by MajoNoTakkyubin » October 24th, 2024, 4:28 am
Oh gosh, as someone who's totally plagued by apophenia, it's hard to say, haha! This is totally anecdotal information, so skip past the --- to get to the main part of my argument!
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My example of apophenia is something incredibly silly and made up when you hear it, which is why I've only ever told one other person about it, but it IS true at least.
For random periods since my late teens, I've had a weird, specific thing that gives me strong apophenia. Virtually every time something bad happens during these months-long periods, from things like friend drama, to something expensive starting to break, to getting saddled with something mentally exhausting, to realizing I'm up way too late due to insomnia, SOMETHING always ends up showing either the number 1234, or the number 666. It's incredibly stupid and incredibly cheesy, but I've had periods where EVERY time something bad happened, it would be 12:34pm, or I would be reading page 66 of chapter 6, or someone would be saying something and the only numbers they say are three sixes in a row. It always inevitably only happens during those periods where something bad is happening, even if the bad thing only lasts for a minute.
Now, especially because of how silly that sounds, I always kind of wrote that off as just apophenia. Something like my internal clock knows it's 12:34pm, so if something bad happens, I automatically glance over at 12:34pm and confirm it for myself. Or my brain hears the number "six" said (I even just did it by accidentally mistyping "six" twice) and anticipates it being said two more times, so I'm paying more attention to it. Or they're just simply two incredibly common combinations of numbers that you're likely to encounter all the time. It still massively weirds me out that it happens so constantly and so consistently for months at a time, but that's how apophenia gets you. It makes you make a bigger deal out of something relatively minor or potentially explainable.
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Pareidolia is very much in the same vein: A face is a form of pattern just the same as 1234 is, and the brain is built to piece together all of this information in order to create a whole that contains all of the important information we need. It's trained to look at those snapped twigs and dirt smudges, and their specific shape and size help us realize the difference between a deer strolling by or a cougar on the prowl. It's trained to gaze into the darkness of the forest and make out physical features amongst the foliage that makes you realize there's a predator watching and waiting to pounce. And it's trained to look at relatively innocuous places and see a face because of the ever-present risk of a lion hiding in the bushes and staring at you, or an enemy warrior peeking from around a corner.
Inevitably, a brain that's prepared to expect something like that will start to see things and interpret them as being that even if they're not! Seeing movement out of the corner of your eye when there's nothing there, seeing a face looking at you out of the darkness, seeing a humanoid white shape in a Polaroid, or whatever! I think there's a reason that the most common things we tend to create in our minds are faces, movement, and the shapes of creatures!
Everyone always sees Jesus on their toast, but nobody ever sees an airplane, or the theory of relativity, or the prophetic image of an impending disaster or something!
But then again, maybe it IS something supernatural and I've been ignoring really important warning signs of an approaching demon...that would totally be my luck! XD
Oh gosh, as someone who's totally plagued by apophenia, it's hard to say, haha! This is totally anecdotal information, so skip past the --- to get to the main part of my argument!
----------------------------
My example of apophenia is something incredibly silly and made up when you hear it, which is why I've only ever told one other person about it, but it IS true at least.
For random periods since my late teens, I've had a weird, specific thing that gives me strong apophenia. Virtually every time something bad happens during these months-long periods, from things like friend drama, to something expensive starting to break, to getting saddled with something mentally exhausting, to realizing I'm up way too late due to insomnia, SOMETHING always ends up showing either the number 1234, or the number 666. It's incredibly stupid and incredibly cheesy, but I've had periods where EVERY time something bad happened, it would be 12:34pm, or I would be reading page 66 of chapter 6, or someone would be saying something and the only numbers they say are three sixes in a row. It always inevitably only happens during those periods where something bad is happening, even if the bad thing only lasts for a minute.
Now, especially because of how silly that sounds, I always kind of wrote that off as just apophenia. Something like my internal clock knows it's 12:34pm, so if something bad happens, I automatically glance over at 12:34pm and confirm it for myself. Or my brain hears the number "six" said (I even just did it by accidentally mistyping "six" twice) and anticipates it being said two more times, so I'm paying more attention to it. Or they're just simply two incredibly common combinations of numbers that you're likely to encounter all the time. It still massively weirds me out that it happens so constantly and so consistently for months at a time, but that's how apophenia gets you. It makes you make a bigger deal out of something relatively minor or potentially explainable.
---------------------------
Pareidolia is very much in the same vein: A face is a form of pattern just the same as 1234 is, and the brain is built to piece together all of this information in order to create a whole that contains all of the important information we need. It's trained to look at those snapped twigs and dirt smudges, and their specific shape and size help us realize the difference between a deer strolling by or a cougar on the prowl. It's trained to gaze into the darkness of the forest and make out physical features amongst the foliage that makes you realize there's a predator watching and waiting to pounce. And it's trained to look at relatively innocuous places and see a face because of the ever-present risk of a lion hiding in the bushes and staring at you, or an enemy warrior peeking from around a corner.
Inevitably, a brain that's prepared to expect something like that will start to see things and interpret them as being that even if they're not! Seeing movement out of the corner of your eye when there's nothing there, seeing a face looking at you out of the darkness, seeing a humanoid white shape in a Polaroid, or whatever! I think there's a reason that the most common things we tend to create in our minds are faces, movement, and the shapes of creatures!
Everyone always sees Jesus on their toast, but nobody ever sees an airplane, or the theory of relativity, or the prophetic image of an impending disaster or something!
But then again, maybe it IS something supernatural and I've been ignoring really important warning signs of an approaching demon...that would totally be my luck! XD