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Mar 19, 2010 
The nothing-thumpers
By Dan Popp
“By the pricking of my thumbs
Something wicked this way comes.”
— Shakespeare (Macbeth)
I saw something disturbing today. It’s a short video designed for the web. It uses no spoken language, just graphics and pulsating music . .
PERCENTAGES! NUMBERS! MUSIC! BELIEVE!
THUMP! THUMP! THUMP! THUMP! . .
We’ll go around your mental defenses. We won’t try to persuade you with logic, with that old-fashioned “features and benefits” song-and-dance. We won’t even appeal to your emotions. We’ll just mesmerize you. You’ll never know how you came to be one of us. Why, you’ve just always believed this.
Thump, Thump, Thump, Thump,
Believe, Believe, Believe, Believe.
We’re just like you.
Exactly like you.
We are you.
And we believe.
Is this video a harmless piece of fluff, or an attack on reason? Doesn’t it ambush the presumption that we are rational people who make rational decisions? Do its creators believe that you’re nothing but an animal, and that your primeval limbic system will respond so powerfully to the beat and the flashing lights that it will render your more-evolved brain a quivering blob of goo?
Thump, Thump, Thump, Thump . .
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