Saturday, August 5, 2017

Mandela effect


On the topic of false memories, I can't help but to think of the Mandela effect as one of the best examples of false memories evolving into something a bit different and being wide spread among a large group of people. The Mandela effect gets it's name from Nelson Mandela, the former president of South Africa. He was in imprisoned for fighting against the Apartheid in South Africa and later died in the 1980's never being released. Except he didn't die. Nelson survived and became president a few years after the fall of the Apartheid and he later died in 2013 living a full life. However, so many people remember hearing about his death in the 80's, even watching the news about the reactions over his death. This is the Mandela effect, a wide range of people having the same vivid memories of certain things being one way while in reality it was something else entirely.

Some of the biggest examples include The Berenstain Bears books, everyone seems to remember the books as Berenstein Bears instead of the correct Berenstain Bears. Some other examples include people remembering "Sex and the City" as "Sex in the City", another is Darth Vader saying,"Luke, I am Your Father." when in actuality he never says that, and lastly people remember watching a movie called Shazaam staring Sinbad  as an incompetent genie while in actuality that movie never existed and instead a movie called Kazaam staring Shaq as a genie existed. I personally remember the Berestain Bears books being spelled with an "e" instead of an "a", I also always referred to the "Sex and the City" show as "Sex in the City" and no one ever corrected me, in fact they said it the same way I did! Lastly everyone seems to remember Darth Vader saying his famous quote, "Luke, I am your Father" to the point were I remember it being quoted in other TV shows. So what is the explanation for the Mandela effect?    
Apparently the explanation for the Mandela effect is that there are parallel universes that are crossing over to ours in which change the past in small ways, our false memories are in fact real and we are just remembering how our universe was before it was changed. There really was a movie called Shazaam, but it was erased by a universe were it didn't exist, but we still hold some memories of it. Overall, even though I remember things differently, I chalk it all up to wide spread misconception gaining traction over the years rather than the state of my universe morphing reality as justification for remembering a children's book being spelled differently. I do find the Mandela effect "fun" however, learning about how common certain false memories are among people and how it's because their are parallel universes were our false memories are true. The Mandela effect really shows how finicky memory can be, even across multiple people.      

1 comment:

  1. Shane, I really found this post quite interesting due to the fact that you brought up examples that even I say wrong. I never really realized that this was so common and so many people are guilty of doing so.

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