The Irony of Influence

Control was never the point. Liberation was.

I make hypnosis content for a living.

This fact alone tends to provoke strong reactions. For some, hypnosis remains shrouded in mystery. For others, it exists somewhere between stage magic and psychological manipulation. More recently, however, it has become something else entirely: a target.

As platforms increasingly distance themselves from hypnosis content, I have found myself reflecting on a strange irony.

The people most concerned with my supposed ability to influence others often appear remarkably comfortable with far larger systems of influence operating all around us.

We live in a world shaped by advertising algorithms, behavioural prediction models, political messaging campaigns, engagement-driven social media feeds, and corporations capable of analysing vast amounts of personal data. Entire industries exist to understand human behaviour well enough to guide it.

Yet somehow the hypnotist becomes the concern.

The stated fear is usually control.

The assumption is that hypnosis grants one person power over another; that it bypasses agency and overrides autonomy. It is a persistent cultural myth, and one that survives despite decades of psychological research demonstrating that hypnosis is far more collaborative than coercive.

Hypnosis does not create obedience.

It cannot force values into a person that were not already present.

It cannot turn someone into a puppet.

At its best, hypnosis is an exercise in focused attention and voluntary participation. It is a process people enter willingly, often in pursuit of change, exploration, pleasure, self-discovery, or healing.

Which raises an uncomfortable question.

If hypnosis is feared because it influences people, why are so many other forms of influence not merely accepted, but actively celebrated?

Why are some attempts to shape thought considered dangerous while others are considered business models?

The question becomes even more interesting when viewed against a broader cultural backdrop.

Increasingly, we find ourselves in an environment where access to financial systems, platforms, audiences, and opportunities is mediated by organisations operating far beyond public scrutiny. Payment processors decide which businesses are acceptable. Advocacy groups lobby financial institutions to restrict categories of content. Technology companies gather unprecedented amounts of behavioural information. Predictive systems promise to understand us before we understand ourselves.

The architecture of influence has never been larger.

The mechanisms of control have never been more sophisticated.

Yet public concern is often directed toward the smallest and most visible actors.

As someone whose work revolves around suggestion, I find this deeply ironic.

Because contrary to popular belief, my interest has never been control.

Control is actually rather boring.

What interests me is liberation.

The most meaningful moments in my work rarely involve persuading someone to do something. They involve helping someone stop doing something.

Stop carrying shame.

Stop obeying fears they inherited from other people.

Stop treating themselves as broken.

Stop living according to rules they never consciously chose.

The greatest prisons are often internal ones.

Many people move through life governed by invisible suggestions: ideas about who they should be, what they should desire, how they should behave, and what parts of themselves are acceptable. These suggestions arrive through families, cultures, institutions, religions, media systems, and social expectations. They become so familiar that they cease to feel like suggestions at all.

They simply become reality.

My work exists in opposition to that process.

Not because hypnosis grants freedom automatically, but because it creates a space in which people can examine the stories running beneath their lives and decide whether those stories still serve them.

That is not control.

It is the deliberate exploration of autonomy.

And perhaps that is why the current climate feels so peculiar.

We are increasingly surrounded by systems that categorise, predict, monetise, and shape human behaviour while simultaneously becoming more suspicious of practices that encourage introspection, self-awareness, and conscious choice.

The hypnotist becomes the villain.

The algorithm becomes infrastructure.

The suggestion spoken openly is feared.

The suggestion embedded invisibly into culture passes unnoticed.

I am not naïve enough to believe hypnosis is beyond ethical scrutiny. Any practice involving influence deserves serious discussion. Ethics matter. Consent matters. Transparency matters.

But those conversations become difficult when they are built upon myths rather than realities.

Because if our concern is truly influence, then we should be examining influence everywhere.

Not just in the places society has decided to find it unsettling.

And if our concern is autonomy, then perhaps the goal should not be protecting people from every form of suggestion.

Perhaps the goal should be helping them recognise which suggestions they have already accepted.

Only then can they decide which ones deserve to stay.