Gavin writes:

> When reading Wirt's message I realized that I haven't "seen" any tag lines
>  on 3000-L messages in quite some time.  If you had asked me about it, I
>  would probably have said that the tag lines must have been switched off,
>  since I didn't recall seeing them lately.
>
>  But then I looked down at the end of the message, and like magic there it
>  was!
>
>  My brain has apparently been editing out the tagline text as being unworthy
>  to present to any conscious part of my mind.

The process is called "habituation" in neurophysiology/psychology. See, e.g.:

    http://psy.uq.oz.au/~landcp/PY269/habituation/habituation.html



>  I'm not sure if this argues for or against the tag lines, but it does
>  suggest that they are useless beyond the period of time that it takes to
>  become immune to them.
>
>  If they were only added to one out of 20 messages or something like that,
it
>  might make them much more effective.

That's one possible cure. Novelty is an especially effective way to break
habituated responses, but what the tag lines need to be is made into more of
an "irritant" (a technical term; I'm not kidding). By placing the tag lines
as the first two lines of every post, I suspect that they would be truly much
harder to ignore and dismiss, even for the most jaded.

Wirt Atmar

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