Me too, but I had always figured it as survivorship bias. That is, there are many such things that I newly hear of, but most of them don't get repeated mentions right way. The few of them that do catch my attention, and it seems like it happens a lot. But it actually happens only for a few of the many, many new things I hear about all the time. Similar to my friend who thought that every time he looked at a dead street lamp, it would turn on. :)

Another possible factor is that I find I pay more attention to things I've recently learned about more closely when I come across them, but ignore them when I either know them very well or don't know them at all. I don't know if this is true for anyone else.