Is this a common phenomenon and what is it called?

February 1, 2024 4:26 PM

I can positively identify places that I have been before visually with only a narrow aspect of the place being shown. For example, a friend posted a video of her walking up a staircase with only the floor and staircase in the video. Now, I get that I would have contextual information about where she might be, so maybe this isn't a good example.

But I've always found myself good at this. I can identify places very easily by a side of a building, a tree, something very specific and not the whole entire perspective. I can identify different cities even if I haven't been there before but only because I've seen lots of films with the cities in them.

I guess it's more like, I can identify Paris by just seeing a scene inside a cafe but with no words or famous landmarks to give it away. I don't mean I identify places because of famous landmarks, but I can identify places through textures or natural scenes.

This isn't foolproof obviously. I just get a kick out of this when it happens. I obviously get it wrong at times. But it's fun when I get it right!

What is this called? Does this happen to everyone? I want to find more examples of this or have more opportunities to identify places. Perhaps it's just a mind trick? And perhaps this is very common and I'm just noticing something about the universal human experience?

I'm noticing that the more online I become, the more enjoyable these seemingly analog experiences are.

posted by mxjudyliza to Science & Nature (8 answers total)

I don't know what this is called but it sounds like you'd love GeoGuessr which is a fun game of identifying where in the world the google street view is showing.
posted by TwoWordReview at 5:19 PM on February 1 [10 favorites]

(Seems like terrible timing, but as of today it looks like you can't play the free version anymore)
posted by TwoWordReview at 5:39 PM on February 1 [2 favorites]

Does this happen to everyone?

I had a weird thing this week where a local tourism/events page on social media posted video snippets of "the best cocktails" in the area. I was scrolling past as the video autoplayed and with just a peek of a drink in a plain lowball glass with just a bit of the wood bar and dark ceiling, I thought "that's bar xyz".

Which is a place I've been to 4 times in my life, but 2 of them were last weekend. But also I'm always on their patio outside and only go inside to get a drink before coming right back outside.

I then thought that there's no way I could possibly know that, so scrolled back up to see what the caption said. I had to expand it out but sure enough it was Bar XYZ. Nothing in the shot obviously said that, but I somehow knew it from the ceiling and bar and having spent a little bit of time there recently.


Is your experience similar to my experience, where recent time at a place makes it more recognizable? Or is this a sort of photographic memory thing where once you've seen a place once you're just as likely to identify it?
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 7:13 PM on February 1 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: The video my friend posted was a place I haven't been to in years but the context clues were what helped me along, so it wasn't that hard to guess... Another example would be I remember things like the floor of a bathroom that is made out of stone or concrete and has bits of gem-like flecks.. like of a building built in the 1960s or something. I love anything naturally made so I will hyper focus on details when I'm anywhere. Maybe it's a part of being neurodivergent as well. I'm good at recognizing if a place is California. And then there are other places that I'm good at pinpointing if I see the types of houses, neighborhoods, yards, landscaping. With these examples it doesn't seem like a phenomenon but just knowledge of places I guess?
posted by mxjudyliza at 7:42 PM on February 1

I don't have a name for it - but I was taught something that was basically military scene analysis (as part of my landscape degree), and have since taken that a lot further through private study as it makes completely unknown places a lot more fun to explore (and somewhat safer, emphasis on somewhat), and understand how they work. Also helps with travelling cities without a map - and more time for looking around.

Part of the teaching was much of the potential to do this is locked inside our heads (more so if we've travelled a bit - or seen a ton of films) and they showed us how to dig into that knowledge. Another side of it was learning street pattern types from multiple eras (and why they were like that). There was a lot more than that too. Basically we were taught how to understand a place with no prior knowledge of it, and with no access to data.

JB Jackson's 1957 The Strangers Path is a great way to start learning this way of thinking, not the only best start but still very relevant. So are the urban books by Andy McNabb.
posted by unearthed at 11:25 PM on February 1 [8 favorites]

I'm not a brain scientist, but it seems obvious that, to some extent, each brain must organize itself, and every brain must beccome a little different it what it stores and what it forgets, in what skills it emphasizes and what skills in minimizes. Something about your brain gives you this charming ability.

When I'm watching a movie, my brain will sometimes chime in with the observation that "this scene was shot on a sound stage". I think mostly this is due to taking notice of an oddly flat landscape, so no real mystery, but that I notice at all is unexplained.
posted by SemiSalt at 5:05 AM on February 2 [1 favorite]

My spouse is pretty far in that direction on the brain spectrum, he’s good at spatial reasoning and has a very visual memory. It’s just another flavor of what brains can do.
posted by matildaben at 10:51 PM on February 2 [1 favorite]

TwoWordReview: "I don't know what this is called but it sounds like you'd love GeoGuessr which is a fun game of identifying where in the world the google street view is showing."

You might also enjoy TimeGuessr, which gives you five photos and asks both where in the world it was taken and in what year.
posted by Rhaomi at 11:51 PM on March 14 [1 favorite]