Despite humans seeing this way since the beginning of time, did you know pareidolia was only first used in 1994 by Steve Goldstein? I believe it does not accurately define what is happening with this action.
I like to say that it is Extractionism: the art of recognizing resemblances, extracting and subsequently presenting them (no need for weird words like apophenia, simulacra, pareidolia, paranoiac-critical method). Resemblances exist whether we discover them or not and are part of a universal law that micro mirrors macro.
This is the technique I used to discover the Old Man in the Peanut!.This meta label now allows other fields to be coupled under one umbrella concerning a very specific way of looking at the world, such as a psychoanalytical tool (Rorschach), biomimicry, camouflage, analogy, eggcorns/mondegreens, the visual pun, constellations, peanut carvings, tea leaf reading, Makapansgat pebble, & droodles just to name a few! One could not mention these under the heading ‘pareidolia’.
By the way, Extractionism is one of the few artforms, if not the only, that is regularly covered by international news agencies!! When an Extractionist discovers a resemblance and gives it life, especially if it is a Striking Resemblance, it will go viral. Consider a recent example:
Marja-Terttu Karlsson, 52, from Pajala in northern Sweden is a photographer who has captured the uncanny shape of a celestial animal resembling a wolf rising from earth into the sky.