Super Recognizer

Last weekend, I was walking home from the grocery store and saw a familiar face.

Me: You look familiar, have we met before?

Familiar Face: Hmmmm, I don't think so

Me: Are you sure? Did you intern at Uber?

Familiar Face: Oh my gosh wait yes I did.

Me: I think I follow you on Instagram. *blah blah blah, probably something dumb*

I had seen this friend stranger person a couple of times during my Uber internships 3 or 4 years ago in San Francisco, and here we both were in Long Island City.

At the end of our conversation, they said something that really boosted my ego and inspired this post: “Your facial recognition abilities are really impressive.”

Curious to see if that was true, I did some Googling and found the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

Before I get into how I performed and why this has changed how I view the world, here are a couple of other fun times I’ve run into people in public.

That one guy

When I first moved¹ to New York, I was walking through the streets of Manhattan (as one does) and recognized this guy. I’m referring to him as “this guy” because I don’t remember his name right now and don’t want to bother looking it up. We also met in San Francisco, and I only remember seeing him once. The conversation was essentially the same as the one from above, though he didn’t intern at Uber but rather had a friend who did.

The Ice Cream Man

The day is August 13th, 2022. My girlfriend² and I are exploring San Francisco (her first time!), trying to knock out as many spots as possible. We went to Muir Woods and Sausalito that morning. Around 2PM, we decided to take the bus from Chinatown to… I can’t remember and it doesn’t matter.

A man got off at one of the stops, and the notorious San Francisco wind knocked his hat off.

We went to Alcatraz that evening and decided to visit Ghirardelli Square to grab some ice cream after dinner. The man working there and I had a lovely conversation.

Ice Cream Man: Welcome! What would you like?

Me: Were you in Chinatown today around 2PM?

Okay, that isn’t exactly how it happened but its pretty close. I was pretty sure that this man lost his hat in the wind earlier that day, and I decided to ask³

Turns out I was right. He was obviously very confused, and I told him I just happened to notice his hat fly away. What a nice guy, we could have been friends.

Back to the test

You should take the test if you haven’t; the faces start to look like metarmophic rocks at some point.

My accuracy was 99%, which basically means I will never forget anyone ever. Turns out there’s a word for us: super recognizers. We will change the world.

Life as a Super Recognizer

I’ve told a couple of friends about this, and one of them asked me when I became a super recognizer (aka suprec because I don’t want to type it out every time).

You don’t become a suprec, you’re born a suprec.

My Instagram and Twitter bios now say “Super Recognizer”.

I’ve been going to Central Park every day to grow my facial recognition database. On Saturday, I started approaching strangers asking if they were “Oliver” or “Lisa”, just to attach names to faces when they corrected me.

A couple of people with missing relatives DM’d me on Instagram asking for help, to which I replied, “busy blogging rn lol”.

I had to take pictures of the weirder looking people because those faces take a little longer to ingrain in my head.

The Harsh Reality

This “skill” is pretty much⁴ useless, and I wanted to poke fun at an article I came across titled “I’m a Super-Recognizer. Here’s What It’s Like.”

I’ll leave you with this:

What good is recognizing people in the street if no one ever recognizes you back…