I thought that I should share something that has been on my mind for a while now, and has just occured again no more than 15 minutes ago.

I called it The Precarious Conspiracy for two reasons. The main reason is because the first time I told someone about it a month or two back it was to do with the word 'precarious' (it'll make sense in a second). The second (semi-)reason is that the word precarious actually describes the conspiracy itself, in that there is no certainty in it and I doubt it'd be even possible to try and prove.

The Precarious Conspiracy is simply this: have you ever learnt a new word or something similar or just payed attention to a certain thing at one point in the day and then found the word popping up all over the place? This is the basic essence of the conspiracy. The first time I told someone was when I had looked up the word precarious and then it was on a TV Quiz show the very next day. Normally I would just put this down to coincidence but the amount of times this has happened is just too many; of course, the obvious possible reasoning behind it is that I wouldn't have noticed it unless I had taken notice of it, but I don't think so.

As I said above, it has just recently happened again and this time it was on the word 'crux'. I read, and taken notice of, because of the fact I hadn't seen the word before, the word in a Sherlock Holmes story about 12 hours ago and then it cropped up on TV.

Call it simple coincidence if you will but I find it too odd, based on the number of times this has happened.

Please tell me if anyone's experienced the same kind of thing -- let me keep my sanity!

LOL,Yes it happens to me also.

But it is immediate.I'll say something and a word or phrase will come up on the TV a moment later.

I never thought of it as a conspiracy though.

Originally posted by John bull 1
LOL,Yes it happens to me also.

But it is immediate.I'll say something and a word or phrase will come up on the TV a moment later.

I never thought of it as a conspiracy though.

Well, we might both be psychic but I don't think I am .

The same thing happened to me with the word "kudos." It's happened a lot but "kudos" is the word I remember being confronted with the most after I heard it the first time.

I just thought it was because I was looking for it. What else could explain it?

It could also be that, since you just learned it, you're paying more attention to it when it comes up. I had never noticed how many Mazda Miatas were on the road until I got one myself. Then they seemed like they were everywhere, when, in fact, I just wasn't noticing them from other cars.

Originally posted by junglejake
It could also be that, since you just learned it, you're paying more attention to it when it comes up. I had never noticed how many Mazda Miatas were on the road until I got one myself. Then they seemed like they were everywhere, when, in fact, I just wasn't noticing them from other cars.

That's probably it but you never know what the imagination might come up with, since there are so many people who could read this and see it as a conspiracy; if it is then I wanna know about it, especially since I don't think it can happen the amount of times it's happened to me, it has to be like a hundred times in the past year.

YES! The same thing happens to me all the time! LOL ITS SO FUNNY THAT YOU MENTIONED THIS!!! hahahah

It's very weird when it happens and it does sometimes feel more than just a coincidence. I cant remember the times its happened to me, but I do remember that it leaves me with a very weird feeling when it happens sometimes. It could be a day after or an hour or minute from when i hear the word again. I would love to know what this phenominon is actually called, if there is such a thing. Next time it happens i'll post the details!

Glad to know there's at least one other person out there who feels really odd about it

Yes, I know exactly what you mean as it does happen to me quite frequently.

Though it can last several weeks and I think the answer is, as JJ said. NOw you have a new word in yoru vocabulary, when it is said on TV you will take note, even more so now that you have found something of a coincidental nature to it. Before you learnt the word, if it came up on TV it wouldnt even register because you had no idea what it meant.


What I am curious of now though is why you think this is a conspiracy??

Do you think other people are involved? Do you think people are purposely making this happen to drive you mad or something?

I think, while you are looking up your next word in your dictionary, have a flick over to the letter C and check up on "conspiracy"

I get that quite often too. And the strangest words too. The one I remember is Soroptimist . I read an ad for their society in Tenby once and within a few hours someone mentioned the word on the news and then again in a talk show (I think it was Paxman). Until then, I didn't even know what the word meant !

triplesod, you made a fair enough point (even if a tad sarcastic, but I thought about it for a while and decided I thought it better to put it in the conspiracy area since some of the things it happens to me I doubt would have ever happened had I not found them out beforehand -- if that makes sense.

Here's an excerpt from the movie Repo Man-
starring Emilio Estavez, describing this same thing-
experienced it many times myself-
enjoy-

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Otto and Miller in vacant lot under bridge

Otto holds up book he's about to throw in burning garbage can. Book says "Dioretix: The Science of Matter over Mind. By A. Rum Bi..."

Miller: A lot of people don't realize what's really going on. They view life as a bunch of unconnected incidences and things. They don't realize that there's this like lattice of coincidence that lays on top of everything. I'll Give you an example, show you what I mean. Suppose you thinking about a plate of shrimp. Suddenly somebody will say like plate or shrimp or plate of shrimp out of the blue no explanation. No point in looking for one either. It's all part of a cosmic unconsciousness.

Otto: You eat a lot of acid Miller, back in the hippie days?

Miller: I'll give you another instance. You know the way everybody's into weirdness right now. Books in all the supermarkets about Bermuda triangles, UFO's, how the Mayans invented television. That kind of thing.

Otto: I don't read them books.

Miller: Well the way I see it it's exactly the same. There ain't no difference between a flying saucer and a time machine. People get so hung up on specifics. They miss out on seeing the whole thing. Take South America for example. In South America thousands of people go missing every year. Nobody knows where they go. They just like disappear. But if you think about it for a minute, you realize something. There had to be a time when there was no people. Right?

Otto: Yeah. I guess.

Miller: Well where did all these people come from? hmmm? I'll tell you where. The future. Where did all these people disappear to? hmmm?

Otto: The past?

Miller: That's right and how did they get there?

Otto: How the # (hell) do I know?

Miller: Flying saucers. Which are really? Yeah you got it. Time machines. I think a lot about this kind of stuff. I do my best thinking on the bus. That how come I don't drive, see?

Otto: You don't even know how to drive.

Miller: I don't want to know how. I don't want to learn. See? The more you drive, the less intelligent you are.

The same thing hapens to me too!!! Must be that when you add a new word to you vocabulary, you're more likely to notice it when someone says it because makes you think "Hey! thats the new word I learned today!"

It happens to me all the time...I also never really thought of it as a true conspiracy, but you may be on to something.

that dosent happen with just words either. i was suposed to get this new used car, a pontiac bonneville iv seen them before but never noticed them. then when i was suposed to get it i started seeing those cars everywhere, when before that i never saw one. i think its just when something is new like an object or word you remeber it and then youll hear it and be like "omg what a coincidence!" when in reality you are just more aware of the word and relating to yourself in one way or another.

I get that it could be just because of the "learnt a new word" thing, but what about when it happens with something so outrageous that it can't just be a coincidence, given that it isn't just once? That's kind of what I'm getting at.

Jung is very much known for extrapolating on this.



syn·chro·ni·ci·ty:
1. The state or fact of being synchronous or simultaneous; synchronism. 2. Coincidence of events that seem to be meaningfully related, conceived in the theory of Carl Jung as an explanatory principle on the same order as causality.

I was just tutoring someone for the ASVAB test (military entrance exam), and its got an SAT-like word definition section. Every day we covered a word, it would later be heard either on the radio, the news, or said by someone outside both her or my circle (strangers in stores, on the street, etc.).

I had thought briefly that this could be one of those 'coincidences' (that i don't believe in).

This happens to me all the time. I'll see a word, or say it, and then I'll see it everywhere. It happens a lot, it freaks me out. Also a lot of times I'll be thinking of something, and then someone else around me will say exactly what I'm thinking. Does that have anything to do with this sort of thing too?