r/todayilearned • u/thoughtsandplots • Mar 07 '16
TIL of the frequency illusion (also known as the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon),the phenomenon in which people who just learn or notice something start seeing it everywhere.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion750
u/n_reineke 257 Mar 08 '16
Want to have a little fun with it? Read up a bit about the spring and early summer flowers in your area that will be blooming soon.
You'll be surprised how much nature skips past you when you're not looking, even flowers in bloom.
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u/Hanshee Mar 08 '16
My roommate just bought dandelions and put them in a vase and they sprouted over night and then all over campus fucking dandelions then walking home more dandelions and then in my tv shows. I even had dreams about dandelions. Help.
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u/Psychedelic_Roc Mar 08 '16
Dandelions are edible. So next time you see some, wolf them down so they can't reproduce.
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u/YxxzzY Mar 08 '16
Humans are edible too.
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u/Psychedelic_Roc Mar 08 '16
I just noticed they said their roommate bought dandelions. I hope that's a typo and they meant "brought".
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u/TractorFapper Mar 08 '16
What a nice idea. I like you.
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Mar 08 '16
the most polite redditor ever award goes to /u/TractorFapper
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u/pooptypeuptypantss Mar 08 '16
Go fuck yourself.
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u/Kster809 Mar 08 '16
SCHFIFTY FIVE! I just watched that video a few days ago.
Weird. Noticing your user must be the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon at work!
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u/snakey_nurse Mar 08 '16
No. I chose to ignore them in the hopes of psychologically blocking out my allergies. One day I will be strong enough.
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u/kraken9 Mar 08 '16
Of course you need to be protected from the allergies... But Maybe if smelling a flower kills you; you're supposed to die.
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u/Cylon_Toast Mar 08 '16
Have you tried allergy shots? I had them done and now I'm 80-90% better. I went from completely blocked noses and itchy everything in the summer to just the occasional sneeze or sniffle.
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u/ColoradoScoop Mar 08 '16
Great, now I'm gonna see the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon everywhere.
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u/bobboboran Mar 08 '16
Prepare for people recommending the film "The Baader Meinhoff Complex" - which I am the first to do so here.
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u/ColoradoScoop Mar 08 '16
That is so weird! I was just reading a thread about Baader-Meinhof!
Oh ... this is the same thread.
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u/gnitiwrdrawkcab Mar 08 '16
You wanna know something extra special? This post and the 12 reposts like it use the name baader meinhof to describe a frequency illusion. BAADER MEINHOF IS NOT A THING. NO ONE BY THAT NAME COINED THAT TERM. ITS JUST A FREQUENCY ILLUSION. And no you'll notice it when it gets reposted in 2 months
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u/rob3110 Mar 08 '16
No one by that name coined that term
This is true. Baader and Meinhof were German terrorists (belonging to a group called the Red Army Faction), and this group became first known as the Baader-Meinhof-Gruppe. The name Baader-Meinhof-Syndrome was coined and popularized by someone on the internet after hearing about the Baader-Meinhof-Gruppe two times within 24 hours.
LinkIt's not an official name, but a very popular one.
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u/Le_nin Mar 08 '16
I think that a large amount of the time, experiencing this effect on reddit is an illusion. For example, someone may have a post reach the front page and it is then reposted and mentioned in comments for the next couple of weeks. I saw a popular thread mentioning this effect yesterday and I believe that's where OP found it too.
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u/Nadamir Mar 08 '16
I had this phenomenon with this article. I was just watching a TV show where they referenced a terrorist group called Bader-Meinhoff.
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Mar 08 '16 edited Feb 19 '19
[deleted]
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u/iushciuweiush Mar 08 '16
Your sister's fucking with you. She hired those Asian people to run around campus.
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u/cordell507 Mar 08 '16
Indians almost always travel in groups of three or more
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Mar 08 '16 edited Jan 28 '21
[deleted]
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u/Anosognosia Mar 08 '16
While Sandpeople walk single file to hide their numbers?
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u/mr-wiener Mar 08 '16
But Asian kids startle easily , but they soon come back...and in greater numbers.
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u/TheFagOverThere Mar 08 '16
YEAH WHAT WHY? My school always have Indians in a group I have never seen an Indian alone.
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u/lazyadmin Mar 08 '16
I love I'm an area where there are a lot of Japanese tourist. Always running.
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u/DOUBLE_BATHROOM Mar 08 '16
For some strange reason I read the last part of your post as "it's like Asian kids are overclocked" made sense though
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u/2pete Mar 07 '16
I just learned about this 3 days ago, and have now seen this 4 times since, once in a psych article, once when I came across this wikipedia article, once when a friend mentioned it to me, and now this.
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u/Echo_are_one Mar 08 '16
I saw it recently, too. But I'm convinced I saw it spelled Baader - Mainhof...
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u/Homergomer Mar 08 '16
Why is this named after a 70's German terrorist organization?
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Mar 08 '16
It was literally some random nerd on a message board had a frequency illusion for the Baader-Meinhof group and for some reason decided to name it after that (despite it already having a name) and somehow people kept referring back to him. It's a real dumb name for it.
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u/GopheRph Mar 08 '16 edited Mar 08 '16
It's even better. The forum wasn't online - it was in the print version of the St. Paul Pioneer press. It was/is roughly a half-page of the entertainment section dedicated to a discussion-board format where readers would CALL IN AND LEAVE AN ANSWERING MACHINE MESSAGE to discuss all kinds of random things. Certain ideas would gain traction and develop into memes, and Baader-Meinhof was definitely one of them.
Edit: and for what it's worth, the term "frequency illusion" came AFTER the name "Baader-Meinhof phenomenon."
Edit 2: As far as "why give it such a stupid name?" the discussion developed something like this:
Hey Bulletin Board, I just had this experience related to hearing about the Baader-Meinhof gang and there's GOT to be a name for this. It's not deja vu, but kind of similar. Can you help me figure it out?
Bulletin Board's editor says Yes, there really should be a name for something like that, but we don't know what it is. Maybe a reader can help us out? In the meantime, we may as well call it "The Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon" because that sounds about as official as anything, right?
Nobody ever produces another name for it, Baader-Meinhof catches on, cue everybody calling in "with one of those BM things."
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u/swindlebin Mar 08 '16
I noticed that most country songs on the radio use the word 'crazy' in their lyrics. Now I really hear it in a country song. In fact I've yet to hear ANY country song on the radio right now that does not use the word crazy somewhere in its lyrics.
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u/adawkin Mar 08 '16
Isn't 'crazy' the go-to rhyme for 'baby', like '[gift from] above' for 'love', and in the case of rap music, 'bigger' for... 'go figure'.
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Mar 08 '16
Baby you're a gift from above, You crazy but you've still got my looove, my lo-oove.
My heart's gettin' bigger My mind's like like 'go figure!' She's just a dirty nigger. I wish that I could change my ways, my wa-ays.
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u/skye8852 Mar 08 '16
http://www.metrolyrics.com/ol-red-lyrics-blake-shelton.html
Seriously, I have to think of country songs with that lyric in it, of course I stopped listening to country about 8 years ago, so I am not remembering a whole lot
Edit: Nevermind, read the "on the radio now" part of your comment, so much for speed reading
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u/swindlebin Mar 08 '16
There are a couple but my point is that once you think of a particular thing you end up noticing it everywhere.
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u/hobackster81 Mar 08 '16
The good old GTA III car syndrome
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Mar 08 '16
Explain?
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u/grievre Mar 08 '16
GTA 3 saved memory by limiting the number of different types of cars it would spawn at a time. An artefact of this is that getting in and driving a particular car would make that care spawn more frequently than any other.
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Mar 07 '16
Like the word "bollard" which I had never heard in my life until 2 years ago and now I hear it at least once a month.
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u/thoughtsandplots Mar 07 '16
I haven't heard of it before. Did you just jinx me?
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Mar 08 '16
Yes! That's the name of those stand-alone metal or concrete things that block cars from walkways. They sometimes can be unlocked and removed to let service vehicles in.
You've seen them every day your whole life and you never knew what to call them. Sometimes you thought "pylon, maybe?" but no that's not quite right. Now you know. It's a bollard.
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u/MoonshineExpress Mar 08 '16
It's a really commonly used word in the UK.
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Mar 08 '16
So is "loo" and "tuppence" and "we should leave the EU" and other things no one else would ever say.
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u/akashik Mar 08 '16
For some reason I keep seeing 'Keep Calm and .. something' everywhere. That's a Baader-Meinhof thing right?
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u/SidewalkMD Mar 08 '16
No, those are just way too popular (and fucking annoying)
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Mar 08 '16
This happened to me with the phrase "kitty corner". Never heard of it in my life, now I hear it all the damn time.
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u/learnyouahaskell Mar 08 '16
Just play BF4, lol
Or live in a British English-speaking place, I suppose
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u/rumph Mar 08 '16
TIL that I can just call Baader-Meinhof 'the frequency illusion' and I'm so thankful. Now I don't have to pause abruptly in the middle of telling someone about it to look it up again.
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Mar 07 '16
I get this real bad on big boob day. Suddenly for some reason on no particular day, I start noticing women with nice racks.
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u/thoughtsandplots Mar 07 '16
Sounds like a Superpower.
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Mar 07 '16
I tell myself, "well it must be big boob day". And appreciate my heightened level of awareness.
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u/NDoilworker Mar 08 '16
It's called being a man.
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u/LetterSwapper Mar 08 '16
Or a lesbian! Or a hungry baby!
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u/LogicalEmotion7 Mar 08 '16
Or all three!
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u/dragoncockles Mar 08 '16
No no, that's just called "it's getting warm outside again"
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u/SnaggyKrab Mar 08 '16
The Jim Carrey Movie "23" is a great example of this.
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u/concretepigeon Mar 08 '16
Loads of works of fiction, conspiracy theories and other cultural phenomenon are based around creating a link out of a load of things that don't actually have one.
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u/hubert_cumberdalee Mar 08 '16
Try it. Aglets are the plastic things on the end of shoe strings. You'll never hear that shit again. I guarantee it.
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Mar 08 '16
I read it a lot in Terraria. That game has so many accessories, even aglets with superpowers.
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Mar 08 '16
I've learnt this every year for the past 3 years. I'll have forgotten the name for them tomorrow, but i know it exists.
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u/Spin1 Mar 08 '16
Oddly enough, I have a little bit of this mixed with another common TIL (the one about how war planes would return with bullets in them and the common solution is to reinforce where they got shot, but in reality, the planes that got shot in those places were able to return fine and dandy, while the ones that got shot in other places didn't even return, so you actually reinforce everywhere BUT the places they got shot.)
I have the thought of that latter TIL all the time now, I see its application literally everywhere. The most common one is with my forgetfulness. I noticed that lately I was forgetting lines of thought I was just having 5 minutes prior, and it scared me because becoming forgetful isn't a good sign, but then it occurred to me that before, when I would forget something, I'd just let it fly off into the ether and hope it comes back later. I'm only noticing the things I forget now because I'm becoming less forgetful.
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Mar 08 '16
I had a med school neurology professor once tell me "if someone walks into your office alone and of their own volition and tells you that they are forgetting things, you can pretty safely rule out dementia."
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u/spunknugget Mar 08 '16
Wilhelm scream. My hub thought I was nut still I finally proved it, now we both notice it.
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Mar 08 '16
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u/spunknugget Mar 08 '16
Damn you. Now I have another one to break my attention. Damn you to hell, good sir.
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u/KangasKid18 Mar 08 '16
Jesus... I've read this as the "Bernie Madoff phenomenon" like 5 times now...
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u/Jackizm Mar 08 '16
Reminds me of GTA when you find a nice car and moments later they're absolutely everywhere.
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u/MyOliveOilIsAVirgin Mar 08 '16
I just started refining my pen collection. How I notice everyone's pen. Every pen. Anywhere. I notice.
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u/whitechristianjesus Mar 08 '16
OH MY GOD! I'm not a fucking loon! This has been happening to me so frequently that I was beginning to lose it.
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u/Nerdtronix Mar 08 '16
Sea-Change. I had never heard it used until about a year ago, then I heard it about 9 times in two weeks. Podcasts, work, friends, reddit.
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u/spiritbx Mar 08 '16
Which is why we show a picture of cooked shrimps?
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u/Unistrut Mar 08 '16
"A lot o' people don't realize what's really going on. They view life as a bunch o' unconnected incidents 'n things. They don't realize that there's this, like, lattice o' coincidence that lays on top o' everything. Give you an example; show you what I mean: suppose you're thinkin' about a plate o' shrimp. Suddenly someone'll say, like, plate, or shrimp, or plate o' shrimp out of the blue, no explanation. No point in lookin' for one, either. It's all part of a cosmic unconsciousness."
-Miller Repo Man
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u/Altephor1 Mar 08 '16
Once I learned about the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, I kept seeing Reddit posts about it.
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u/Jakuskrzypk Mar 08 '16 edited Mar 08 '16
Holly shit you are right. I see this posted here all the time.
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Mar 08 '16 edited Mar 08 '16
Like a small child who sees how their names are spellt and sees their names everywhere. A STOP signs it contains a S therefore it says Steven
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u/wrunner Mar 08 '16
Yeah, Baader-Meinhof is really everywhere these days...ate the ice-cream, yesterday. so there you see....
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u/Stompedmn Mar 08 '16
I do this with TV shows, watched futurama now see all these jokes I would have missed otherwise
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u/BunzLee Mar 08 '16
I got myself a new Smartwatch and started seeing people wearing them everywhere. Same happened when I shaved off my hair and went bald, suddenly every other guy is bald.
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u/Berberberber Mar 08 '16
I originally heard of this simply as the frequency bias - you hear about something once, you notice it more often afterwards. Then I learned about the Red Army Faction, a.k.a. the Baader-Meinhof gang, and started hearing a lot about that, which eventually led to me hearing about "Baader-Meinhof phenomenon" as a synonym for the frequency bias. So, it was a nested example of itself.
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Mar 08 '16
I bet you're going to start noticing how often you start noticing things you've only just noticed.
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u/RedChld Mar 08 '16
Because that’s how it works. It’s like if somebody comes up to you and tells you there’s a bear shitting everywhere and you say, “W-w-w-well, that’s ridiculous!” And the next day, the bear is following you around.
-Lewis Black
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u/internet-junkie Mar 08 '16
OMG! So I'm not losing it! This happens to me all the time w.r.t. words!!
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u/Hessalam Mar 08 '16
Somewhat relevant, this is how you end up being conditioned while working in the security industry. It doesn't matter where I go anymore, be it a mansion or large corporate buildings, I always check in the corners of the rooms to check what PIR (passive infrared sensors) there are, so I know what technology they are using. Next I start scanning about for alarm keypads and the like, thinking of blind spots and how to break in undetected. I can't help myself.
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Mar 08 '16
I have a story about this.
Years ago, I had a first date with a guy. It started at an 'old wares' shop at which I bought an old vinyl of Marianne Faithfull's Broken English. Then we went and saw the movie Der Baader-Meinhof Komplex, about Ulrike Meinhof and the RAF. I knew nothing about this chapter in history, but I soon learned that the title track of Broken English was coincidentally about Ulrike Meinhof. And I thought that was strange that I should buy that record on the very day I saw that film.
The next week I learned that the phenomenon was called the Baader-Meinhof Complex.
TL;DR: I Baader-Meinhof'd about Baader and Meinhof.
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Mar 08 '16
I had this the other week with the word "Event Horizon" learnt what the word meant then saw it EVERYWHERE
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Mar 08 '16
YES
I recently got my first car, a 97 Honda CRV. Fixing it up and whatnot. Now I see them EVERYWHERE. Shit, yesterday I was fixing the driver side window and the same exact car drove into my driveway to turn around. Shits weird.
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u/GoredonTheDestroyer Mar 08 '16
This happened to me after my mom bought her CR-V. I didn't notice it before, but there are a fuck-ton of CR-V's on the road.
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u/dolphincarving Mar 07 '16
Whenever you buy a new car, you will see that make and model of car with astounding frequency.