As I mentioned before, human memory is associative, and you can tell because look at this image and then close your eyes.
Whichever one you saw, maiden or crone, will make certain words easier to hear or read through noise. Because those words have been primed in your associative memory.
Mere exposure to misinformation, retroactively fucks with your memory. Even arguing about it, will do this. Even if it's a seemingly tiny detail.
The more you go "no are you fucking with me? I saw it with my own eyes, you're just making shit up," the more that misinformation will fuck with it.
If your glance showed the maiden, you will hear the word "young" better through a noisy channel than the word "old."
If your glance showed the crone, the opposite.
You can literally see this in fMRI scans.
This is an essential part of how language works, you would literally not be able to communicate if your mind did not work like this, constructing associative networks of related things.
It's why sherlock scans are bullshit.
Your mind does not give one single fuck *how* an element is associated. Where that association came from, even when it happened. Doesn't fucking matter, it's now part of the network.
Consider when you see news headlines about Christian fundamentalists pushing for laws that restrict women's rights.
And how so often, some shitlib does the "what are we, a bunch of Asians?!" thing. They come out with a cute islamophobic nickname for it: the Y'all Qaeda, etc.
Your mind does not give a fuck that the association with Islam came from some dipshit tweeting. It doesn't know what tweets are.
That legislation is now, despite your will, associated with Islam in your warm ape jelly.
After reading that dipshit tweet about the "American Taliban," you will be more easily able to hear the Islamophobic slurs through a noisy channel, etc.
You will be faster to recall instances of events portraying Muslims negatively, etc.
Less trusting of muslims in interactions.
People have tested this.
One interesting one: people are exposed to one of these dipshits commenting on an event.
Then, a few minutes later, waiting in a room for the next test, a woman wearing a hijab drops her papers on the floor.
Guess whether this makes people more or less likely to help her
Mere exposure is enough to create this association.
You remember things better, by placing them in a wide array of contexts, making a resilient associative network that attaches the new thing to several different things in several different ways.
Consider now rightwing media, where the day's outrage topic is endlessly, relentlessly crammed into every possible context in every possible way.
Your boomer mom hears about whatever the fuck it is, the women's olympic team or a random trans woman or hunter biden, hundreds of times a day.
Her favorite radio host will mention this topic when talking about the weather or the price of tea in China, just cramming it into every single spot they can.
This creates a *very* resilient associative network, deliberately. One that will retroactively alter memories, actively *make it harder to perceive* certain words, etc.
Mere exposure to this kind of association is enough to fuck with you, can you even imagine what 10 hours of youtube videos of white guy screaming at camera in his car will do to you?
Or consider this:
Almost every Asian man online has at some point had people ask if he's "the one with the ants."
People spreading half-remembered rumors about him and ants. Something about ants, was it him?
In 2012, before gamergate, IMC tweeted about ants and people who disliked him, made jokes about him and ants.
Later, people made even more jokes about him and ants.
"Asian guy who I find annoying" became vaguely associated with ants.
Years later, this vague association spilled over to other Asian men, men with Asiatic facial features, etc.
People who had only like 5th-hand exposure to those ant jokes via osmosis, going "wait didn't I hear something about him and ants?"
It doesn't take much for this kind of association to form, vague half-remembered pieces glomming onto each other.
Female youtube streamer + racist comment = "wait wasn't she the one who"
On any social media you will find cliques forming, and vagueposting alluding to things someone has said or done.
And you'll find totally innocent third parties getting hit with these vague rumors, based on like one feature half remembered.
Now consider how a very large backbone of rightwing media is to take a very remarkable event involving a marginalized person, and then amping the hell out of it.
One trans woman a decade ago, attacks someone with an axe. A decade later, andy ngo breathlessly mentions the epidemic of trans axe murde
Mere exposure creates an association, and retroactively fucks with memory.
People merely *responding* to him and pointing out it was one person, a decade ago, there is not a fucking epidemic of trans women attacking people with axes you nazi fuck, merely amplify this association further.
People who encounter one of these debunking quote tweets, still have that association form.
The repost it, because who can resist a good dunk.
And a million more people get the association between trans women and axe murder.
And, in those people, you can slap them into an fMRI, show them a trans woman, and then literally see them more easily able to hear the word "axe" through a noisy channel than those who hadn't been primed with the picture.
Imagine a boomer who, more than a year later, is still regularly exposed to their favorite media making jokes about Dylan Mulvaney and bud light.
How do you think that has affected their ability to *merely perceive* news involving trans people?
Just this thread alone has created these associations in you. Merely talking about this, has made you more likely to hear some words through a noisy channel than other words. Your memories are already slightly altered.
Again: you can tell that humans cannot see both the maiden and crone simultaneously, because if you could you wouldn't be able to hear the word "youth" better through noise after seeing the maiden but not the crone.
Both words about youth, and age, would be equally primed after seeing it.
