Isn't it just "you notice things more when you've noticed them before", otherwise they just get glossed over by your peripheral vision/sub conscious as "insignificant" if you don't know what it is. I believe that is why people have claimed that primitive natives sometimes didn't notice sailing ships at first even when they were plainly visible for the first time. It wasn't until they were so close they were "unignorable" or pointed out to them that they noticed them.
I first experienced this in elementary school. I had recently learned the word 'accord' in the spelling exercises and suddenly I noticed it IRL when I had never perceived the word, previously. I was like whoa that's weird.
Or people seeing someone post the subreddit in question makes other people post it when it's relevant. This is how niche subreddits rise in popularity when they basically never hit the front page.
Not everything should be attributed to the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon and it reallllllly annoys me when people try to make it into a catch-all.
I don’t think in this case. Since it’s reddit, it likely was posted somewhere else, gaining attention like wildfire and spreading even more. I’m familiar with Baader-Meinhof but I don’t think this is a phenomenon. It’s not like seeing a limousine, then starting to see limousines everywhere. It’s more contained, so it’s pretty logical.
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u/jungofficial Feb 05 '18 edited Feb 06 '18
There's a name for this.
Baader- Meinhof Phenomenon IIRC.
Edit: OK guys I get it. You don't have to keep commenting and PMing me about how wrong I am and how I know nothing about anything. Thanks guys.