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Perhaps You Can Help

Graphic: 'Muy Muy Rapido Tuesday' icon.

Eldon has a question and I’ve been unable to answer it. I thought this

might be a good time to tap the collective intelligence of the internet

and post it here:

Do you know the term for when you become suddenly aware of something and start seeing it everywhere?

For example: “I had never heard of this band, XYZ. Today I read about them in the paper, and then my

friends told me about them. Then I saw a poster for them…”

Another example: “I’d never heard of the book ABC, but today everywhere I went I saw it for sale and

people seemed ot have it”

Yet another example: “I only recently heard the word ‘blog’ for the

first time, but I’ve heard it in so many conversations this week.”

He’s looking for the term that describes this phenomenon: learning

about something and then suddenly seeing instances of it everywhere. I

vaguely remember hearing that there was such a word. Any ideas?

11 replies on “Perhaps You Can Help”

I think the part of your brain responsible for this is called the reticular activating system.

Eric (with the help of Google)

I call it the Hundredth Monkey Syndrome.

The theory being that when 100 monkeys do something, other monkeys all start doing the same thing.

It almost makes you not feel guilty about buying that Britney Spears CD.

Could the word be, “marketing?”

The other word that leaps to mind despite seeming not quite correct is synchronicity.

I know the phenomenon well, it’s what landed me in Austin, TX in 1994.

I’d lobby for a coinage like “obliquity,” combining “oblivious” with “ubiquity.”

Close: it’s “plate of shrimp”, which is Miller’s example of the latticework of coincidence in _Repo_Man_. Back in the day, my friends & I would exclaim “Plate of shrimp!” whenever this happened.

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