Let’s start with a history lesson.
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| Once a new element is introduced, our penchant for patterns makes something new, seem not so new after all. |
Of course, German communism is as outdated as Marx, Lenin, and West Germany itself, so this little trip down memory lane is probably irrelevant to you. But it might become relevant, maybe in a day or two, if the Baader-Meinoff Phenomenon holds true.
The Baader-Meinhoff Phenom gives appellation to some weirdness we’ve all experienced: You’ve just learned about something, or heard an odd word or term for the first time, then suddenly you find it cropping up again and again. Not surprisingly, the name was coined by someone who reported, in an online discussion forum, that they’d recently heard about the Baader-Meinhoff Gang…and then heard another random reference to the same, the very next day.
That thread took off, they say, because everyone can identify.
So is it as spooky as it seems? Is it some eerily specific type of synchronicity, diabolically designed to shoehorn ephemera like the Baader-Meinhoff Gang into our consciousness?
We kind of wish that were so. The truth is a little more pedestrian, but much more enlightening as to opaque workings of the human mind.
It’s called frequency illusion, and it’s related to the pattern-seeking bias we’re all programmed with. We’re creatures constantly on the lookout for recognizable patterns, even though we hardly realize it, because it’s a pretty reasonable survival strategy. After all, if you’re able to quickly, subconsciously espy a pattern within the willowy savannah grasses, one that suggests the lurking of hungry teeth, you just might buy yourself a valuable head start. These days the urgency isn’t quite as great, but the tendency remains.
Our brains are pretty good at editing, too. Via our senses we’re constantly bombarded with information and stimuli, most of which we instantly deem irrelevant, so we ignore it. But this tendency is at war with the previously mentioned one; within those terrabytes of ignored data patterns exist, or at least they seem to. And we’re watching for them. If some random bit of chatter makes it through the censor, like “Baader Meinhoff” for instance, we’re alert for that chatter to repeat itself—even though the whole process is happening outside our conscious awareness.
The truth is, we’re perceiving the world as persistent, mostly meaningless static. And you know how it is with static: you can either ignore it, or you can listen close. If you do, you can swear you hear within it creepy whispers.
From a marketing perspective it’s intriguing, but not exactly an easy thing to leverage. Sure, we try to pierce the barrier of psychological editing with repetition and with uniqueness of message—and sure, it often works. But trying to predict which patterns (or more accurately, perceived patterns) folks will find meaningful is challenging indeed.
It’s just too bad the name Baader Meinhoff was already taken, and tainted. Because clearly, that one works like a charm.
The C4:
1. The Baader-Meinhoff Gang were very bad, no-good people. The less said about them the better.
2. But the Baader-Meinhoff Phenomenon is fascinating. It’s not supernatural, it only seems that way. It tells us a lot about the way we think, and the way we see the world.
3. It’s about pattern recognition, and it’s about thinking you’ve found patterns where none actually exist. It’s why you see faces in the clouds, and it’s why you’re certain to see a ’56 Packard the same week you find out your grandpappy drove one.
4. How useful is it? That remains unsure. We’re just kind of glad the Baader-Meinhoff Gang didn’t have a marketing department to harness their eponymous phenomenon. Those bomb-throwing twits might have been famous, rather than historical footnotes.
