Have you ever learned a new word and then hear it a million times soon after? Have you ever learned a new concept or idea and then hear it shortly after? This is the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon. It occurs when one learns a new name or word and encounters the same word shortly after. An example of the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon would be hearing about the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon shortly after. Maybe tomorrow during school you will hear someone talk about the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon. Perhaps you've recently learned about it, and now you're hearing about it again in this post. Mind-blowing, am I right?
Have you ever said, "Wow, that's so weird I just heard about that?" You just got Baader-Meinhof'd. I find it happening in my daily life all the time. The timing is uncanny. I will learn a new word from someone, and then for the next week it seems I encounter that word in every book, sign, tweet, etc. It's a weird experience and I know others surely feel like this too. I find it wildly amusing how our brains can detect patterns in words and new concepts. Our brains process so much information on a daily basis. It's understandable that our brains are exposed to the same information sometimes in short amounts of time. Our brain recognizes this as information it recently came across, and it gives the information a form of priority. This new "interesting" data is given more attention resulting in this phenomenon. I would compare the Phenomenon to a form of deja vu. Wow, I just learned what deja vu meant the other day ;) Talk about getting Baader-Meinhof'd.... ;)
P.S. I do not know how to pronounce it. I just say it loud with a German accent.
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