VisionAndPsychosis.Net©

In Montgomery Alabama

Copyright 2003 Edit June 2010

Humor South Park

There are many TV programs that show incorrect designs of computer use areas. Most are set up for camera positioning and dramatic effect. This episode of South Park,   "Make Love Not Warcraft'" is from the tenth season.

In this frame it is not obvious that the computer is drawn located incorrectly in the animated program.

The stereotype of a video game player is a nerd or geek that spends all their time glued to the computer. This is given as the reason for computer or Internet addiction.

Psychosocial explanations of mental events are used when there is a suicide or sudden violence.

Violence portrayed in video games is blamed when a video game player commits a mass shooting.

But the cause of the real world event is not the violence in the game but the location and design of he computer workstation where the game is played.

If the player accidentally creates a defective workstation by placing the computer where there is repeating detectable movement in peripheral vision they will have Subliminal Distraction exposure. With enough exposure that player will have the mental break this phenomenon is known to cause.

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In this animation frame the computers in the lab are correctly placed below the work surface out of sight along the back wall.

But like real life computer labs there is no privacy screen to block peripheral vision between computer users.

While you cannot subliminally detect something in your conscious sight occasional quick movements in your peripheral vision will trigger an attempt to startle.

It would not matter if that detected movement was the adjoining computer user, someone further away, or someone walking by.

Because your subliminal sight does not report color or shape your brain cannot determine there is more than one source of threat-movement in your peripheral vision.

That also means the movement does not have to be human or alive and the efforts to startle, a Subliminal Distraction, are cumulative.

In the basement the computers are correctly placed so that no one is seated in another person's peripheral vision.

But the computers are now placed on top of the work surface so that any blinking lights on the CPU tower would be swept through peripheral vision with a head turn.

At the level in your brain where the vision startle reflex is created, below thought, reason, and consciousness. there is no evaluation for the source or meaning of the detected movement in peripheral vision.

The startle reflex is a warn first evaluate second system. The source of movement is not identified unless you complete the reflex, turn and look.

Subliminal Distraction exposure happens when you successfully learn to ignore that detected movement. The startle stops and you no longer turn to identify threat movement.

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At that level in the brain stimulus from a blinking light cannot be distinguished from reflected light from a moving object. It's all just electro chemical exchanges across synapses. Many computer manufacturers have removed bright blinking lights from the CPU case. But home assembly of a computer from parts can still create this problem when hard drive busy lights or CD/DVD player busy lights are visible on the CPU tower or box.

As the movement in peripheral vision continues your brain detects it and tries to make you startle to warn you. We can learn to consciously ignore movement in peripheral vision but no one can turn off the primitive function to detect threat movement. As exposure continues the subliminal appreciation of that threat will color thought and reason.

That will shape the way you perceive normal every day events. Simple encounters will take on a sinister meaning.

Personality values we all have will determine if you react by running away or trying to settle up the score with violence.

Since your brain deals with the startle reflex subliminally this exposure cannot be consciously experienced.

That's why engineers and designers created the cubicle when the problem was discovered forty years ago.

Visit the Letters page for a simple presentation of the unrealized history of these mental breaks.

Linked at the top of the Home page are two suicide clusters where the companies involved failed to provide effective Cubicle Level Protection or warn workers about computer use at home. An incident in fourteen Ontario, Canada elementary schools shows what low level Subliminal Distraction exposure can do