Monday 19 May 2008

Fun with Pareidolia

Pareidolia is an interesting psychological phenomenon. Sufferers have a tendency to interpret random images or sounds as non-random and significant.

Essentially, they see or hear stuff that's not really there.

But they don't just see it. After all, any one of us can look up into the clouds and see anything we want.

The difference for the truly Pareideluded (I just made that up) is that they truly believe in what they see. To them it's a message. Or it's a sign.

The most common (and amusing) examples are the appearances of religious icons in various earthly forms.

Recently, baked goods have been popular among the heavenly types, with the appearance of Mother Theresa on a cinnamon bun, and the Virgin Mary on a cheese sandwich (although I always thought that one looked more like Marlene Dietrich).

Pareidolia isn't restricted to the religious fringes, though. There's plenty of secular delusionals out there too.

There was the Face on Mars (finally debunked in 2001 when the Mars Global Surveyor got this high-res photo) and just a few weeks ago, the mysterious appearance of two aliens on the wall of a house in Calgary . . . when it's not too cloudy.

Like anything too fantastic to be credible, these things are used by the insignifcant to garner attention, and by the unscrupulous to rip off the gullible.

Anyway, I decided this might be a train worth jumping on, and had a quick look around the house for something that might get me some instant notoriety.

There might even be few bucks in ticket sales.

Once I decided to look, it took me less than 30 seconds to find this on my kitchen wall:

Clearly, it's Jesus on the cross.



See?

That'll be $12.50. And please buy a t-shirt on your way out.

3 comments:

Rob said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Rob said...

I bought a box of Nutri-Grain the other day. Every single one of them looked like the head of E.T.
It was amazing.

And for those who like an injection of Lore into their ludicrous, check this out.

Anonymous said...

I don't mean to lower the tone but you know what I think it looks like?