Subliminal Ads in SL???

On a couple of occasions recently, near my home, I have noticed a strange effect that seems to be some sort of 'subliminal advertizing' in Second Life. I'm trying to capture a screen-shot of this effect, but haven't managed to capture it yet.

What is happening is that I will be looking somewhere that I am certain should not have any sort of hover text in it, and as I pan my view or move, I'll suddenly see a block of white text appear and vanish again. 4 or 5 lines of white hover text with no background, in the middle of nowhere.

The last time, I was looking out to sea at the very edge of the sim, watching a sunset. The only thing in my line of sight, between me and the sun, was a willow tree that belongs to a friend who is building our home with me. And I know that tree doesn't have any hover text in it. Yet over the open sea, to the left of that tree, I saw a block of text flash. I carefully moved back, and could stabilize it just enough to read the first two or three out of four lines. It was some sort of ad, for a teleport gadget, selling for L$1000. I couldn't keep it around enough to see the last line clearly, and don't know the vendor or product name.

Again, we're not talking about looking at a wall, and maybe seeing some hover text for an object on the other side. I have seen that happen all the time, especially in a mall. I know what that looks like.

This is happening where there has been nothing at all in that direction that should be able to have hover text in it. The edge of the sim was less than 2 meters from me, and there are NO sims beyond that edge on that line of sight.

So... WTF is happening here? Has someone else seen this? Is someone floating an invisible object around, displaying a subliminal ad as a fast flash of hovertext? The next time I see it, I'm going to try checking for invisible objects...

I've seen this a few times as well, usually red settext though. No clue about the cause, but it did start popping up after the HUD was added in 1.7

There is no such thing as a subliminal ad.

I'm not sure what it was but after seeing it I somehow felt compelled to give Kris all my money .

I believe it's a bug.


I have a fair deal of llSetText floating around in Games1. Occasionally text elsewhere in the sim would "catch" in my viewer and follow me around for some odd reason.

Seems to happen at random.

I've seen this as well. I know what it was, though not what causes it. Sometimes hover text will sort of 'ghost' on my screen from something I've previously seen. It appears for a second then vanishes again.

The reason I think it's a form of ghosting is because I know where the text I've seen is coming from. It's from my store, my husband's products on the second floor which have hover text above them, but I'll occassionally see it when I'm hell and gone from my store. Usually just after I change my camera view.

Not sure why it shows up, or if it's the same thing you're getting.

That's pretty much what I'm getting, as well.

Sometimes I've been able to freeze such things by slamming Ctrl-8 sixtimes and then looking for the hovertext.

It does seem a good excuse to SLAM a few KEYS. ahem I've seen this too, always in the lower left corner of my screen. Alt-swinging the camera, then resetting to standard view, has always made it vanish for me.

Is there such a thing as a subliminal Eggy?

In my case, it was almost dead center in my screen. And from the one good look I managed to get, it wasn't for any product I could recall ever having looked at.

That last time, I had switched to Mouselook and walked about 10 meters, heading towards the shore and the setting sun. The text appeared momentarily near the center of vision, as I turned myself to look somewhat to the right.

I'm calling it a strange bug, for now.

^ theremin plays, TARDIS enters.

Well, the question is not 'does it exist'.

The question is: will this form of ad be subject to dynamic pricing?

Someone called?

Thought I would throw this in the mix. When you use Alt to move your view around you can have white text appear from a hinge joint. It can be seen from waaaaaaaaaaay far away from the object in question.

Wasn't me.

Actually the TARDIS sound effect is caused by a sped-up and slowed-down piano string noise.
Source: Doctor Who: A Celebration by Peter Haining

Actually it's the sound of the space/time continuum unzipping... but this embarrasses space/time and we struggle a bit before I manage to get through.

Later, (or possibly earlier, or even not at all)

Type40 (highly modified)

Wow, this rises potential of some serious mind-f***ing.

the original Exorcist movie in theaters had subliminal images of death hidden in the movie, and people were leaving the theatter, vomitting, etc, where after the movie had the images removed this did not happen -- proof that subliminal imaging has a real effect on people.

I thunk it's a type 40E but I may be too old to remember correctly.

do u have any resources to point to details of this experiment?

I'm pretty sure at least one of the Doctor Who themes has a theremin playing over top the eerie piano sounds.

Regardless, I'm picking up good vibrations.

It's a UFA... unidentified flying advertisement. Prepare for anal probing.

I decided long ago that if I got the chance to change my name I'd be Osprey Theremin.