Ever since the knowledge of coversational hypnosis and subliminal programming exploded on media a few decades ago, people have come to suspect that one or another person, company, or entity is taking advantage of them in some way.
After all, some reason, why was the study in subliminal programming peaking at exactly the right time people were deathly afraid of the cold war and were spending their time building underground bomb shelters? Could that have been a grand test in mass hypnosis?
While we will honestly never know the true answer to that question, it remains that covert or underground hypnosis is in practice at this time. An unfortunate association with this legitimate medical treatment is that it works best when the subjects don't expect it to happen. While you would really expect a bit of this when you see a street magician, for example, or book a session with a hypnotherapist, it's the way the words are couched that don't let you expect it.
But what if it's someone off the street? Or your favorite movie, a community leader, or just the commercials on Saturday morning that have those commands embedded in its audio or visuals?
It seems that the suspicion that someone is controlling your mind is a common one. There are times that you'd go out of a shop with bags of clothing only to get home and find out that most of it doesn't suit you! After the initial thought of “What was I thinking?!?” you may realize that probably you weren't. It may have been a type of conversational hypnosis that you were exposed to, whether the salesperson was aware of using it or not.
We could just cry wolf and do away with human contact in all shapes and forms, or we could come to accept that people do try various forms of conversational hypnosis at one level or another on an everyday basis. Once we recognize this, that is the only time we can be on guard, and knowing that it could happen would be one way for the rational side of our brain to analyze and detect something unsavory is happening.