Ditto here. When I first heard the English expression, I thought it was about an astronaut. Although, clearly, Frenchman Georges Méliès had heard of the concept.
And no, I don’t see a face. Or a rabbit.
I see a person of indeterminate sex with his/her mouth open in a scream of horror. I always have. My personality probably has something to do with this.
I see a man playing on a ladle, wearing a coat made of good roast beef, eyes like meatballs, hair of spaghetti… I believe his name is Aiken Drumm!
Thanks for explaining that. I guess it was quite U.S. centric of me to assume the man on the moon is universal. It leads me to an extremely stupid question for you or any of the other smart cookies here:
I know almost nothing of astronomy but I believe I’ve read that only one side of the moon is visible from Earth. Do we, in the U.S. for instance, see the same portion of it all the time and folks in other parts of the world have their own specific view of it? In other words they may not ever see the portion that has the feature that make up the MITM?
I’m no astronomer either, but as I understand it what happens is that the moon rotates over itself at the same speed as it rotates around Earth, and the side we see is the same for every single one of us. Or at least, the same within observational error 
The traditional simulation for kids is one person (Earth) standing in place and another one (the Moon) walking around the first one while always looking at it.
I see a rabbit. I could see a man, or a face, but my default image is the rabbit.
No, everyone on Earth views the moon from the same perspective. The “dark side” or more accurately, the far side remains hidden. It wasn’t even viewable or mappable until the advent of space probes, noteable the Russian Luna 3 in 1959.
FTR, we can see ~59% of the moon’s surface.
Yes, or two children hold hands while facing each other. One rotates in place while the other “orbits” around them.
It took me a while to see anything like a face out of that, but all of a sudden it resolved into Jesse L. Martin in the role of Joe West, with his head tilted to the viewer’s left and his teeth bared.
As pareidolia goes, I’d have to say the man in the moon is a pretty weak example. I’ll take a Virgin Mary on toast or Elvis potato chip any day over the man in the moon.
I’ve always seen a face that seems to be looking somewhat to my left so it’s a sort of three-quarter view.
I’ve always thought the face looks a little dull or vapid; the appearance of an open mouth is not in horror, but in a kind of slack-jawed ignorance/stupidity.
Given that plain cognitive disability wasn’t always distinguished from “madness”, as they used to call it, I’ve wondered if the appearance of the MITM has anything to do with the Moon’s traditional association with lunacy.
The Better You Look, the More You’ll See.
Flikr says that is Adult Content. I disagree.
While it’s true that we all see the same disc, it should be noted that our view of it depends on the latitude we live at on Earth. I live at 45 degrees North; my view of the Moon is tilted compared to the view from Canberra, Australia (by about 90 degrees?). I remember looking at a Moon crescent in Florida and finding it weirdly rotated. It doesn’t change much in general, but surely the pareidolia is affected by it.
When it’s low on the horizon, the way the light is ‘bent’ thru the atmosphere makes it look both larger & pink/orange in color.
Turn your head 90° to the right. The man’s left eye is the rabbit’s head & the ‘mascara streaks’ behind the left eye toward the left ear are the rabbit’s ears.
Not to be “that guy” but the moon isn’t actually larger near the horizon. It’s an illusion.
Sometimes he looks like a smudge on the lens.
I can’t say I’ve noticed the difference from relocating twelve degrees to the north, but maybe that wasn’t far enough.
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I didn’t say it was larger, I said it looks larger. I know it’s an illusion.
I can see a “face”, when the moon is full. If you were to stand in front of me, looking to your right and downwards, that’s the angle of the face I see on the moon.
Interestingly, I’ve never been able to see that when looking at a photograph of the moon - only when looking at the real thing.
I’ve never seen a person in the lunar Rorschach test.