The act of seeing meaningful images or faces in examples of pareidolia itself. It's perceiving a higher-order "face" or intentional design in humanity's universal tendency to see faces in clouds, toast, or rock formations. This theory often veers into the philosophical or mystical, suggesting that our collective drive to find faces isn't just a neural bug, but is itself a "face" or signature of a deeper cosmic tendency toward order, or even a designer who built that bias into us.
Meta-Pareidolia Theory Example: Someone looks at a collage of hundreds of photos of "Jesus in toast" or "the Man in the Moon" and declares, "Don't you see? The fact that we all do this, everywhere, is the real face! The universe is winking at us through our own brains." This is Meta-Pareidolia—interpreting the pattern of pareidolic events as itself a grand, meaningful pattern.
by Abzugal Nammugal Enkigal February 6, 2026
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