CW: Mental Illness
One thing that really grinds my gears about human pattern recognition is that I'm biologically biased to think that specious stuff is beautiful. It's all because some dumb monkeys way back in my genetic lineage saw sticks as snakes and didn't get cut out of the gene pool when snakes actually came around for it. Instead of, you know, getting better eyes that don't flag false positives all the time they just went and evoved to laugh about it to tell all the other dumb monkeys whenever it's a false positive.
We have literally evolved to hallucinate.
Despite the fact that hallucination has been a feature of the human condition ever since there has been a human condition we've only ever considered it to be a symptom of a rare mutation. I'd say that's a fault on the side of the quirks of language in that there isn't currently a mild or extreme variant of the term 'hallucination' because heavy words beget heavy connotations. People generally hear the word 'hallucination' and they immediately picture either someone on a dose of psychedelics or someone who's mentally ill. What about those moments where you mistake a pillow in your peripheral vision for your pet cat? I doubt anyone has a word for that in the English language yet so I've only ever heard those moments described as, well, 'weird moments' so that's a big help.
That's not even mentioning the dumb monkeys somewhere else in my lineage that learned to be able to overthink any interaction on a metacontexual level because it meant a greater chance to shag. People that are wired differently than neurotypicals probably have enhanced sensitivity in those respects so they flag false positives of people on T.V. communicating directly to them through use of metaphor. A seemingly banal thing like hearing the word 'handrail' in a speech could mean 'You need something to hold onto.' or it could be taken non-metaphorically as a secret hint like 'I saw you holding the steganography as you left the bus terminal this morning.' when applied to a speciously calibrated mind. I realize that I am entering a double-bind by saying this but that example does not exactly pertain to my personal experience although I have experienced similar things before. Usually it can be up in the air as to whether the person seems to be either A: directly communicating with you, B: a conduit to communicate to you, C: a transmission manipulated in order to communicate to you, or D: simply a person who is unaware that someone is overthinking their words. In case that example may have triggered an episode for you I will clarify explicitly that I am not writing directly to you and you do not have to worry. It'll be okay. Take a breather.