The Baader-Meinhof complex is happening to you right now. It happened to you yesterday; it’ll happen to you tomorrow; and it'll happen the day after that. If you’re starting to see a pattern here, that’s because you’re experiencing the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon (AKA the "frequency illusion"), the prickly sensation that after you see something once, it's everywhere.

All mind trickery aside, the world is made up of patterns. Some people see certain types of patterns, while others may see different types. It really has to do with how a person is educated. After all, someone with a PhD in Applied Mathematics is going to see how numbers fit into the world far better than a person schooled in literature. The patterns you see reinforce your preconceptions and therefore your reality... but what if you see only what you want to see? What if a certain reality only exists because it's the world you want? What if you shut out everything that might challenge that view because you just aren't looking for different patterns?

Like its sister phenomenon the Mandela Effect, in which whole groups of people misremember the same thing, the Baader-Meinhof complex is an example of your mind playing a trick on you in a really effective way. But, given how terrible human memory actually is, you might want to consider reading on to see if you're in the midst of the Baader-Meinhof right now, this very minute. Otherwise, you might just get trapped inside your own mental patterns.