Weekly Eldritch: Faces 2

Further to a previous post, I keep seeing faces everywhere…

And when you find a face unexpectedly, it’s like suddenly noticing someone hiding. This one in particular was so detailed it just made me jump when I spotted it (Hope, BC):

It must be at some base level of instinct, for my eye to always be picking out facial features where there aren’t any. I can’t believe it’s just me – does everyone do this?

It’s like the face-recognition feature in my photo software, that picks faces out of photos and often enough makes errors, thinking that a curtain pattern or folded bit of fabric is a face.

All of which reminds me of the ‘cocktail party effect’: where a person says your name in the middle of a party hubbub, and you can hear it across the room, your ear picking it out of all the other sounds. Do we pick out faces from all other visual stimuli, because we have some primal need to locate and identify beings like ourselves?

Even animals are attuned to facial cues – many butterflies have eye spots to fool predators into thinking they are larger creatures.

I can’t seem to stop seeing faces, even in the weird patterns in my flooring… it’s hypnotic.

Actually, it’s kind of annoying.