pareidolia, plain and simple, shame it wasn't mentioned in the article
That does seem to be the correct term for what happened. I had never heard of "Pareidolia" before, thanks for sharing. Actually it's definition might make a good Jeopardy answer!
Hehe, it would!
In the Ai world it's called overfitting.
Great term, happy to illuminate :)
It seems less simple than that since there is a political angle, which is mentioned in the article.
Hmm, I guess you can add in there a hand full of cognitive biases if you wanted. Reactance bias, negativity bias, loss aversion, etc...