Buy a red car and suddenly every road is full of red cars. Your brain finds whatever you’ve been hunting.

Searching for something quietly changes what you see, without any decision being made. The red cars were always there, and the filter changed rather than the road. The same machinery works on less harmless things, so a week spent expecting rudeness will hand you a full catalog of rude people, and it will feel like evidence rather than selection.

Notice what you have been hunting for lately. If your recent days have been full of one kind of proof, ask what you loaded into the filter. You can point it deliberately at something else and get an equally convincing pile.