Banes at 6:29AM, May 29, 2022

Thanks, you guys - it's true; memory manipulation/implanting is chilling for sure. I didn't even think of the comedic angle from movies like The Hangover, either. Much appreciated food for thought, you all!

PaulEberhardt at 12:14PM, May 28, 2022

Forgot to mention: the students in question are 16-18 years old. Not the kind, normally, to take much crap from grown-ups any more. That's what makes it so eerie. This same suggestion trick also works rather too well for comfort with grown-ups I met on a party the night before (on whom I used to play it for laughs and giggles at an earlier stage of my life).

PaulEberhardt at 11:56AM, May 28, 2022

In a class it might be easier to do this than elsewhere, because as a teacher I'm a person with some authority and apart from manipulating them into remembering a dog that isn't there I can also rely on the peer pressure that automatically sets in. Still, it's unsettling how well it works, as they invariably find out when I tell them. Dang it, it secretly unsettles me too, every time. May I add: afterwards, those select few who dared tell me to my face that there is in fact no dog get a reward like no English homework for one afternoon. I think that's just fair, because it takes the same kind of courage you'd also need to stand up against populists and dictators.

PaulEberhardt at 11:42AM, May 28, 2022

The thing that most scares me about mental manipulation is how easy it is. Here's a little experiment I sometimes do with my students in English lessons e.g. as a warm-up for a story about brainwashing or why eyewitnesses are unreliable: I show them a picture of, say, a busy street for no more than ten seconds and then have them describe it from memory in as much detail as possible. After a while I'll say: "Good job, but what about the dog?" Of course there really was no dog in this picture, but I keep insisting there was, and when some student names a detail ("Was it a little black dog?") I'll confirm it or add one of my own. It hardly ever takes more than two minutes to convince at least 75% of the class so much that they remember the little black dog with perfect clarity, while only a very few strong-willed ones are able to resist the brainwashing. It has to be a relatively minor detail for it to work, initially, but you can gradually add more and more BS while the farce goes on.

PaulEberhardt at 11:15AM, May 28, 2022

My first thought went to the time when The Bourne Identity was out - which I enjoyed watching a lot - and how it seemed to me that whatever new book I picked up suddenly was a thriller whose main character had lost his memory, like Ken Follett's Code to Zero - which I also enjoyed. It possibly wasn't really that way, anyway (a freak of memory?) but ever since I've been torn between being bored at the same story being told over and over again and the undying fascination at this spooky if not outright surreal experience these characters are going through and what a cool way it actually is of letting a web of backstory and intrigues gradually unfold. I'm told that any of this is not really the way amnesia works with real-life patients, but what the heck. Also, there remains the question why memory loss caused by hard partying is funny (Hangover / Dude, Where's My Car?) and CIA-induced memory deletion is not. Think about it: it should be the other way round, because the first is real.

Corruption at 12:16AM, May 27, 2022

@marcorossi, I think you mean first season of the series (stand alone complex). The smiley man did that. The movie looked at where you draw the line between human and machine when humans start to become so integrated with machines, and machines become ever more humanish.

Corruption at 12:12AM, May 27, 2022

The total recall movie has a twist most people do not realize. His memories seem to start to come back after he goes to get some memories implanted. However, just before it is, the technician says "Blue skies over mars" That his how the movie ends. This implies the entire adventure was all an implanted memory he payed to experience.

usedbooks at 4:41AM, May 26, 2022

Check out the Guðmundur and Geirfinnur case for some real life memory implantation. Memory manipulation is scary af.

marcorossi at 1:49AM, May 26, 2022

In Ghost in the Shell (the first movie), the Master of puppetts uses peoples by manipulating their memory, that is then used to imply that we are our memories, not our bodies.

dpat57 at 12:15AM, May 26, 2022

You fool, now you must be silenced forever, lest you recall that which must not be recalled. *scribbles story notes*