Some kind of ESP?

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Although I am generally quite skeptical about people who claim to have ESP or can predict the future (I know most, if not all online or phone "psychics" are complete scam artists), I will sometimes start thinking about something right out of the blue and then it happens. The weird thing is that it's always something to do with a TV show or a video. Just yesterday for example, I started thinking about some episodes I've admittedly seen of "Happy Tree Friends" (in case you don't know, it's a cartoon full of sugary cute and cuddly animals who always end up getting killed in horrible, graphic, and unusual ways. There's no swearing or sex, and it looks deceptively like a kid's cartoon). Anyway later I go on Kindertrauma, a website I recently found where people can talk about things like movies or tv shows or pop culture that basically murdered their happy childhood, and there's a "traumafession" about the cartoon made by a teenaged girl whose friend let her watch the cartoon when she was only 9 at a sleepover. The episode was called "Flippin' Burger's" and after watching it she was bawling and for a month couldn't go into a fast food place or see a cartoon, a squirrel, or even someone eating a hamburger without bursting into tears. I had Anyhow, this has happened to me too many times for it to be a coincidence, but it's not like I'm "predicting" major things and I don't do at at will it just happens, but it almost does feel like some weird kind of ESP.

No. It's Confirmation Bias.

We are a pattern-finding species. The problem is that we have a tendency to generate false positives (like seeing Elvis in a piece of burnt toast). When something interesting occurs, we remember it. When something that seems to be connected to a phenomenon we believe in, we remember it. So if you have a habit of "predicting" the next video, you'll think you are psychic when you are right and conveniently forget those times when you were wrong. The more you believe that this is not a random event, and the more you believe that the event is evidence of ESP, the more likely it is that you are to make something out of purely random chance. Behavioral psychologists refer to this as "intermittent reinforcement".

Believe what you will, but if you document the number of times where you think you are predicting the very next video and the next video is actually the one you've predicted, and compare it to the number of time when the video you've predicted was not the next one, I think you will be disappointed to learn that you have no ESP or precognitive abilities.

Also, keep in mind that some dating advisers will counsel men to avoid women who claim to be able to predict the next song on the radio, as they may have other delusions, as well.

I get the same thing in regard to the "group mind" I cannot contact. Everyone knows what I am thinking while I have no clue about them.
When I focus I understand it is childhood related from getting hit when my feelings could be read on my face when I had not clue about others being upset at me.
I do not focus all the time and when an action of mine is anticipated all my knowledge of how it works is gone and an episode happens.

TV shows will come up with exactly what I was bothered by at exactly the time I was bothered.
Coincidence is understood and I can do higher math and statistics. But only when I focus on them.

Conspiracy and magic rule most of the time and without an anchor I float off with them.

Older folks remember mechanical watches that had to be wound up. The knob would be taken between the fingers and spun back and forth. One way tightened the spring but the other way slipped on a ratchet. Turning backwards would never loosen the spring.

Coincidence is like that, positives tighten the spring and all the wrong guesses in the world do not loosen it.

When my mother would run from the home, there would always be someone waiting when she arrived at her destination. She never understood how they did that, She would not talk about it but she knew it involved tracking her thoughts.

I'm new and hope this fits.

The title of this thread made me cry. Don't say ESP. It hurts.

However, the OP made me feel a little better because now it doesn't feel like an ESP thread.