iDosing- Digital Drugs: the new downfall of Man

[LongSilence]

Via Onion's AVclub:

God, why won't someone think of the children?!

Don't worry guys, the first hit's for free-

Embed not work with this? Hmmm- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=en1asB1haQM
Seriously though, maybe you gotta be young and have that whole greater sensitivity to certain frequencies thing, or an undeveloped capacity to deal with repetition but personally it seems like a bunch of bored people trying too hard to both be 'under the influence' of something and be funny.

I mean, I can't even be sure enough to take the newscast above seriously.

[jon54321]

Oh how I wanted iDoser to work.

Of course it did'nt. Boo.

[rhinosaur]

Reminds me of Snow Crash (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash).

[cordillia]

It seems to affect people in similar ways to music. In this case, very annoying and grating music. I tried listening to a couple audio files, and they were almost physically painful to listen to.

[wote]

I tried binaural beats in the past and in my opinion it's not particularly effective, but completely harmless. Whether the children are susceptible to trying real drugs is a whole other issue (If a kid is willing to try drugs, it's going to be on the suggestion of a friend, not because of a website).

iDoser was annoying as hell. I'd never try that again. Unless covered with music or ambient sounds, brainwave entrainment audio is very difficult to listen to (in my opinion, anyway)! One of the first ones I listened to (Holosync - while falling asleep) did cause a completely unexpected mild convulsive reaction, interestingly. But it only did it once. Some other ones (including audio on Youtube) seemed to enhance meditation, but each file tended to "work" only once. I tried making my own for a short while using sbagen to blend beats of my own choosing with music of my own choosing. As with the others, doing this produced a mildly pleasant effect some of the time and absolutely nothing, the rest of the time. It could easily be a placebo effect, of course. I quickly tired of finding new tracks and the irritating controls in sbagen (not many free options for a mac) and found this blog: http://binauralbanjo.blogspot.com/ which I haven't accessed in several months.

I would conclude that brainwave entrainment tracks can be nice for relaxation, but I doubt whether they have any consistent effect on people. I seem to recall reading somewhere that it's common for entrainment tracks to lose their effect after a listen or two.

For relaxation purposes, someone could probably make some money by creating an (iTunes Genius-like) "Entrainment DJ" that analyses your music library, lets you enter the frequency you want to hear and then makes random playlists out of it, blending in the beats under the most mood-appropriate music. (I wouldn't pay for it, though.) :D

[Qfwfq]

That was The Onion, right?

[wote]

Yes, but not the Onion News Network (news satire). LongSilence said it's the AV Club. Looks like a clip from a local news program.

[Qfwfq]

Alright, well I searched for an iDose on youtube and came across this one:

idose

It's 7 minutes of a monotone oscillating tone. I stopped it after 1 minute because it was too lame to bare. The caveat introduction is really anticlimactic. seeds and stems.

[Skinart]

Stick with Jenkem.

[Cam'ron]

I started idosing a year ago and it is not harmless, leads to bad things

[Qlippoth]

When I saw Digital Drugs, I assumed we were going to be talking about flash games on Facebook. How many of you have lost loved ones?