Times People Witnessed The Placebo Effect Working Its Magic

Author image for Eric Lund
Eric Lund
Oct 10, 2021 8:00 AM EDT

Humans are very suggestable beings, and every one of us is not immune to BS. We are so not immune to BS that we can actually convince ourselves that something is working. When it comes to health, work, or even delusions of our own funkiness, there's a place for the placebo effect to take hold and influence our understanding of reality. For some straight up widely-accepted trickery, here are some obvious scams that people still fall for.

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  • 01
    Font - Opposite_Iron454 - 1d 2 3 When I worked/trained tech support, we would constantly get pushback from customers when we requested them to power cycle their phone, which would solve their problem nine times out of ten. So I told them to have the customer read certain numbers off the back of the battery (while it was still removable!) that we didn't require. After that, we told them we had refreshed a few systems, and they replaced their battery, and everything was fine! When batteries couldn
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  • 02
    Font - IlanaBess · 1d 2 3 My kid was having trouble sleeping and asked if I had anything that could help her. I told her about Melatonin and went to my CAR to get her some (surprise, surprise). I returned and handed her a Tic-Tac. The next day, she yelled at me because she went asleep right away after taking it and couldn't wake up the next day - she was drowsy all day. I had a good laugh at my own expense.
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  • 03
    Organism - Sprinkles_raedres · 1d When I deliver commissioned creative work the same or next day, folks assume I didn't spend enough time on it. People are thrilled if I wait three days to driver because they feel I worked on their assignment nonstop even if I was finished a day or two before.
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  • 04
    Font - scdog - 1d e2 Back in the late 1990s I programmed an online ordering web site for one of my company's clients. When it went live they started receiving orders right away, but also were getting a lot of customers calling in saying the order didn't go through (when in fact it had). After enough customer feedback had been gathered we realized that the reason people thought the order form wasn't working was that it was processing the orders too quickly The solution? I programmed a 3 second de
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  • 05
    Human body - the-wifi-is-broken - 1d Any water that claims to be extremely alkaline.
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  • 06
    Font - pussicats · 1d Products claiming to "Detoxify your body!" No, your organs flush most things out the system itself.
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  • 07
    Smile - Worng_professor · 1d 3 2 When you hand a disconnected controller to your younger brother after he or she begged to join the game.
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  • 08
    Font - AdmiralAkbar1 · 1d S Those rubber athletic bracelets with the copper in them. 3.8k Reply Share Report Save AudibleNod - 1d Right when COVID started there was a bunch of copper rods (Copper Zap being one) that were sold that can "stop COVID in its tracks". My mom sent me a link to a copper lugnut she wanted to buy that she was going to (I guess) stick up her nose. I explained that copper can kill many things but only on contact. So for 100% effectiveness, she'd have to line the mucus membr
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  • 09
    Font - Farmer771122 · 23h One of my coworkers bought a quantum necklace, with little beads that have had their quantum chakras aligned or whatever bullst , and he showed me the "scientific studies" about how it will make his red blood cells more round. It's absolutely bonkers, but after a few years of work experience I've learned not to start those discussions with the scam victims.
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  • 10
    Font - WilliaSwisher 1d S In high school, I worked at a children's birthday party venue for a number of years. Many children would weep because they had fallen over, bumped their arm, and so on. Nothing ever goes wrong. "Are you able to shake your foot around?" I'd ask. "Do you think it's getting better?" "How about jumping in a circle?" says the narrator. "All right, we'll blow on your hand to make it feel better," they say, before asking whether they're ready to play again. It works perfectly.
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  • 11
    Font - insatiableromantic · 1d head on apply directly to forehead
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  • 12
    Font - FictionVent · 19h My friend is a music engineer. His recording studio setup had a stand-alone panel with a switch that just said "Funk." Whenever a picky recording artist was never content with a mix, he would flip the funk switch and have them listen again. The switch did nothing, but the artists always agreed that it sounded way better...
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  • 13
    Font - headclouds · 1d Crystals. People really believe a pretty rock can change their entire lives nowadays. 1.8k Reply Share Report Save FledAccrossTheDesert 1d I worked very briefly for a crystal shop. The owner was explaining that his magnets on a string could cure disease, because magnetism is in everything and it's what keeps the earth orbiting the sun. I'll repeat, I worked VERY BRIEFLY there.
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  • 14
    Font - Royal_Beautiful007 · 1d Your attitude toward poor luck. Bad events are remembered more vividly by the human brain than happy ones. As an example, you can claim that your toll luck is usually bad, whereas in actuality you only get caught in traffic 20% – 50% of the time.
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  • 15
    Font - cait_a · 22h - edited 4h In college, I worked for a party planning company where I would dress up as Cinderella for birthdays and events. We would host giant “Royal balls" around the country and at the beginning of each event, we would have a coronation ceremony to crown the kiddos as princes and princesses. It never failed that a handful of kids would be absolutely terrified and needed some warming up. To trick the kids into relaxing a bit, I would always convince the kiddos to try a mag
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  • 16
    Font - independencedaffodil - 1d My husband works at Starbucks and tells about a time someone brought their drink back saying it didn't taste right and they asked if it could be remade. Husband said no problem, to just leave the wrong one on the counter. Customer went to the restroom and came out, grabbed the original drink, took a sip, and said "ahhhh, much better! Thank you!"
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  • 17
    Font - hlaj · 20h I worked for a helpdesk and the CEO complained their new laptop was too slow to boot and login. True but all the computers were the same. We had tons of stuff like network shares and other systems to connect to so they could do their job. All I did was turn on verbose messaging during login. So instead of a screen that says please wait or whatever it would quickly flash messages of whatever process it was working on on the screen. Apparently it did the trick. When asked he'd sa
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  • 18
    Font - OliviaFa · 1d I used to work in a crystal healing shop (it's a loooong story how I got there, I'm not into it at alI) and I was shocked at how gullible people were in buying crystals to 'heal them'. For aesthetics I don't mind, they are rather pretty, but being asked to prescribe a crystal remedy was a huge stretch. The owner was also bat s: * crazy and made up a fake story that I was bringing negative energy to her after she spent the entire day every single week complaining about her ha
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  • 19
    Font - nlderek · 1d I have a webshop and we deliver next day. We used to advertise this, but then changed our site to say 2-3 day delivery. This dramatically increased our positive reviews 'shipping was so fast' and virtually ended negative 'my package was late' reviews - all the while having no change in sales.
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  • 20
    Font - MigBird - 21h Sort of adjacent to what you were asking, but the Alka-Seltzer antacid brand once boosted their sales with just a new slogan. See everyone would just chuck one tablet in a glass of water, drink it, and that was that. Then some incredible marketing genius wrote the jingle: "Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh, what a relief it is!" Sales almost doubled, because so many people who heard the jingle now assumed they were supposed to take two tablets, even though the product worked fine o
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Placebo Effect behavior placebo wtf human behavior interesting stories psychology weird
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