Is there a word for ...

I asked about exactly this phenomenon a few years ago. I’m having trouble finding the thread, but I’m pretty sure the Baader-Meinhof name cropped up. And, of course, I then kept hearing about the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon.

Wikipedia used to have a page on it, but it’s been deleted.

Ah, here it is - although oddley there is no mention of the B-MP.

This seems the most likely phrase. Personally I like “The Rule Of Five” called that after Robert Wilson noticed the same phenomenon when writing “The Illumunatus Trilogy”

Wikipedia calls the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon either “frequency illusion” or “recency illusion.”

And having posted about this phenomenon yesterday I just had another example happen this morning.

While cycling to work I was passed by a car that had a decal on the back that I’d never seen before - three luminous green “claw marks”. I noticed it and wondered what it represented, and idly thought to myself that I might look it up when I got to work.

Then, not two minutes later, I literally cycled over a flattened drink can bearing exactly the same logo. A logo I’d never seen before, which registered enough to make me curious, and then blam, there it is again within two minutes. Asked and answered.

Honestly, it’s like the matrix is leaving clues for me. :stuck_out_tongue:

(BTW, I’m pretty sure the can and the car were totally unrelated - the can was on a side road that I turned onto, whereas the car had taken a different route. So it wasn’t some energy-drink fiend tossing cans out of the window. Also, the can was pretty well flattened and looked like it had been there a while.)