Face blindness tends to be a very specific and literal anomaly, relating to the inability to capture the physical appearance and features of a person in one’s mind. Similarly, however, many people have a somewhat related issue, in which it’s difficult to remember a person in general aside from obvious points (hair, clothing, attitude, etc.). This tendency to remember the unnatural or altered aspects of a person’s character has an interesting concept of perceived identity behind it; many of the remembered aspects are those that are easily altered and changed by the person, choices of presentation and ways of interacting with the world being the most obvious aspects. Something of a conceptual, delayed face blindness of memory.

We can tend to see others around us as just background characters in the stories of our lives, usually not paying close attention to specific details in the passing moments of seeing a random person. It can be easy to boil a person down to just what they wear or how they appear to be, discarding the minute details of someone’s face (and therefore the long story of their lives).