I’d never heard of Ōmisoka until few days ago when I updated the site’s subject line. And today…
So I need to add a Baader-Meinhof tag.
And absolutely true story: I’d never heard of the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon until last month, and then two days later…
Comics I Don't Understand 
I could’ve sworn we’ve been making Baader-Meinhof wisecracks for more than a month.
Grawlix, it might have been more than a month: I have a terrible sense of that sort of thing, Whenever it was, that was the first time I’d heard the name, and I came across it again two days later.
Hadn’t heard of B-M phenomenon either; just always called it LOC (Lattice of Coincidence). See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4nvmyMU9is
Would you believe last December?
https://godaddyandthesquirrelmustbothdie.wordpress.com/2018/12/18/another-day-another-death/#comment-18962
And look down a few comments for some previous hits.
Three years in Japan and I’d never hear omisoka as well. New Year, yes, but not specifically about New Year’s Eve celebrations.
Arthur, yes I would. I am really, really bad at that sort of thing; but to my credit, I know I’m really, really bad at it and won’t argue with anybody who corrects me.
“I am really, really bad at that sort of thing; but to my credit, I know I’m really, really bad at it and won’t argue with anybody who corrects me.”
And that, unfortunately, is a rare combination.
Arthur, I’ve run a site called Comics I Don;t Understand for 23 years: does that sound like somebody unwilling to accept when he doesn’t know something?
I was saying that it’s a shame that there aren’t more like you. Perhaps I didn’t state it well.
And, wow! 23 years. I do remember the days of “while you were waiting…”
I did understand, Arthur. And thank you.
Things certainly change, Arthur: it could take longer for the CIDU page to load in 1996 than it takes an Amazon order to arrive in 2019.
There are a few threads where the term was used and there were posts from you quite close. In this one from about year ago you used it:
https://godaddyandthesquirrelmustbothdie.wordpress.com/2018/12/18/another-day-another-death/
It was fairly recently that I heard the terminology of Baader-Meinhof phenomenon. But I don’t know how to differentiate it from “Mandela effect” (or sometimes “mandala effect”!) and “Barbra Streisand effect”.
Am I the only one who immediately thought of Red Army Faction?
I didn’t really know about Baader-Meinhof until seeing it here, but it seems to be a version of Goethe’s “we only see what we know”/
My teddy bears celebrate the feast of the Hibernation on the winter solstice The eat until they are overfull and the adult bears tend to overimbide – to prepare to hibernate, which they do not actually do. At the spring equinox they will have the feast of the awakening.
Meryl, any chance of a pic of you with the teddies?
@Brian in STL – the fact that Bill commented nearby really doesn’t mean he noticed it at all. I’ve definitely had cases where I “first” learn about something, then I go and re-read a book that I know I read ages ago, and discover that “new” thing in it, leading me to wonder just how I missed it the first time. (I’ve always assumed that’s Baader-Meinhof related though, in that the thing I noticed right after learning about it was always common, and I’d just skipped over it as some random thing I didn’t know about but wasn’t plot-critical.)
the fact that Bill commented nearby really doesn’t mean he noticed it at all.
For the average person, perhaps, but he’s the site moderator. I would expect him to read every post. And you glossed over him actually using the term in one.
Sorry, I mis-read the comment as being two separate statements – that it was a year ago that Bill started using the term, but previously other people had used it in comments. Given that my example was talking about stuff that I had read but went …in one eye and out the other? Bill reading the comments, even thoroughly, and missing the term, wouldn’t surprise me. It’s like how Bugs Bunny could get away with so many very adult jokes – they don’t register with the kids at all, because the kids don’t understand them.
It isn’t called Omisoka. That is a word but that isn’t how it is used.
Chak – perhaps of them, they are much cuter and photogenic than me. Christmas is, in general lagging in our house especially bad this year – Thanksgiving bears and general decorations barely (hah) made it out for Thanksgiving.
The bear village tends to be the last of the Christmas decorations and I have to schlep the RV stuff still in the dining from when it went to PA for service for a month out to the RV so I can move the huge “hope chest” of DVDs from the living room to the dining room (on wheels for this purpose) so I can put the tree in the living room where the chest was and put the Colonial Williamsburg ornament tree on the chest in the dining room… The poor bear village generally ends up being set up for Christmas on Christmas Eve day or Christmas night and now that is set up in different seasons I have to pack away the Thanksgiving bears & their corn shuck house and the children’s train ride on the ski/sled mountain and all of the bears boating in the pond.
We keep discussing taking a photo of the village when it is set up and the next year sending it out on Christmas card “From our village to yours…”