Gawker
Walking westward on Prince St. between Mulberry and Mott Streets, I heard a woman's voice in my head whispering, "Who's there? Who's there?" Not like I "heard" a woman's voice like when I wear flared jeans with skinny shoes and I "hear" a woman's voice in my head say, "Wait, you've got to be kidding?" but like an actual woman's voice in my head. This usually means I've had a psychotic break.
But! Then I noticed that, above a billboard for some A&E show called Paranormal State were some speakers that looked like hypersonic sound beams, a device which uses your skull as a speaker—that is, it transmits soundwaves that resonate against whatever surface they hit.
So when they hit your head, it sounds like the call is coming from the inside the brain-house.
The billboard says 73% of Americans believe and I'm assuming that that means 73% of Americans believe in ghosts. So if that's true, why try to convert the skeptical/not crazy 27% by beaming voices into their heads? That's just greedy. Also it leads to a lingering sense of serious mental violation. How soon will it be until in addition to the Do Not Call list, we'll have a Do Not Beam Commercial Messages Into My Head list?
Comments
The grinning man in my navel says they're full of shit.
fucking creepy. beaming commercials into your brain should definitely be illegal. how do they get away with this?
Is Our Government Doing Enough to Monitor the Nation's Paranoid Schizophrenics?
ihad a broken ankle, was stuck on the couch in the w.village. an entire U2 concert was broadcast to a molar filling.
i kinda hate U2, but i was hopped up on goofballs for the pain, so it wasn't too bad.
Look for the American Apparel ads beamed directly into your penis.
(sigh) These technological advances make it so hard to keep up with the times. Can't we just go back to the days of billboards featuring American Apparel models fingering themselves?
Warren Ellis has gone into advertising. We are so fucked.
Damn, Jennifer Love Hewitt goes all out to advertise.
I was in The Hague once and they had this outdoor art exhibit set up. One of the "pieces" was two rows of trees. When you walked between them, strange laughter would follow you. There were male voices, female voices, children's voices, all kinds of laughing. It was so ridiculously unsettling.
Then I looked out across the little pond and could make out the roof of the International Criminal Court. Milosevic was being tried when I was there.
I stood there looking at it while the trees laughed ominously at me.
Very strange.
Is this the same lady's voice that told you to move to London?
Ooh. Subliminal knock-knock jokes!
Now I have a great excuse to go downtown. And an even better one to buy some hypersonic sound beams.
Yes, Grandma, I predict an angel telling you to change your will very, very soon.
WOW! This is like the TV sets in Halloween III that set off the masks. I for one will freak out if I hear, over and over in my head, "20 more days to Christmas Eve, christmas eve, christmas eve!"
@mitchel_stevens: If Transmet is coming true, cancer-free cigarettes may be in the future. A beautiful, smoky future.
Why didn't momo predict this?
This is the most FUCKED FUCKED up think I've heard in a LONG time.
Josh, I don't know how to break this to you, but those things on the roof? They're just air ducts.
Which means the voice in your head must have come from a ... well, you know.
Either that, or it came from the microphones the advertisers implanted in your inner ears while you were sleeping.
So it isn't really my fault I danced naked through the streets of Montclair and then let the women's crew team run a train on me?!?
If this technology existed back when I was in college, it might explain a lot of my choices.
how soon before someone runs screaming into traffic because they think they've finally gone completely batshit?
"Whoah, a psychotic break. Well it's finally happened. Hmmph. I always thought it would be more DRAMATIC."
This is like the time Leo Burnett tatooed "They're Grrreat!" on my perineum.
@adminslave:
i'm all for the digi-cam shades.
Didn't I hear that you were moving to London to make a go at it as a woman?
@collegecallgirl: The Tranny Reclamation Riots destroyed all that advertising shit.
Damn! Mystery has exclusive iCyrano installation contracts with Hard Rock Cafes nationwide.
I imagine the creative brainiacs who came up with this idea don't realize that about 10% of New York City pedestrians are marginally medicated paranoid schizophrenics who can barely handle stimulation like blinking traffic lights. I can't wait until they start reacting en masse to REAL fakes voices in their heads. It'll make the zombie invasion look like your average rush hour.
Where's Duffy to rip into this one?
Sound beams being transported into your head??? Honestly, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean we're not all out to get you...
@LolCait: Congratulations. You're the first person in the history of everything to start a story with the phrase, "I was in The Hague once ..."
Hey, let's replace the recording with "don't be a douche, don't be a douche...."
@collegecallgirl: I would have somehow added cocaine and ass into it.
At least it didn't say "I'm going to the gym in 26 minutes."
As usual Matt Lauer and the today show should cover this in about 10 days.
Jeeze. Relax, people. Nothing a tinfoil hat can't handle.
Once, whacked out on Oxycontin, I could hear Heart's 'Barracuda' coming up from the floor, loud and clear.
I then spent the remainder of the night banging on said floor and trying to avoid getting tangled up in the black tentacles growing out of my furniture.
Also: anyone want to buy some leftover Oxycontin? Shit is a bad trip.
73%? Sigh. James Randi for president!
Nothing to fear until you start hearing a woman whispering from your catbag. Then it's time to hit the rubber room.
This is Jesus, Kent, and you've been a very naughty boy!
@billiejeanismylover: It's probably already happened but the powers that be know how to cover it up.
That is soooo f*cked up I can't get over it!
@KarenUhOh: And the frowning sprite in my pocket who shouts, "Who's frying bologna?!" says they're nuts.
@TheBigDoggy: Could just be an echo effect. (Helloooo, hellooo, hellooooooo)
How the hell is this not a huge liability risk? What happens if this causes an actual schizophrenic to flip out, have an episode, and hurt someone?
"Didn't you consider this a possibility when you set the ad up?"
"We didn't think it would cause a schizophrenic episode."
"It IS a schizophrenic episode. HOW DID YOU NOT THINK OF THAT?"
@JojoSaysNo: I like you.
So, 73% believe, and this billboard shows that they're believing utter nonsense. See? It's not a ghost, it's a stupid marketing gimmick. Glad we got that cleared up. Next!
@LolCait
Creepy. Who knew a Gawker comment could make your hair stand on end?
I know this technology; these are Audio Spotlight devices, manufactured by Holosonics (www.holosonics.com). It's a scaled up version of the project that was done in book stores for Court TV:
[holosonics.com]
@TedSez: That's exactly what I was thinking. Now, the billboard needs to shoot incredibly powerful laser beams.
Something went terribly awry and someone in marketing is SO fired. Those messages were supposed to lure passerby to the psychic on the corner, who will then direct the consumer to the proper nearest American Apparel location. Whom does a Marketing Director have to fuck around here to get some cooperation? Sheesh!
Probably 73% of Americans believe in Jesus, too.
I swear to DOG this shit just happened to me at the corner of Prince & Mulberry. It was a total bad-touch on the brain. If I hadn't read this post at work before heading home (inadvertently past this demonic billboard) I would've been seriously freaked. Scared my ass pretty good anyway.
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Yipes! It's a test, isn't it? A test secretly sponsored by the CIA. Right? Because otherwise this has got to be illegal on some level. And if it isn't, it should be.
So, Xtianrut is the only one here to have encountered this? Anyone else?
Sign me up for the do-not-skullfuck list, please!
"I'm making my LUNCH."
It's a shame that the author has completely misconstrued the technology and that noone has taken the time to research it nor explain it. The speaker generates a narrow beam of ultrasound frequencies, not unlike a light beam, that are inaudible by themselves but can be heard when they interact with /*air*/, which converts the high frequencies to lower frequencies humans can hear.
ULTRASONIC sound actually /*reflects*/ off of any solid surface, not make it resonate. So this has nothing to do with your skull, but rather normal safe sound which is transmitted on a carrier frequency which has both directionality and locality.
Using normal speakers, to achieve the same effect, you'd keep the neighborhood up all night. Instead, even the tenant just below the units hears absolutely nothing. And once you cross Mulberry walking westbound, you hear nothing. And on the south side of Prince, you hear nothing.
I'm equally disappointed to see all the people in this virtual blogland jump to crazy alarmist conclusions before actually going to visit the location and judge for themselves.
THIS JUST HAPPENED TO ME TONIGHT. I heard the whispers on Prince btw Mott and Mulberry. North side, walking eastbound. The ridiculous part is is that I think it's totally random, so when you (for example), take your friend back an hour later to the same spot to show him the whisper, nothing happens, and you look even MORE like a lunatic than even the five minutes before when you were talking about a whispering wall.
I just took a walk over there (I live just a few blocks south on Broome) and heard nothing. I didn't even see the speakers. :(
@JPF321: Okay so I went to judge for myself! I went down Prince Street and guess what? That thing was CRAZY. DID NOT LIKE IT.
@JPF321: It's irrelevant how it works. It's just a ridiculous, disturbing, over-the-top way to promote a TV show.
This is what happens when engineers/marketers get ahead of attorneys. I can't imagine their legal dept signing off on this-- seems like a trauma suit waiting to happen. (or maybe just a favorable dearth of research and case law...it sounds new-ish.)
All I know is, the human body was not designed to take in sound that way. It was designed to echolocate, like any other species.