series of promotional cola cans produced in 1990 with four different designs, as part of a PepsiCo advertising campaign. The designs passed into folklore, particularly the one titled Neon, due to the belief that the word SEX was hidden in that design.

"In League with Satan" is the first song released by the English extreme metal band Venom. It was released on 19 April 1981 as a single with the B-side "Live Like an Angel" by Neat Records and later appeared on the band's first album, Welcome to Hell. The song has been cited as the first black metal song and is also often cited by critics who claim a connection between heavy metal and Satanism.

References

  1. 1 2 Bickel, Christopher (January 20, 2017). "It's Fun To Smoke Dust! Satanic Panic Preacher Gets Mashed-Up With Queen". Dangerous Minds. Retrieved May 1, 2017.
  2. Epley, N.; Keysar, B.; Van Boven, L.; Gilovich, T. (2004). "Perspective Taking as Egocentric Anchoring and Adjustment". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 87 (3): 327–339. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.87.3.327. PMID   15382983. S2CID   18087684.
  3. Goldstuck, Arthur (1991). The Rabbit in the Thorn Tree: Modern Myths and Urban Legends of South Africa. Penguin Group. p. 87. ISBN   0140148078.
  4. 1 2 "Risque Coca-Cola Poster". Snopes. 14 May 2011. Retrieved 31 May 2011.
  5. "'Sex' Seen on Pepsi Cans". 12 July 1990.
  6. Urban Legends Reference Pages: Disney (Disney Films)
  7. 'The Rescuers' Topless Scene : snopes.com
  8. Rovell, Darren "Secret Message Makes it Into New Park" ESPN.com 4/16/2004
  9. "How subliminal and hidden design messages can boost brand engagement". Mashable. 5 August 2015. Retrieved 21 May 2019.