Ha, I had a couple of experiences alike also. But then if you look at the big picture, it makes sense. You're a solid target for Bitcoin ads, you're in the same location with 3 other people, likely same demographics, interests, social status etc. and they become a target too?

This is all suppositions of course, I have no idea how it works. But I've tried this experiment with my gf once:

We both opened Instagram and started talking about a product class that we never saw ads for there, say like shampoos. We even mentioned a few brands and then waited for the ads to hit us. They never did.

EDIT We use iPhones

The “Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon” is a name that was applied to the frequency illusion [1] before the term “frequency illusion” was coined.

It's a particularly bad case of opaque naming, because even knowing about the terms that make it up gives you no clue what it means (since it doesn't reference the Baader-Meinhof Gang, but instead presumably the experience of the person who coined the term around the time they first encountered the name “Baader-Meinhof Gang”.)

Further shortening to “Baader-Meinhof” (perhaps a result of mistaking the name for being named after the discoverers, which would be less opaque, like the Dunning-Kruger Effect, where familiarity with the work of the researchers in question makes the term less opaque) actually makes the term worse, since then it seems like a direct reference or analogy to the group.

[1] http://web.stanford.edu/~zwicky/LSA07illude.abst.pdf