I was brought up on those TV hypnotists that would make people do all that weird stuff that we assumed that they would never normally do e.g. start dancing on hearing a certain ‘trigger’ word – even when they were back in the audience and, apparently, as surprised at their reactions as the people sitting next to them.

I was always intrigued by that and the apparent credo that a hypnotist could not make anybody do something that they did not want to do – kind of conflicting.

Later I got interested in NLP ( Neuro Linguistic Programming) which is kind of hypnotism/persuasion based as a tool when selling stuff to people.

Later still, when reading books such as ‘The Art of Persuasion’ I was shocked to discover how I had fallen for the techniques used by TV advertisers, politicians and car salesmen to bend me to their will and ‘force’ me to make decisions that I would not normally make.

Want an extreme example? Hitler’s political rallies in the 1930′s that ‘persuaded’ a whole bloody country to behave in a certain way and feel OK about what happened during WW2.

Now, as the internet is so much a part of our lives, I am interested in how these techniques – old and new – can be used on the web. During my research I’ve come across more than a few rubbish, copycat ‘Hypnotism Courses’ – and bought most of them.

I’ve also come across that rare thing these days – the real deal: