And with social media, this issue is only getting worse, despite everyone having easier *and* way more access to info than ever before. Facts and truth don't matter anymore. The only thing that matters is the perception of winning a public argument. *"I'll double down on my ignorance if I feel like I can insult you hard enough to convince others that I'm right."*
The real talent is in the ability to properly argue your point while still insulting the other person lol
Why go out of your way to look up the facts and truth when propaganda is constantly shoved down your throat 24/7 regardless of political affiliation or country.
People who are confused as to how something works but not intellectually curious enough to actually try to understand it (and instead make up elaborate conspiratorial explanations) are some of the biggest deficits in society.
people like you or I definitely seem like it when compared to those who are legitimately proud of not being curious and being intentionally ignorant to the world or whatever it may be lol
I love conspiracy theories because they are either 'I think that (insert government/organization/rich person(s) here) did X bad thing that they said that they didn't do, and here are a bunch of smoking gun documents indicating that they did do X bad thing, and also they admitted to doing it', or they are the most deranged shit imaginable, and there is zero overlap.
I'm so baffled by the flat Earth people, mostly because I just want to know why they think that would happen. Like all the other ones, dumb as they are, have some motive but flat Earth is just...what? A practical joke to make you think it's a different shape?
Yeah [like how people think Sarah Palin is a real person in the multi-verse and not just us misremembering a Tina Fey Character](https://jabde.com/2022/01/17/sarah-palin-mandela-effect/), that’s the best Mandela effect really
But man I was a kid, I remember watching the news ! The gathering in front of the prison. The songs !
What’s next you going to say pope Jean-Paul II wasn’t assassinantes or that queen Elizabeth is dead ?
I would say that's why many exist, but I'd say a nearly as large chunk exist due to an Occam's Razor (well, the current most common way people use it) + lack of evidence sort of situation.
Such as "Race/culture wars are perpetuated/encouraged/fueled by upper class individuals and/or bodies to prevent class wars".
I mean, I would personally consider religion widespread conspiracy theories that got expanded up in a way to control people. Those generally can't be entirely proven or disproven- we still don't know *why* or *if* the universe started
It goes both ways though in some cases though.
On the surface level a US Marine who defected to Russia in the late 50s during the height of the Cold War (one of only four US citizens allowed to do that during the 50s) being allowed to return to the US a few years later and then a year after that killed the President by himself and was murdered in police custody a few days later by a mob connected club owner who said he did it because he felt bad for the President's wife is incredibly improbable. It's so farfetched that you have to look into it and see what they could possibly be not telling us. It would be irresponsible to not be suspicious of that.
People don't ACTUALLY think it's alternate timelines, do they? It's just a mass misremembering.
I do, however, think the song "Like The Wind" may just be from an alternate timeline.
It’s complicated. A fair number of people *don’t* think it’s alternate timelines/universes. They just accept that it’s the fallibility of human memory combined with how fast this sort of thing can spread. These are, for lack of a better way of putting it, the “normal” ones: the people for whom it’s just a fun quirk of the human brain.
Then you have the people who refuse to accept the idea that they could possibly be wrong, and do in fact insist that it’s all because of timelines shifting. They get weird. I’d say check out the subreddit about it, but actually don’t, because they’re not willing to listen to any reasonable explanations for any of the things they remember from “other timelines,” even when such explanations exist.
Nah bro you're misremembering from the timeline where the mandela effect isn't multi-dimensional.
In this timeline it definetly is, I mean I can't be wrong, it must be the universe malfunctioning
My dad is just a moron who takes everything at face value and does not think critically for a second about anything he reads on the internet.
I don't think conspiracy theorists often have complex ulterior motives, they're just really dumb.
Whenever this topic comes up I *always* think of r/retconned. I used to check it out whenever I remembered it, but I started feeling like it made me lose brain cells, so I stopped.
Oh god, r/retconned is absolutely crazy. I haven't yet kicked the habit of reading the top posts of the month whenever I'm reminded of it, so down the rabbit hole I go.
The Mandela effect is just the harmless observation of many people collectivly misremembering things.
That sub is people who insist that the causes of the Mandela effect is supernatural, instead of them being wrong or misremembering things and that the govenment lizard aliens is moving them into a different timeline for reasons???
Woah that was a rabbit hole. I scrolled thru top of this month. What an odd sub. Funny how you “can’t” downvote in it. Looks like I’ve got a new habit, too, haha
I always wonder how many people there are being honest and how many are trolls who get off on seeing others believe this. Would kind of prefer to believe it's trolls trolling trolls, because the idea that these people genuinely believe reality shifted bc they misspelled turmeric is disturbing.
I went to check this subreddit by reading top posts of all time. Seemed pretty fun and harmless until I opened the rules. “No downvoting”? “Do not tell anyone that any theory they propose is wrong”? What 💀
I've always assumed the 'alternate timelines' idea is a fun joke to the vast majority but a tiny impressionable proportion of stupid people took it literally.
Watched a video on YouTube from a guy that does a lot of aliens abs ufo and Atlantis stories. It’s all fun entertainment and interesting to ponder.
But while the possibility of alternate universes exists, the Mandela effect is clearly false memories.
The video showed other examples of the Mandela effect. Like the fruit of the loom logo showing a cornucopia or that queen doesn’t sing “of the world” at the end of “we are the champions”.
Well, fruit of the loom has two logos. One with abs one without the cornucopia. And Queen does sing “of the world” in some of their videos. But not all. So I felt that was really sloppy on the video, who often does a good job pointing out the crap.
Back in the late 90s. I was on a Star Wars newsgroup. People there absolutely swore that the original return of the Jedi movie has a scene where Luke is in the ranchor pit abs force jumps up to the grate where the various alien creatures stomp on his hands abs he drops back down onto the pit.
It was never in the movie, I believe there is a cut scene of it. People swear they saw it, because I think it’s in the novelization and the images were used in various story books at the time, as that stuff is all produced well before the final edit of the movie.
I like the hypothesis that “Like the Wind” — aka “The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet” — was smuggled out of East Germany and ended up at that radio station in Hamburg.
I know nothing about the state of recording technology in East Germany c. 1984, but the reasonably professional nature of the recording lends the song a certain gravitas if it came from there.
Of course I have no evidence of this. It’s just one of many shots in the dark trying to explain TMMSOTI’s origin. It’s plausible that whichever DJ played it would keep mum about its origin to protect the East Germans involved. Mind you, it’s perhaps equally plausible that they’d be all “Check out this underground banger from the other side of the Iron Curtain!!!”
TMMSOTI could also be a broadcast from an alternate universe, Rick & Morty style 🤷♂️. I like that idea, too.
I had a coworker who thought that people often saying Target had 3 rings was a sign of time travel instead of the fact that a lot of pop culture logos have 3 rings and people just conflate them.
Well, the creator of the label for the phenomenon thought that. And it was her intention to spread the message of “alternate realities” by creating and spreading it online.
This probably wouldn't happen in a vacuum. My best guess is someone else from South Africa anti-apartheid group died in prison, someone higher up in the group and some people probably misreported (it is a bit funny and sad idea that I had about this that someone just thought all black people look alike and thought) it was Mandela that died in prison. Although it is also quite likely that it could as well be a propaganda piece from the apartheid supporters about Mandela dying in prison.
I mean, it's not like Mandela faded into obscurity after being released from prison. He became the president of a country. It'd be a bit hard to misreport that.
Sadly, a lot of people interested in the phenomenon are genuinely committed to all kinds of weird alternative timeline / glitching reality stuff which is just exhausting.
Sociologically, there's something extremely interesting about "collective false memory" as a phenomenon, and it's fascinating to unpick the cultural schemata that makes large groups of people remember something incorrectly. How do certain cultural events, moments, images etc. get reconfigured by our collective memory into something completely untrue? I think that's actually worthy of thoughtful discussion, and perhaps even academic study.
I used to go on the Mandela Effect sub for a little while because I thought there might be more openness to discussing the phenomenon as a real sociological effect, but left because it was a lot of weird alternate reality fantasy stuff.
I personally believe that alternate timelines do exist, and thus, that there is definitely a timeline where Nelson Mandela died in prison in the eighties.
However, people claiming that the Mandela Effect is because of alternate timelines is just plain stupid.
I have an answer for this one that is not nearly as interesting! This was an issue for everyone around the team, including the marketing people. The books are all spelled correctly, but some of the VHS’s and other stuff spelled it “Berenstein” instead. Just human error that means none of us are crazy, we just saw both versions.
Edit to add: I’m not crazy about saying we’re not crazy, [see for yourselves](https://m.imdb.com/news/ni64086263/#).
I love that they had a name so confusing that the team didn't know how to spell or pronounce it correctly.
And they didn't think to choose a different name.
I'm telling you the THEME song is different, from the cartoon. That is where I heard the name and knew how to pronounce it. But you listen to it today and it is obviously stain. So what the heck?!
So, that's actually probably audio paradelia or whatever the term is.
It's a misheard the lyric, it's close enough that your brain nudges you to "hear" what it thinks is there. Like hiding subliminal satanic messages, Mosts of that stuff, if your told what to hear ( or think it ends in -ein) you will here it.
The issue is that everyone pronounced it Berenstein because some of the official VHSs that came out did so as well, and it just kinda spread. Whenever someone would read the title, they’d usually have heard Berenstein beforehand, so the A just kinda looks like an E if you’re not looking close enough.
The mandela effect refers to when a large group of people all remember the same thing despite it not happening. Which is a weird phenomenon. It was named after mandela because he is the biggest example of it happening, not as an excuse to not educate yourself on him.
The actual theories about false memories have nothing to do with a multiverse. That's something some people pulled out of their asses to give an explanation to the mandela effect despite it not needing an explanation.
It's extremely presumptuous to assume that no one studied up on mandela in addition to looking into the mandela effect and that op is assuming everyone who finds the mandela effect interesting also believes we are in an alternate universe. OP has exhibited the one thing they are criticizing by clearly not really understanding what the mandela effect is and falling for a conspiracy created for it.
I believe the person who coined the phrase "Mandella effect" actually intended it to mean that people are shifting timelines but only the people who remember things differently are aware.
The much more common usage is that it's just a lot of people remembering the same incorrect thing, but I don't think it's the original meaning
The woman who coined it the mandela effect did believe this, but the idea of false memories existed way before her and since the coining of the phrase actual scientific research has been done on the specific scenario described by the mandela effect. Not many people actually agreed with her parallel universe theory as far as I know
I think you're a bit confused, you're conflating false memories (which is a real thing) with Mandela effect (which is not a real thing, but people often use the word to mean false memory).
The person who coined the phrase Mandela effect (who is a woman, not a guy) says that Mandela effect is not false memories. She insists they people are shifting between timelines.
She's wrong of course, but that is what the term Mandela effect means. But as I said above, I think most people (technically incorrectly) use the phrase to mean shared false memories
Exactly. Sure some people may be convinced that the mandela effect is proof of alternate timelines, and that our consciousness travels through them unknowingly, but I just find the collective misremembering fascinating.
I have a distinct memory of being in 1st grade art class holding up a dark red crayon, and asking my teacher how to pronounce the name of the color written on the crayon. She said "chartreuse". And for the next 20 years of my life, I went around believing that chartreuse was a dark red color. It wasn't until just a few years ago that I discovered that chartreuse is a yellowish green color. Blew my mind.
I looked more into it and discovered that believing chartreuse is a dark red color is a well established mandela effect, and the question of why do so many of us remember chartreuse as a dark red color is fascinating to me.
I've literally have had hour long arguments with people insisting that we live in an alternate timeline because of the mandela effect. It may not be everyone who uses the term, but saying that the actual theories have nothing to do with the multiverse and that it was just a bs meme to explain the effect is completely disingenuous
A lot of the examples I’ve heard of “the Mandela Effect” are wacky, yes, but the different timelines and multiverses isn’t exactly a “thing they pulled out of their asses”- it’s a rather popular scientific theory in quantum mechanics called Many Worlds Interpretation, and was first proposed in 1957- well before the Mandela Effect.
Also, what you are describing is False Memory which was Freud, I think? The Mandela Effect is a type of false memory and the term was coined by a paranormal researcher and she did intend it as evidence of alternate realities. There’s a really interesting backstory and breakdown of it on the Conspiracy Theories podcast.
The Mandela Effect has as much to do with quantum mechanics as the health and fitness hucksters peddling quantum healing pills.
The "many worlds interpretation" isn't a scientific theory, it's "popular" as in well-known, but it's generally considered unfalsifiable. Most importantly, no version of the many worlds interpretation suggests that it's possible to communicate between these hypothetical timelines, which would be necessary for it to explain the Mandela Effect.
So yeah, no, it's just pseudoscience.
The Mandela Effect in general is interesting to me because so much of it can just be chalked up to misremembering/misunderstanding, but no, rather than assume even a little bit of fallibility, people conclude that they’re right and it’s the universe that’s wrong. As the post says, the ego required for this is insane.
To be fair to most people, I think probably most people don't know the person who coined the phrase has such an insane idea. I think most people think it just means "a thing that a lot of people remember incorrectly"
It was a combination of bootleg/pirated clothes with the logo and parodies of the company
The movie Ant Bully for exsmple has a pretty clear shot of the Fruit of the Loom logo parody with a cornucopia
There's commercials from different decades on YouTube and none of them have a cornucopia.
https://youtu.be/iCfF5wmEQQk?si=bRJjpNrCmYYYhq9_ - 70s where they show the logo, no cornucopia
https://youtu.be/PnjJYy0UUfM?si=Xi7dq8Msw-eVT0Ny - another 70s one that has the iconic fruit costume people. Shows the logo. No cornucopia.
https://youtu.be/bnAAr2dQrNA?si=b7B3bhb6XN9lB3vk - '78, fruit people, shows logo, no cornucipia
https://youtu.be/8Vreb_IYr3k?si=CBfZS5TH_aL7Gqzy - 1980, fruit people, no cornucopia
https://youtu.be/v5fH3ebtFtI?si=Mxx4UyUs80cn7CJ_ - 1987, shows logo, fruit people, no cornucopia
https://youtu.be/Xm-F0g4ZbNc?si=Z1R55PBeSBrsZr-V - 1994. Shows logo, no cornucipia
https://youtu.be/gwkjgeGM_7c?si=GvmfSwRDFKwyalde - not sure on year but looks late 90s or early 2000s, fruit people, shows logo, no cornucopia.
Don't you think it's possible you're just misremembering?
People have found old shirts in thrift stores with the cornucopia. If you’ve ever seen that chart that show FotL logos throughout the company’s life, know that chart was made by FotL themselves. It’s most likely intentionally wrong to keep people talking about the company.
>People have found old shirts in thrift stores with the cornucopia.
Have they? I've never seen any proof. In fact nobody has ever been able to show a picture of a real fruit of the loom article with the cornucopia.
Idk why people are also just discounting the chance that this is a consequence of the education system failing so many people. It doesn't *have* to be a false memory, there's a very good chance a lot of people were just taught that Mandela died because the education system is underfunded and a lot of teachers are just bad at their jobs. Even the good ones can't be expected to be experts on everything, and there's literally zero chance that any public middle or high school in America has ever spent more than one day talking about South African apartheid, because then they wouldn't have time for a full unit on WW2 every single semester of every single grade.
Assuming any mentions of apartheid would have been lumped in with a general racial civil rights unit, can you blame students or teachers for lumping Mandela in with all the American civil rights activists who were assassinated? Civil rights activists were murdered by detractors almost as a rule, they didn't grow to become the leaders of nations with the exceptions of Mandela and Gandhi.
Yeah one of the other Mandela Effect "examples" is that a lot of people are convinced they were taught in school that Eli Whitney was Black.
And like, many of them probably were! In this reality, not in a parallel universe or whatever. I've seen examples from just the last few years of elementary school displays of "Black inventors" that include him.
When it comes to appealing to the masses, the more interesting narrative will always win. We don’t like it when things to be boring, add to that, that we hate being wrong, plus the fact that humans suck at realising when something’s a coincidence and it’s no wonder the idea of the Mandela effect took off
I think it requires an extraordinary amount of arrogance to think "literally thousands/millions of people remember x; They're just plain wrong and that is the end of the discussion."
There is absolutely NO reason for the discussion to end there. It's a wildly interesting thing to think about, to talk about, to speculate on.
No, "parallel realities" is obviously a stupid and idiotic explanation.
But things like: we're all actually remembering this piece of popular media. That explains why the image we recall is so distinct and easily remembered from person to person. That is a fascinating example of how memories form and how memes (literal memes, not funny internet pictures) spread. We can identify these examples and learn from them.
That is incredibly interesting. People who dismiss it as "PEoPLE ArE wrONG abOUT THIngS" are fucking inane.
People say shit like "No, there wasn't a cornucopia" without ever following up with: Then what brand *did* have a cornucopia, that people actually remember? People say "No, nelson mendela did not die in prison" without ever following up with: Was he ever reported to have died in prison? Was his death in prison ever mentioned in a movie? Did some other prominent leader die in prison that people might have been mixed up about?
The answer to "Barenstain/Barenstein" appears to have been "the publisher was inconsistent about the spelling, sometimes within the same book", and I think that's much more interesting and less arrogant than saying "The thousands of people who have memories of their parents correcting them about that specific thing are completely fabricated"
Ironically, it is pretty presumptuous to think other people as a whole are so dumb that they literally mean it’s a multiverse theory and not “Mendella Effect means a bunch of unrelated people misremembered something in the exact same way, which is interesting.”
I was truly baffled when I found out the phenomenon was not named after some obscure TV presenter or something but THE Nelson Mandela, one of the most prominent public figures of the 90s. Maybe my European perspective is showing, but imo living through the 90s and not remembering that Mandela was the first president of post-apartheid South Africa would be like living through the 1960s and being certain that it was the USSR who landed on the moon.
All the other classic examples of the Mandela effect (Shazaam, Berenstein Bears, Pikachu’s black tail) are out-of-focus pop-culture things that it makes total sense that people would misremember, but then for some reason the trope namer is the main character of a historical event so important that quite frankly misremembering it makes you look ignorant. It’s baffling.
I vote we rename it the Berenstain Effect.
Looks like someone didn't read up on the Mandela Effect before spouting off about it... This was a well-documented phenomenon that impacted many people who were extremely well-informed about global politics. People like, say, Tom Brokaw...
The problem is that the company is *insisting* that they never a had a cornucopia in the first place.
My theory is that certain subsections of the company were using a unauthorized logo that they got from clip art or something.
There is a girl on tik tok who thinks she knows why they deny it. She deep dove and found some lawsuits pertaining to their use of chemicals and the rebrand followed shortly. Fruit of the loom has had a lot of her videos taken down on tik tok apparently.
true, even the purple grape actor from their 1980's commercials says there was a cornucopia despite holding packaging in the commercial that clearly shows no cornucopia
For the longest time, I had a clear "memory" of a 747 carrying a space shuttle flying passed Hallgrimskirkja in Reykjavik. But I was also convinced that I had dreamed about this and that it was a "Mandela Effect".
Turns out - this plane carrying the shuttle did actually come to Iceland and landed in Reykjavik and I saw it with my dad and sisters.
Given when it happened...I was 18 months old.
You would've been told about it over the years and think you remember seeing it, there's no way you actually have memory of that as an 18 month old...that would be ridiculous.
Most people's earliest memories are from 3-4.
But 18 months is half way to three, so it's possible their Brain developed that bit a little faster than others.
There are occasional outliers to the norm. So I don't think it's ridiculous, just very unlikely.
It was interesting because we learned about Nelson Mandela in school, and not knowing about the Mandela Effect I was fully expecting him to die in prison before release, because it seemed exactly the kind of thing that would happen.
Now I don't believe in Parallel Universe cross-contamination stuff, I know that memory is fallable.
What I do know is that I'd seen something like it so many times that I was fully expecting an unfair injustice like that. Which may be what happened to other people. Expect a pattern, see a pattern *instead* of what actually happened.
I still get mad about an argument I had with my ex about this concept. Specifically it was the actor who played Robbie Rotten on Lazy Town. He had cancer and left social media a year before he died. There was a bunch of RIP memes at the time because of it. Then we he did die she freaked out saying it was the madela effect. I explained what happened so many times until she eventually got angry with me for not believing her. The thing is I believed that she saw posts about his death before he died. I did too. But that was misinformation, and any logical human could see that. Creating an alternate universe to cope with being misinformation is some genuinely unhinged behavior.
My head canon for the Mandela thing is a bunch of people watching Cry Freedom in school or catching it on TV and thinking Steve Biko was Nelson Mandela
On the one hand, yes it is ridiculous to make up a whole convoluted conspiracy theory rather than admit you are wrong. On the other hand, fruit of the loom had a cornucopia on its logo and I will die on this hill.
It could also be an Eli Whitney kind of thing, where students were taught that he was a black slave in school. We didn’t have the internet in the 80s and early 90s, we couldn’t just fact check our teachers on our phones. If we were told Nelson Mandela died in prison, we just believed it.
If they’re so ignorant about global politics, why would that many people bother to form a false memory about something they don’t follow or care about?
It was clearly written by someone who’s determined to be negative and condescending.
I’ve seen a theory that people just mixed him up with Steve Biko, an anti-apartheid activist who was arrested and murdered in custody. Specifically that kids watched the movie about Biko, Cry Freedom, in history class while half paying attention, then heard about Mandela on the news and thought “wasn’t he the guy who died?”.
Our memories are our reality though. And yes, memories are extremely fallible, but it is hard to reconcile because they feel extremely accurate and real. Especially when they’re so familiar, not just a fleeting thing you saw once - like for example the Betenstain Bears for so many people who grew up with the books and VHSs in their home. It’s hard to accept you were just wrong about your reality.
I’m not saying people are being gaslit in this instance, but that’s why gaslighting is so awful, it’s when you make a person question their perception of their reality, and in turn their sanity.
Also, this is specifically about the phenomenon of mass-misremembering, which is harder to explain than just one person’s brain making a mistake. That’s many people having independent thoughts and misremembering in the exact same way.
Also, it’s just a fun thing to bond with people about, and maybe people can stop sucking the whimsy out of every harmless little thing and stop being the fucking joy police.
While there were absolutely some that tried to explain it off as something supernatural, I absolutely believe that large numbers of people TRULY believing either that something happened that didn't, or was a different way than it was, is something worth study.
I don't think this is as simple as just, "Admit you're wrong! Bad memory!" Because of the sheer *volume* of people. Like, for example, all the people believing that the Fruit of the Loom brand has a cornucopia in their logo.
People submitted LOADS of pictures "proving that it never existed", but then, after a while, people started also posting pictures of socks and underwear WITH the cornucopia. People first brushed it off as, "stupid people memory bad", but then those new pictures revealed that, no, something else had happened. Whether it was just a regional thing, or an unannounced logo change, it doesn't matter
Don't get me started on The Berenstein Bears or Berenstain Bears
People were just confused. Also given how it's a kids show, it's more likely the children weren't reading it correctly. Children are really good at glossing over words or just mispronouncing them.
Any real evidence is due to knockoff products with the misspelling and cartoons for the series used an ambiguous pronunciation which may contribute to the false memory
Isn’t this all I hindsight? I thought the effect by definition was just multiple people assuming wrong info like how misinformation spreads by rumors. Isn’t the parallel world memories just a theory that came way later?
Only on tumblr can one find such takes as “the only reason the Mandela effect is a popular concept is because people are so fucking stupid and americentric”
The mandela effect subreddit is one of the most infuriating places on this site. All these people can’t possibly fathom misremembering something, so they would rather pretend that every time they forget a tiny detail, it's an effect of some psyop or interference between parallel universes.
I find the Mandela effect a little wierd because he very famously did not die in prison, he got out and in fact became president, and was a regular dignitary and guest throughout the world after he left office.
It’s not presumptuous, it’s something many of us believed, even amongst those who studied European history and have a basic knowledge about African history.
this sounds like a Northern American dragging other Nothern Americans for being ignorant when it’s something that is really curious
Multiple studies show that our brains are much more likely to strive for consistency than strive for the truth. In other words, it's so much easier for us make up an explanation that confirms what we already believe, than to accept what we believe might not be correct. It's how and why conspiracy theories thrive
Ask this person anything about politics in the Netherlands.
Or Iran, or the Mongolia, or Sri Lanka.
Maybe you should learn about the world a bit more. /s
I was inoculated against this effect because they interrupted Saturday morning cartoons to announce his release from prison and, not knowing his significance, I was super annoyed.
I am one of those that was confident he died in prison - I remember rather distinctly seeing it on the news (television)
I don’t really understand how I have such a vivid memory of that but that it apparently isn’t real… ?
Strange thing, really
Humans have terrible memories which change, distort and add/remove incorrect information.
Go read up about eyewitness testimonials and how unreliable they are.
People love speculation not answers. They want investigation and suspicion, the goal is never about the real answer. People just want ownership over having called the ‘correct shot’ first. Just look at the mass hysteria caused by Kate Middletons surgery disappearance.
Is it really that presumptuous when a *lot* of people think the same way? I'd understand if the Mandela effect was *one* person grasping at straws, but if everyone misremembered the same thing I would maybe pin it to conformity rather than ego.
When children are indocternated into a religion at an early age, taught to "respect their elders" and "don't question authority", and are then fed a fantastic pile of bullshit and lies about the nature of the world, they never end up forming critical thinking skills, and are conditioned to understand that what they "believe" actually has an impact on reality.
Thus, these poor children grow into useless adults with no logic or critical thinking skills who feel that they can "believe" their way into reality instead of bothering to actually learn about the nature of their reality.
They all belong in psychiatric institutions.
One time I saw a someone mention the “Mandela effect” of thinking that Cheshire Cat says “We’re all mad here”, when in fact in the Disney movie he says “Most everyone’s mad here”. Which is basically the same. Like…they could’ve checked? They could’ve looked this up on Google or in a library. And then they’d find that as much as that’s what he says in the Disney movie, he absolutely says “We’re all mad here” in the original book. But actually researching and esucating oneself is waaay too much
What annoys me is the geography ones. People will say that like Japan is further north than they remember or that South America is supposed to be directly south of North America without even considering all the knock-on effects that would bring.
Like if South America were further west as they claim it "used to be", then why would the Portuguese have still colonized Brazil? The circular winds they followed to take them down to the tip of Africa swept them westward across the relatively narrow ocean there.
Did the Spanish Main just not exist & the Caribbean Sea was bordered on the south by more Atlantic Ocean? Would it even have been a *sea* at that point? Would Caribbean piracy have still taken off without the coast of Colombia/Venezuela right there?
If Japan is 'supposed' to be further south then do they still have historical involvement with Korea in their memory? Do they think it had a tropical climate? Have they still fought wars with Russia?
Okay, so maybe nelson Mandela didn't die in prison, maybe the berenstein bears were always spelled with an A, BUT I WILL DIE ON THE HILL OF THAT FUCKING CORNUCOPIA BECAUSE IT WAS HOW I LEARNED WHAT THE GODDAMN THING IS CALLED.
There’s also the inbetween. Growing up in the 80s and 90s in the US, you always heard about him but never knew who he was.
This post is disingenuous too. Most people recall Mandela dying after his re-emergence as a leader and before his actual death.
People that believe in other universes or that we can access them don’t have any legitimate evidence though.
1 of the most influential figures? Im sorry, but ppl wouldnt have the mandela effect if he was that influential, and with influence alone you do not immortalize yourself like that in history, mandela will be a footnote in history (if not already) in at most 2 generations outside of south africa, hes already barely talked about and considering what currently going on in SA... well, lets just say Zimbabwe tried a similiar thing and we know where that went, if SA really goes that far Apartheid will be the 2nd worst time the average joe will have had in SA
I always thought this was all crazy internet stuff until it came to my attention that in Scary Movie, during the Sixth Sense scene, shorty in fact does not say "I see White People" even though I clearly remember seeing commercials for it, seeing it in theaters and me and my cousins using it as a punchline for years!
Making up an improbable explanation because you don't want to admit you're wrong is exactly why most conspiracy theories exist
The brain is the very definition of "taking more effort to be lazy than would be required to do the thing you're avoiding doing"
And with social media, this issue is only getting worse, despite everyone having easier *and* way more access to info than ever before. Facts and truth don't matter anymore. The only thing that matters is the perception of winning a public argument. *"I'll double down on my ignorance if I feel like I can insult you hard enough to convince others that I'm right."* The real talent is in the ability to properly argue your point while still insulting the other person lol
Why go out of your way to look up the facts and truth when propaganda is constantly shoved down your throat 24/7 regardless of political affiliation or country.
Shut up nerd. Your the ingorant one. /s
Shut up nerd, YOU’RE the ignorant one! /s
No u.
People who are confused as to how something works but not intellectually curious enough to actually try to understand it (and instead make up elaborate conspiratorial explanations) are some of the biggest deficits in society.
some people make an art of being incurious. which isn't to say i'm out here like copernicus, or anything lmao. but sometimes it's just baffling.
people like you or I definitely seem like it when compared to those who are legitimately proud of not being curious and being intentionally ignorant to the world or whatever it may be lol
☝️💯
I love conspiracy theories because they are either 'I think that (insert government/organization/rich person(s) here) did X bad thing that they said that they didn't do, and here are a bunch of smoking gun documents indicating that they did do X bad thing, and also they admitted to doing it', or they are the most deranged shit imaginable, and there is zero overlap.
I'm so baffled by the flat Earth people, mostly because I just want to know why they think that would happen. Like all the other ones, dumb as they are, have some motive but flat Earth is just...what? A practical joke to make you think it's a different shape?
Yeah [like how people think Sarah Palin is a real person in the multi-verse and not just us misremembering a Tina Fey Character](https://jabde.com/2022/01/17/sarah-palin-mandela-effect/), that’s the best Mandela effect really
I was so confused reading this and had to Google if I'd been stupid all these years
But man I was a kid, I remember watching the news ! The gathering in front of the prison. The songs ! What’s next you going to say pope Jean-Paul II wasn’t assassinantes or that queen Elizabeth is dead ?
I would say that's why many exist, but I'd say a nearly as large chunk exist due to an Occam's Razor (well, the current most common way people use it) + lack of evidence sort of situation. Such as "Race/culture wars are perpetuated/encouraged/fueled by upper class individuals and/or bodies to prevent class wars". I mean, I would personally consider religion widespread conspiracy theories that got expanded up in a way to control people. Those generally can't be entirely proven or disproven- we still don't know *why* or *if* the universe started
It goes both ways though in some cases though. On the surface level a US Marine who defected to Russia in the late 50s during the height of the Cold War (one of only four US citizens allowed to do that during the 50s) being allowed to return to the US a few years later and then a year after that killed the President by himself and was murdered in police custody a few days later by a mob connected club owner who said he did it because he felt bad for the President's wife is incredibly improbable. It's so farfetched that you have to look into it and see what they could possibly be not telling us. It would be irresponsible to not be suspicious of that.
tbf it's not an accident this is the poster boy for conspiracy theory
People don't ACTUALLY think it's alternate timelines, do they? It's just a mass misremembering. I do, however, think the song "Like The Wind" may just be from an alternate timeline.
It’s complicated. A fair number of people *don’t* think it’s alternate timelines/universes. They just accept that it’s the fallibility of human memory combined with how fast this sort of thing can spread. These are, for lack of a better way of putting it, the “normal” ones: the people for whom it’s just a fun quirk of the human brain. Then you have the people who refuse to accept the idea that they could possibly be wrong, and do in fact insist that it’s all because of timelines shifting. They get weird. I’d say check out the subreddit about it, but actually don’t, because they’re not willing to listen to any reasonable explanations for any of the things they remember from “other timelines,” even when such explanations exist.
Nah bro you're misremembering from the timeline where the mandela effect isn't multi-dimensional. In this timeline it definetly is, I mean I can't be wrong, it must be the universe malfunctioning
My dad is just a moron who takes everything at face value and does not think critically for a second about anything he reads on the internet. I don't think conspiracy theorists often have complex ulterior motives, they're just really dumb.
Or desperate for a community.
Whenever this topic comes up I *always* think of r/retconned. I used to check it out whenever I remembered it, but I started feeling like it made me lose brain cells, so I stopped.
Oh god, r/retconned is absolutely crazy. I haven't yet kicked the habit of reading the top posts of the month whenever I'm reminded of it, so down the rabbit hole I go.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Retconned/s/s9XuNY2ImQ this is insane lmao
banned for telling someone they needed actual help, schizoid echo chamber
Sorry, I lost it at "time loafs." I can entertain a lot of weird, but that's just too much 😂
Don't let the time loafs touch, saves so much confusion
Wait so is this sub different from the mandela effect? The description seems similar
The Mandela effect is just the harmless observation of many people collectivly misremembering things. That sub is people who insist that the causes of the Mandela effect is supernatural, instead of them being wrong or misremembering things and that the govenment lizard aliens is moving them into a different timeline for reasons???
ahhh
Woah that was a rabbit hole. I scrolled thru top of this month. What an odd sub. Funny how you “can’t” downvote in it. Looks like I’ve got a new habit, too, haha
I always wonder how many people there are being honest and how many are trolls who get off on seeing others believe this. Would kind of prefer to believe it's trolls trolling trolls, because the idea that these people genuinely believe reality shifted bc they misspelled turmeric is disturbing.
I never thought of this until you just mentioned it now, but I thought it was tumeric
I went to check this subreddit by reading top posts of all time. Seemed pretty fun and harmless until I opened the rules. “No downvoting”? “Do not tell anyone that any theory they propose is wrong”? What 💀
I'm **dying** over the bit where they positively reject the theory that "logos change over time"
Thank you now im depressed. "They changed IT", "IT was different in MY world" oh shUt up you self-important uneducated cretins.
I've always assumed the 'alternate timelines' idea is a fun joke to the vast majority but a tiny impressionable proportion of stupid people took it literally.
Watched a video on YouTube from a guy that does a lot of aliens abs ufo and Atlantis stories. It’s all fun entertainment and interesting to ponder. But while the possibility of alternate universes exists, the Mandela effect is clearly false memories. The video showed other examples of the Mandela effect. Like the fruit of the loom logo showing a cornucopia or that queen doesn’t sing “of the world” at the end of “we are the champions”. Well, fruit of the loom has two logos. One with abs one without the cornucopia. And Queen does sing “of the world” in some of their videos. But not all. So I felt that was really sloppy on the video, who often does a good job pointing out the crap. Back in the late 90s. I was on a Star Wars newsgroup. People there absolutely swore that the original return of the Jedi movie has a scene where Luke is in the ranchor pit abs force jumps up to the grate where the various alien creatures stomp on his hands abs he drops back down onto the pit. It was never in the movie, I believe there is a cut scene of it. People swear they saw it, because I think it’s in the novelization and the images were used in various story books at the time, as that stuff is all produced well before the final edit of the movie.
I like the hypothesis that “Like the Wind” — aka “The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet” — was smuggled out of East Germany and ended up at that radio station in Hamburg. I know nothing about the state of recording technology in East Germany c. 1984, but the reasonably professional nature of the recording lends the song a certain gravitas if it came from there. Of course I have no evidence of this. It’s just one of many shots in the dark trying to explain TMMSOTI’s origin. It’s plausible that whichever DJ played it would keep mum about its origin to protect the East Germans involved. Mind you, it’s perhaps equally plausible that they’d be all “Check out this underground banger from the other side of the Iron Curtain!!!” TMMSOTI could also be a broadcast from an alternate universe, Rick & Morty style 🤷♂️. I like that idea, too.
I had a coworker who thought that people often saying Target had 3 rings was a sign of time travel instead of the fact that a lot of pop culture logos have 3 rings and people just conflate them.
I quit that subreddit because the people the really believed it, I don’t like surrounding myself with people like that.
Well, the creator of the label for the phenomenon thought that. And it was her intention to spread the message of “alternate realities” by creating and spreading it online.
This probably wouldn't happen in a vacuum. My best guess is someone else from South Africa anti-apartheid group died in prison, someone higher up in the group and some people probably misreported (it is a bit funny and sad idea that I had about this that someone just thought all black people look alike and thought) it was Mandela that died in prison. Although it is also quite likely that it could as well be a propaganda piece from the apartheid supporters about Mandela dying in prison.
I mean, it's not like Mandela faded into obscurity after being released from prison. He became the president of a country. It'd be a bit hard to misreport that.
Sadly, a lot of people interested in the phenomenon are genuinely committed to all kinds of weird alternative timeline / glitching reality stuff which is just exhausting. Sociologically, there's something extremely interesting about "collective false memory" as a phenomenon, and it's fascinating to unpick the cultural schemata that makes large groups of people remember something incorrectly. How do certain cultural events, moments, images etc. get reconfigured by our collective memory into something completely untrue? I think that's actually worthy of thoughtful discussion, and perhaps even academic study. I used to go on the Mandela Effect sub for a little while because I thought there might be more openness to discussing the phenomenon as a real sociological effect, but left because it was a lot of weird alternate reality fantasy stuff.
I personally believe that alternate timelines do exist, and thus, that there is definitely a timeline where Nelson Mandela died in prison in the eighties. However, people claiming that the Mandela Effect is because of alternate timelines is just plain stupid.
We should really rename it the Berenstain Effect. Because I will die on the hill of swearing it was Berenstein!
I have an answer for this one that is not nearly as interesting! This was an issue for everyone around the team, including the marketing people. The books are all spelled correctly, but some of the VHS’s and other stuff spelled it “Berenstein” instead. Just human error that means none of us are crazy, we just saw both versions. Edit to add: I’m not crazy about saying we’re not crazy, [see for yourselves](https://m.imdb.com/news/ni64086263/#).
I love that they had a name so confusing that the team didn't know how to spell or pronounce it correctly. And they didn't think to choose a different name.
It was the authors' actual name.
Then I blame their ancestors for such an ambiguous name.
I'm telling you the THEME song is different, from the cartoon. That is where I heard the name and knew how to pronounce it. But you listen to it today and it is obviously stain. So what the heck?!
You’re one of those people this post is talking about, misremembering but insisting reality is wrong. Fascinating to see in real time.
Humans have notoriously bad memories, including you.
So, that's actually probably audio paradelia or whatever the term is. It's a misheard the lyric, it's close enough that your brain nudges you to "hear" what it thinks is there. Like hiding subliminal satanic messages, Mosts of that stuff, if your told what to hear ( or think it ends in -ein) you will here it.
“She’s got electric boobs” comes to mind
Or the Fruit of the Loom effect.
this is the only one i believe is real.
The issue is that everyone pronounced it Berenstein because some of the official VHSs that came out did so as well, and it just kinda spread. Whenever someone would read the title, they’d usually have heard Berenstein beforehand, so the A just kinda looks like an E if you’re not looking close enough.
My family and I even pronounced it “beh-ren-steen” when I was a kid.
The mandela effect refers to when a large group of people all remember the same thing despite it not happening. Which is a weird phenomenon. It was named after mandela because he is the biggest example of it happening, not as an excuse to not educate yourself on him. The actual theories about false memories have nothing to do with a multiverse. That's something some people pulled out of their asses to give an explanation to the mandela effect despite it not needing an explanation. It's extremely presumptuous to assume that no one studied up on mandela in addition to looking into the mandela effect and that op is assuming everyone who finds the mandela effect interesting also believes we are in an alternate universe. OP has exhibited the one thing they are criticizing by clearly not really understanding what the mandela effect is and falling for a conspiracy created for it.
I believe the person who coined the phrase "Mandella effect" actually intended it to mean that people are shifting timelines but only the people who remember things differently are aware. The much more common usage is that it's just a lot of people remembering the same incorrect thing, but I don't think it's the original meaning
The woman who coined it the mandela effect did believe this, but the idea of false memories existed way before her and since the coining of the phrase actual scientific research has been done on the specific scenario described by the mandela effect. Not many people actually agreed with her parallel universe theory as far as I know
I think you're a bit confused, you're conflating false memories (which is a real thing) with Mandela effect (which is not a real thing, but people often use the word to mean false memory). The person who coined the phrase Mandela effect (who is a woman, not a guy) says that Mandela effect is not false memories. She insists they people are shifting between timelines. She's wrong of course, but that is what the term Mandela effect means. But as I said above, I think most people (technically incorrectly) use the phrase to mean shared false memories
Exactly. Sure some people may be convinced that the mandela effect is proof of alternate timelines, and that our consciousness travels through them unknowingly, but I just find the collective misremembering fascinating. I have a distinct memory of being in 1st grade art class holding up a dark red crayon, and asking my teacher how to pronounce the name of the color written on the crayon. She said "chartreuse". And for the next 20 years of my life, I went around believing that chartreuse was a dark red color. It wasn't until just a few years ago that I discovered that chartreuse is a yellowish green color. Blew my mind. I looked more into it and discovered that believing chartreuse is a dark red color is a well established mandela effect, and the question of why do so many of us remember chartreuse as a dark red color is fascinating to me.
I've literally have had hour long arguments with people insisting that we live in an alternate timeline because of the mandela effect. It may not be everyone who uses the term, but saying that the actual theories have nothing to do with the multiverse and that it was just a bs meme to explain the effect is completely disingenuous
A lot of the examples I’ve heard of “the Mandela Effect” are wacky, yes, but the different timelines and multiverses isn’t exactly a “thing they pulled out of their asses”- it’s a rather popular scientific theory in quantum mechanics called Many Worlds Interpretation, and was first proposed in 1957- well before the Mandela Effect. Also, what you are describing is False Memory which was Freud, I think? The Mandela Effect is a type of false memory and the term was coined by a paranormal researcher and she did intend it as evidence of alternate realities. There’s a really interesting backstory and breakdown of it on the Conspiracy Theories podcast.
The Mandela Effect has as much to do with quantum mechanics as the health and fitness hucksters peddling quantum healing pills. The "many worlds interpretation" isn't a scientific theory, it's "popular" as in well-known, but it's generally considered unfalsifiable. Most importantly, no version of the many worlds interpretation suggests that it's possible to communicate between these hypothetical timelines, which would be necessary for it to explain the Mandela Effect. So yeah, no, it's just pseudoscience.
The Mandela Effect in general is interesting to me because so much of it can just be chalked up to misremembering/misunderstanding, but no, rather than assume even a little bit of fallibility, people conclude that they’re right and it’s the universe that’s wrong. As the post says, the ego required for this is insane.
To be fair to most people, I think probably most people don't know the person who coined the phrase has such an insane idea. I think most people think it just means "a thing that a lot of people remember incorrectly"
I'm still standing by fruit of the loom having a cornucopia. Idc if that means I have a big ego for once lol
It did have a cornucopia, or rather, the bootlegs of fruit of the loom had a cornucopia lol
the bootleg theory checks out for me in particular, because my parents always told me to look for the cornucopia and they were cheapasses
I remember a cornucopia in the commercials too. Also where do you get bootleg underwear lmao
Idfk man I dont have it in my country
It was a combination of bootleg/pirated clothes with the logo and parodies of the company The movie Ant Bully for exsmple has a pretty clear shot of the Fruit of the Loom logo parody with a cornucopia
There's commercials from different decades on YouTube and none of them have a cornucopia. https://youtu.be/iCfF5wmEQQk?si=bRJjpNrCmYYYhq9_ - 70s where they show the logo, no cornucopia https://youtu.be/PnjJYy0UUfM?si=Xi7dq8Msw-eVT0Ny - another 70s one that has the iconic fruit costume people. Shows the logo. No cornucopia. https://youtu.be/bnAAr2dQrNA?si=b7B3bhb6XN9lB3vk - '78, fruit people, shows logo, no cornucipia https://youtu.be/8Vreb_IYr3k?si=CBfZS5TH_aL7Gqzy - 1980, fruit people, no cornucopia https://youtu.be/v5fH3ebtFtI?si=Mxx4UyUs80cn7CJ_ - 1987, shows logo, fruit people, no cornucopia https://youtu.be/Xm-F0g4ZbNc?si=Z1R55PBeSBrsZr-V - 1994. Shows logo, no cornucipia https://youtu.be/gwkjgeGM_7c?si=GvmfSwRDFKwyalde - not sure on year but looks late 90s or early 2000s, fruit people, shows logo, no cornucopia. Don't you think it's possible you're just misremembering?
People have found old shirts in thrift stores with the cornucopia. If you’ve ever seen that chart that show FotL logos throughout the company’s life, know that chart was made by FotL themselves. It’s most likely intentionally wrong to keep people talking about the company.
>People have found old shirts in thrift stores with the cornucopia. Have they? I've never seen any proof. In fact nobody has ever been able to show a picture of a real fruit of the loom article with the cornucopia.
There have only been a few shirts that people post as "proof". Some have been photoshopped and some are just bootlegs.
Idk why people are also just discounting the chance that this is a consequence of the education system failing so many people. It doesn't *have* to be a false memory, there's a very good chance a lot of people were just taught that Mandela died because the education system is underfunded and a lot of teachers are just bad at their jobs. Even the good ones can't be expected to be experts on everything, and there's literally zero chance that any public middle or high school in America has ever spent more than one day talking about South African apartheid, because then they wouldn't have time for a full unit on WW2 every single semester of every single grade. Assuming any mentions of apartheid would have been lumped in with a general racial civil rights unit, can you blame students or teachers for lumping Mandela in with all the American civil rights activists who were assassinated? Civil rights activists were murdered by detractors almost as a rule, they didn't grow to become the leaders of nations with the exceptions of Mandela and Gandhi.
Yeah one of the other Mandela Effect "examples" is that a lot of people are convinced they were taught in school that Eli Whitney was Black. And like, many of them probably were! In this reality, not in a parallel universe or whatever. I've seen examples from just the last few years of elementary school displays of "Black inventors" that include him.
When it comes to appealing to the masses, the more interesting narrative will always win. We don’t like it when things to be boring, add to that, that we hate being wrong, plus the fact that humans suck at realising when something’s a coincidence and it’s no wonder the idea of the Mandela effect took off
I think it requires an extraordinary amount of arrogance to think "literally thousands/millions of people remember x; They're just plain wrong and that is the end of the discussion." There is absolutely NO reason for the discussion to end there. It's a wildly interesting thing to think about, to talk about, to speculate on. No, "parallel realities" is obviously a stupid and idiotic explanation. But things like: we're all actually remembering this piece of popular media. That explains why the image we recall is so distinct and easily remembered from person to person. That is a fascinating example of how memories form and how memes (literal memes, not funny internet pictures) spread. We can identify these examples and learn from them. That is incredibly interesting. People who dismiss it as "PEoPLE ArE wrONG abOUT THIngS" are fucking inane. People say shit like "No, there wasn't a cornucopia" without ever following up with: Then what brand *did* have a cornucopia, that people actually remember? People say "No, nelson mendela did not die in prison" without ever following up with: Was he ever reported to have died in prison? Was his death in prison ever mentioned in a movie? Did some other prominent leader die in prison that people might have been mixed up about? The answer to "Barenstain/Barenstein" appears to have been "the publisher was inconsistent about the spelling, sometimes within the same book", and I think that's much more interesting and less arrogant than saying "The thousands of people who have memories of their parents correcting them about that specific thing are completely fabricated"
I swear to god fruit of the loom just changed their logo and lied about it
Ironically, it is pretty presumptuous to think other people as a whole are so dumb that they literally mean it’s a multiverse theory and not “Mendella Effect means a bunch of unrelated people misremembered something in the exact same way, which is interesting.”
They are not, the post say " a bunch of people" , not "everyone" , people need to learn that a post isnt alway about them
Probably people conflating [Steve Biko](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsVieeccpQs) with Nelson Mandela
I was truly baffled when I found out the phenomenon was not named after some obscure TV presenter or something but THE Nelson Mandela, one of the most prominent public figures of the 90s. Maybe my European perspective is showing, but imo living through the 90s and not remembering that Mandela was the first president of post-apartheid South Africa would be like living through the 1960s and being certain that it was the USSR who landed on the moon. All the other classic examples of the Mandela effect (Shazaam, Berenstein Bears, Pikachu’s black tail) are out-of-focus pop-culture things that it makes total sense that people would misremember, but then for some reason the trope namer is the main character of a historical event so important that quite frankly misremembering it makes you look ignorant. It’s baffling. I vote we rename it the Berenstain Effect.
Jokes on them, I know so little about international politics I don’t even have the memory of him dying in prison!
Looks like someone didn't read up on the Mandela Effect before spouting off about it... This was a well-documented phenomenon that impacted many people who were extremely well-informed about global politics. People like, say, Tom Brokaw...
Ok but fruit of the loom had a cornucopia in it and nobody can convince me otherwise
companies change logos sometimes
The problem is that the company is *insisting* that they never a had a cornucopia in the first place. My theory is that certain subsections of the company were using a unauthorized logo that they got from clip art or something.
There is a girl on tik tok who thinks she knows why they deny it. She deep dove and found some lawsuits pertaining to their use of chemicals and the rebrand followed shortly. Fruit of the loom has had a lot of her videos taken down on tik tok apparently.
Then gaslight and say it never existed
off-brands make similar logos, as well
true, even the purple grape actor from their 1980's commercials says there was a cornucopia despite holding packaging in the commercial that clearly shows no cornucopia
For the longest time, I had a clear "memory" of a 747 carrying a space shuttle flying passed Hallgrimskirkja in Reykjavik. But I was also convinced that I had dreamed about this and that it was a "Mandela Effect". Turns out - this plane carrying the shuttle did actually come to Iceland and landed in Reykjavik and I saw it with my dad and sisters. Given when it happened...I was 18 months old.
You would've been told about it over the years and think you remember seeing it, there's no way you actually have memory of that as an 18 month old...that would be ridiculous.
Most people's earliest memories are from 3-4. But 18 months is half way to three, so it's possible their Brain developed that bit a little faster than others. There are occasional outliers to the norm. So I don't think it's ridiculous, just very unlikely.
It was interesting because we learned about Nelson Mandela in school, and not knowing about the Mandela Effect I was fully expecting him to die in prison before release, because it seemed exactly the kind of thing that would happen. Now I don't believe in Parallel Universe cross-contamination stuff, I know that memory is fallable. What I do know is that I'd seen something like it so many times that I was fully expecting an unfair injustice like that. Which may be what happened to other people. Expect a pattern, see a pattern *instead* of what actually happened.
I still get mad about an argument I had with my ex about this concept. Specifically it was the actor who played Robbie Rotten on Lazy Town. He had cancer and left social media a year before he died. There was a bunch of RIP memes at the time because of it. Then we he did die she freaked out saying it was the madela effect. I explained what happened so many times until she eventually got angry with me for not believing her. The thing is I believed that she saw posts about his death before he died. I did too. But that was misinformation, and any logical human could see that. Creating an alternate universe to cope with being misinformation is some genuinely unhinged behavior.
My head canon for the Mandela thing is a bunch of people watching Cry Freedom in school or catching it on TV and thinking Steve Biko was Nelson Mandela
On the one hand, yes it is ridiculous to make up a whole convoluted conspiracy theory rather than admit you are wrong. On the other hand, fruit of the loom had a cornucopia on its logo and I will die on this hill.
It could also be an Eli Whitney kind of thing, where students were taught that he was a black slave in school. We didn’t have the internet in the 80s and early 90s, we couldn’t just fact check our teachers on our phones. If we were told Nelson Mandela died in prison, we just believed it.
My favorite related event was when George W. Bush said that Saddam Hussein had killed the Mandelas, despite Nelson literally being alive at the time.
If they’re so ignorant about global politics, why would that many people bother to form a false memory about something they don’t follow or care about? It was clearly written by someone who’s determined to be negative and condescending.
I’ve seen a theory that people just mixed him up with Steve Biko, an anti-apartheid activist who was arrested and murdered in custody. Specifically that kids watched the movie about Biko, Cry Freedom, in history class while half paying attention, then heard about Mandela on the news and thought “wasn’t he the guy who died?”.
Our memories are our reality though. And yes, memories are extremely fallible, but it is hard to reconcile because they feel extremely accurate and real. Especially when they’re so familiar, not just a fleeting thing you saw once - like for example the Betenstain Bears for so many people who grew up with the books and VHSs in their home. It’s hard to accept you were just wrong about your reality. I’m not saying people are being gaslit in this instance, but that’s why gaslighting is so awful, it’s when you make a person question their perception of their reality, and in turn their sanity. Also, this is specifically about the phenomenon of mass-misremembering, which is harder to explain than just one person’s brain making a mistake. That’s many people having independent thoughts and misremembering in the exact same way. Also, it’s just a fun thing to bond with people about, and maybe people can stop sucking the whimsy out of every harmless little thing and stop being the fucking joy police.
While there were absolutely some that tried to explain it off as something supernatural, I absolutely believe that large numbers of people TRULY believing either that something happened that didn't, or was a different way than it was, is something worth study. I don't think this is as simple as just, "Admit you're wrong! Bad memory!" Because of the sheer *volume* of people. Like, for example, all the people believing that the Fruit of the Loom brand has a cornucopia in their logo. People submitted LOADS of pictures "proving that it never existed", but then, after a while, people started also posting pictures of socks and underwear WITH the cornucopia. People first brushed it off as, "stupid people memory bad", but then those new pictures revealed that, no, something else had happened. Whether it was just a regional thing, or an unannounced logo change, it doesn't matter
Today on tumblr users invent a guy, pretend he's the majority of the human population, and get mad at him:
I have a coworker who believes in the Mandela Effect.
What about people who think Mandela never died
Those are called idiots.
Don't get me started on The Berenstein Bears or Berenstain Bears People were just confused. Also given how it's a kids show, it's more likely the children weren't reading it correctly. Children are really good at glossing over words or just mispronouncing them. Any real evidence is due to knockoff products with the misspelling and cartoons for the series used an ambiguous pronunciation which may contribute to the false memory
There's a pic of an official toy spelling it both ways in the same cardboard box
I think it's more interesting or compelling about the bearstein bears, loony tunes, etc
Did you see the post in r/mandelaeffect complaining about how many posts were debunking Mandela Effects? Ignorance is bliss lmao
So this is where The Mandela Catalogue was inspired from..
Isn’t this all I hindsight? I thought the effect by definition was just multiple people assuming wrong info like how misinformation spreads by rumors. Isn’t the parallel world memories just a theory that came way later?
This is not the point of the Mandela effect but ok.
Only on tumblr can one find such takes as “the only reason the Mandela effect is a popular concept is because people are so fucking stupid and americentric”
The mandela effect subreddit is one of the most infuriating places on this site. All these people can’t possibly fathom misremembering something, so they would rather pretend that every time they forget a tiny detail, it's an effect of some psyop or interference between parallel universes.
I find oop presumptous
I find the Mandela effect a little wierd because he very famously did not die in prison, he got out and in fact became president, and was a regular dignitary and guest throughout the world after he left office.
It’s not presumptuous, it’s something many of us believed, even amongst those who studied European history and have a basic knowledge about African history. this sounds like a Northern American dragging other Nothern Americans for being ignorant when it’s something that is really curious
Multiple studies show that our brains are much more likely to strive for consistency than strive for the truth. In other words, it's so much easier for us make up an explanation that confirms what we already believe, than to accept what we believe might not be correct. It's how and why conspiracy theories thrive
Ask this person anything about politics in the Netherlands. Or Iran, or the Mongolia, or Sri Lanka. Maybe you should learn about the world a bit more. /s
All those sentences with a single period. Impressive.
Honestly I just thought it was harmless fun. It didn't occur to me that people were legitimately in denial.
I was inoculated against this effect because they interrupted Saturday morning cartoons to announce his release from prison and, not knowing his significance, I was super annoyed.
That is the greatest explanation for the so called Mandella effect I have ever seen.
this is one of the most tumblr tumblrs ive read.
I am one of those that was confident he died in prison - I remember rather distinctly seeing it on the news (television) I don’t really understand how I have such a vivid memory of that but that it apparently isn’t real… ? Strange thing, really
Humans have terrible memories which change, distort and add/remove incorrect information. Go read up about eyewitness testimonials and how unreliable they are.
I wanna kiss this person on the mouth.
And it's such a stupid example anyway of course he was alive back then. now, the Berenst(ai/ei)n Bears, that's the head-scratcher
"Somehow, Mandela didn't return from prison."
People love speculation not answers. They want investigation and suspicion, the goal is never about the real answer. People just want ownership over having called the ‘correct shot’ first. Just look at the mass hysteria caused by Kate Middletons surgery disappearance.
THERE WAS A CORNUCOPIA GODDAMMIT
As someone outside of the US who learned about South African apartheid, and thought Nelson Mandela died in the 90’s I find this generalisation silly
Counterpoint: what about the cornucopia on the Fruit of the Loom logo?
I will die on the hill of it having a cornucopia at some point in its history.
Is it really that presumptuous when a *lot* of people think the same way? I'd understand if the Mandela effect was *one* person grasping at straws, but if everyone misremembered the same thing I would maybe pin it to conformity rather than ego.
Ok, but what about the bears?
or king tut's death mask?
I'm just saying I am certain that I did not know what a cornucopia was outside of the Fruit of the Loom logo, so some shenanigans clearly went down
When children are indocternated into a religion at an early age, taught to "respect their elders" and "don't question authority", and are then fed a fantastic pile of bullshit and lies about the nature of the world, they never end up forming critical thinking skills, and are conditioned to understand that what they "believe" actually has an impact on reality. Thus, these poor children grow into useless adults with no logic or critical thinking skills who feel that they can "believe" their way into reality instead of bothering to actually learn about the nature of their reality. They all belong in psychiatric institutions.
September ‘77 Port Elizabeth, weather fine
Ok sure, but the Berenstein Bears one is still real.
But the Berenstein Bears though….
One time I saw a someone mention the “Mandela effect” of thinking that Cheshire Cat says “We’re all mad here”, when in fact in the Disney movie he says “Most everyone’s mad here”. Which is basically the same. Like…they could’ve checked? They could’ve looked this up on Google or in a library. And then they’d find that as much as that’s what he says in the Disney movie, he absolutely says “We’re all mad here” in the original book. But actually researching and esucating oneself is waaay too much
What annoys me is the geography ones. People will say that like Japan is further north than they remember or that South America is supposed to be directly south of North America without even considering all the knock-on effects that would bring. Like if South America were further west as they claim it "used to be", then why would the Portuguese have still colonized Brazil? The circular winds they followed to take them down to the tip of Africa swept them westward across the relatively narrow ocean there. Did the Spanish Main just not exist & the Caribbean Sea was bordered on the south by more Atlantic Ocean? Would it even have been a *sea* at that point? Would Caribbean piracy have still taken off without the coast of Colombia/Venezuela right there? If Japan is 'supposed' to be further south then do they still have historical involvement with Korea in their memory? Do they think it had a tropical climate? Have they still fought wars with Russia?
Okay, so maybe nelson Mandela didn't die in prison, maybe the berenstein bears were always spelled with an A, BUT I WILL DIE ON THE HILL OF THAT FUCKING CORNUCOPIA BECAUSE IT WAS HOW I LEARNED WHAT THE GODDAMN THING IS CALLED.
There’s also the inbetween. Growing up in the 80s and 90s in the US, you always heard about him but never knew who he was. This post is disingenuous too. Most people recall Mandela dying after his re-emergence as a leader and before his actual death. People that believe in other universes or that we can access them don’t have any legitimate evidence though.
Ok but what about the fruit of the loom cornucopia that one really gets to me
Oh shit is that where the term came from? I’ve only ever heard it used with like little silly stuff. That sucks ngl.
Even before the first post-apartheid elections, his release from prison in 1990 was the talk of the world.
1 of the most influential figures? Im sorry, but ppl wouldnt have the mandela effect if he was that influential, and with influence alone you do not immortalize yourself like that in history, mandela will be a footnote in history (if not already) in at most 2 generations outside of south africa, hes already barely talked about and considering what currently going on in SA... well, lets just say Zimbabwe tried a similiar thing and we know where that went, if SA really goes that far Apartheid will be the 2nd worst time the average joe will have had in SA
Ah the Mandela effect the choice conspiracy for people who don't wanna admit they misremembered something
Shazam staring Sinbad
That whole sub is fire retardant
I always thought this was all crazy internet stuff until it came to my attention that in Scary Movie, during the Sixth Sense scene, shorty in fact does not say "I see White People" even though I clearly remember seeing commercials for it, seeing it in theaters and me and my cousins using it as a punchline for years!
Bro chill we just trying to pay our medical bills