How I brain-washed my girlfriend out of depression using old House MD episodes.
First of all, I know the title looks like a complete click-bait (or a complete douche move), but bare with me please, it’s 100% real and about 50% romantic.
It all started when we (me and my significant other) to binge some “House MD”, she never got to see the entire thing and we had some free time, I downloaded a couple of seasons to my PC and we started watching them together every night, 3–4 episodes at a time.
Winter was just starting and the world turned gray, the days were shorter and less sunny and like every year my girlfriend - a sensitive soul - started getting moody and a bit depressed.
We had some long talks on the subject, as I said it wasn’t the first time, she spoke of depressing thoughts and a feeling of loneliness, I tried telling her she is loved and not alone, but even though she heard it and believed it, it had little actual effect.
So I decided to tell her another way.
First I installed FFMPEG, then I created several images with transparent background containing several messages I wanted delivered. than I embedded the messages in the House MD files, using this command:
“ ffmpeg -i [INPUT FILE] -loop 1 -i [MESSAGE_FILENAME] -filter_complex “[0][1]overlay=enable=’if(gt(n,0),not(mod(n, 1490)),0)’:shortest=1[v]” -map “[v]” -map 0:a -c:a copy [OUTPUT_FILE]”
This resulted in House MD episodes containing my images as subliminal messages.
Now, I know what you’re thinking, you’re thinking this is wrong, you’re thinking I can’t do something like that to a person with their consent, and I really do understand that, but hear me out please.
A. All of my messages were very general loving messages, they were in hebrew but they loosely translate to “You are loved”, “Erez loves you”, “You are not alone” and “You are safe and loved”, which are all things everyone tells his loved ones, some may say it with flowers, some with song, I chose a different medium.
B. Telling her I was doing this would ruin any chance I have of testing the effectiveness of the process, and I just had to test it.
C. I was using House MD episodes, and I’m pretty sure House would’ve approved.
So, we started watching the episodes together, sometimes I could spot the subliminal message, most times I couldn’t, I wonder if it had any effect on me, but since the messages were about love and safety I didn’t mind, actually I kinda hoped they work on me too.
I prepared a google sheet, and after every episode I asked her to quantify (1 the lowest and 10 the highest) how loved, safe and lonely she feels, she got a little suspicious at this point, but I told her I had some stupid theory about House MD episodes being good for feeling loved and safe, it was pretty idiotic but she bought it, and so we watched.
Week 1 (averages):
— Loved: 7
— Safe: 7.5
— Lonely: 6
Week 2 (averages):
— Loved: 8
— Safe: 9
— Lonely: 5.5
Week 3 (averages):
— Loved: 8.5
— Safe: 9
— Lonely: 4
Sadly, in the 4th week I made a horrible mistake with one of the messages and I was forced to tell her everything, she thought it was funny and sweet of me (that weirdo, right?) but made me promise not to do it again, so the experiment ended.
Please Note, this isn’t really scientific, I pretty much tainted my results by asking her to quantify her feelings so much, but I thought it was working, and I swear to you that I felt her winter depression wasn’t as bad that year, much better then the year before.
so as far as I’m concerned it worked, I brain-washed her out of depression.