Real Glitch in the Matrix
When Something Really Weird Happens from Time to Time to You
In the original Matrix movie from 1999, we were introduced to something called déjà vu, a glitch in the Matrix that happened if something was changed in the code of the Matrix and the déjà vu was the effect of overlapping of the altered reality, observed by the people trapped inside.
In real world, Déjà vu itself is a known phenomenon that can happen to us (a situation that feels like we’ve experienced it before, even though it’s the first time), and it actually happened to me several times.
But in fact, I use the term “glitch in the Matrix” for a bit different phenomenon myself.
Sure, I started to use it as a reference to the movie itself, especially as it sounds cool, but I somehow adopted it to describe a slightly different phenomenon that I was not able to describe with just a several words before.
So, what is that “glitch in the Matrix” for me?
Imagine a situation when you suddenly remember some person, for example, your friend, that you have not met for a really long time — and the next day, that person rings your doorbell or suddenly calls you to say hello.
Or a situation when you hear some term that you haven’t heard for some time, and suddenly you hear it from another random source, like a radio.
Does that seem really weird?
Is it just a coincidence that you connect these two events and have a specific response from your brain?
For me, it really sounds like a kind of glitch, like when someone suddenly remembers that something (like your friend or that word) exists and must use it from that moment at least once.
Frequency illusion
I have been experiencing such moments for my whole life.
For some reason, there is a little itchy response of my body whenever it happens, and maybe you can relate to it yourself.
Why is it so weird when it happens to us?
Is it some kind of brain self-defense mechanism that is triggered so we pay more attention to it?
For a long time, I even thought that this was happening only to me, but when I was playing with AI recently, I got an idea to describe it, and guess what — I found that I am not the only one who experiences such situations.
In fact, this phenomenon is already described as Baader-Meinhof phenomenon — also called Frequency illusion.
According to Wikipedia, it is “a cognitive bias in which a person notices a specific concept, word, or product more frequently after recently becoming aware of it.”
And yes, it actually fully describes what I call “a glitch in the matrix.”
So, maybe I simply named a known behavior of our brain my own way, but whenever it happens, I actually smile at the reference to the movie, even though twisted a bit.
The Real Error, or Future Prediction?
But, well, as far as I was able to identify this psychological concept that was bugging me for years, there is one more that even the almighty AI chat could not describe properly.
It happened to me when I was much younger, probably in my early teenage years.
One night, I had a dream that we traveled in a bus and for some reason, the road went to a narrow street between high-rise buildings, and it suddenly continued over the stairs.
As the bus started to climb uphill, it tilted more and more, and it even overturned onto its back, to its roof.
At that moment, I woke up, but that moment left a really deep sense of something in my mind.
Several days after that dream, we were playing on the backstreet with my friend, running and riding bikes, simply everything kids would do in their free time.
For some reason, we started to bet who would make the longest drive on the back wheel of the bicycle, with the front raised up in the air.
And yes, as I wanted to win so badly, I pushed the pedal with too much power, so I tilted the bike too much and overturned onto my back.
Sure, it was a rough fall, and the pain in my back was there for several days after, but you know what was absolutely weird about this?
It never, ever happened to me before, and during the overturning motion, I had absolutely the same feeling as during that dream the other day.
Was it a simple coincidence? Or was it a “real glitch in the matrix”? Have I somehow predicted the future in my dream?
Hard to say.
I would accept if both events happened in a different order — I mean if my subconsciousness repeated the fall on my back in the dream, but vice versa, it sounds really, really weird.
And What About You?
Anyway, has something similar ever happened to you?
Is there something that happens to you from time to time, feels really weird, so you could call it also like “glitch in the matrix”?
Or maybe you have your own term for situations that seem so off and unnatural that you can almost think that it could not be simple coincidence?
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