Mandela Effect (sorry, Nelson Mandela Effect)

[Samantha Rinne]

Basically, if you don't know the phenomenon, it's where people distinctly remember something different. Named for Nelson Mandela, who supposedly died in prison, but actually became president and died much later.

Now, I looked on the subject and it seems like secular sources are convinced the later one is always real, and the former one is just your memory playing tricks on you. As for theists, they are split between those who feel believing things have changed is a sign that you don't accept God's word is unchangeable to those who think this whole thing may be part of the "strong delusion" described in the Bible, to ummm this...

If You Don’t Believe the Mandela Effect is Real, You May Accept the Antichrist – "Mandela Effect" Bible Changes

Ummmm, yeah okay. Not extreme at all.

The thing is, for those who claim it's a memory thing, I happen to remember Fruit Loops changing to Froot Loops sometime in the 90s, and apparently, this has flipflopped several times. I also remember it being "follow your nose" that Toucan Sam said, but now wikipedia articles list it as "follow my nose."

I feel like this is a sort of existential equivalent of one of these games.

The question is, why does it happen?

Do people really have fallible memories? Because looking at this game above, I can definitely pick out most things that are changed. Is it some time/space effect? George Orwell described "Eurasia has always been at war with Eastasia (except for two seconds ago where Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia)." Is it something else?

Also, how is all of this relevant to religion? Is it just something that happens? Or is it a "strong delusion"?

 

[bobhikes]

I'm a Beatles fan and I enjoyed Yesterday so I'll go with that. Eventually the Mandela Effect will effect that movie. People will start believe that John Lennon was actually alive to shoot Yesterday.

 

[Samantha Rinne]

His name is John Lenin. It has ALWAYS been John Lenin.

(Nah, I'm pretty sure it was John Lennon)

 

[Unveiled Artist]

I'm having fun reading this: 40 Mandela Effect Examples - What Is The Mandela Effect Definition

 

[George-ananda]

Ahh, the Mandela Effect is one of my pet topics. I am a believer that something not understood in our straightforward thinking of reality is highly likely occurring. I realize what a dramatic statement that is.

I believe in my reality the Berenstain Bears used to be the Berenstein Bears. The current history says it was always the Berenstain Bears. Huh? I believe Central and South America were aligned more westward in their orientation to North America. I started a thread here on that: Here's the link
Mandela Effect Moves South America East

I of course believe in normal memory errors too and make them all the time but I believe Mandela Effects are something different.

Well none of the choices in the OP survey sat well with me so I created my own leading theory:

> Those who are ready to upgrade their understanding of consciousness/reality are being shown by benevolent higher beings with real world examples that reality is not hard-fixed but a creation of consciousness

 

[Heyo]

"Beam me up, Scotty."
"Luke, I am your father."
"Play it again, Sam."

Not only do we misremember things, it is even possible to "implant" false memories. Anybody who thinks s/he has a good memory has just forgotten how often they were wrong in school - were memory gets constantly tested.
(And could easily test themselves by trying to recall binomial formula or the capitol of Slovakia.)

 

[sun rise]

My wife and I live this - we can have very different memories that match the OP description.

 

[George-ananda]

Also, how is all of this relevant to religion? Is it just something that happens? Or is it a "strong delusion"?

Well, Samantha, what is your opinion on the Mandela Effect?

 

[Tambourine]

As far as I can tell, the fundamental basis of all these phenomena seems to be people refusing to accept that they could ever have been wrong about something, regardless of evidence to the contrary.

 

[Samantha Rinne]

Well, Samantha, what is your opinion on the Mandela Effect?

Well, I'm not exactly sure honestly. This is a good chunk of the reason I made this thread.

I have about three or four options that I'm willing to entertain, and most of them are such that they keep me up at night. In other words, most of them give me nightmares.

1. 1984-style political revisionism. If this one's true, it basically screams some sort of super-government trying to run the lives of everyone. If you remember reading this book in Literature class, great, otherwise the basic premise is that the main character lives in a screwy dystopia where every waking hour people are watched meddled with and re-educated. The main character works for the Ministry of Truth, which is basically historians/media/propaganda experts and routinely revise even their own history. One such example is "Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia" only they change alliances and then rewrite history as though it has been the case forever, scrubbing previous records.
   
2. It's possible this is a sort of religious reprogramming, where some entities are trying to distort the minds of humans to make them easy to conquer. When people can't be sure of what they know, they are effectively a divide-and-conquer victim and they can't be ideologically united. This could be anything from some creepy emerging religion to some sort of non-human species looking to eat us. That all of our popular media appears to be screwed with tells me that while it could just be people remembering wrong, this combined with a dumbing-down of both education and things like music. For example: the book Sword of Shannara, a character was originally described as having auburn hair. I had to ask a teacher what the word meant (in 6th grade). When I looked at a reprint, the word was red. I think it could be an attempt to lower spiritual vibrations, especially since some of the changes appear to be less meaningful, less interesting, less spiritual, and less grammatically correct (Fruit Loops to Froot Loops, for example)
3. It could be a Butterfly Effect of someone going back in time to change history. Think about the aforementioned Nelson Mandela, who should have died in prison. What if the this created a bunch of ripples in history, that changed the name of products. However, I cannot say that I really strongly like this one, as most of the ripples seem to be in very odd locations.
4. I think reality is being changed on a cosmic level. I couldn't tell you if someone good (God/Jesus/Buddha/etc) is doing it, or someone evil, but given that in many ways 20th and 21st century seem to be fairly bad (two big genocidal movements, a global pandemic, and so on), I'm willing to go with the latter. But it's possible all this reality warping might ultimately set the stage for some kind of new Earth.

My motto is to leave options open unless they can definitely be disproven. So yeah, even the lizard people one, I'm okay with. I think #4, with #1 and #2 as strong options as well. Let's go with #2 though.

My basic religious philosophy has strong emphasis on a kind of Judeo-Christian New Earth, with some strains of Buddhist and Taoist thought. I just have never been able to discount a religion as wrong, unless it treats people wrong (a religion of evil where people are enslaved, for example).

As far as I can tell, the fundamental basis of all these phenomena seems to be people refusing to accept that they could ever have been wrong about something, regardless of evidence to the contrary.

And you've never been wrong about something? Also, show me evidence to the contrary. You can show me that something is currently the case, but can you show me that it's never been changed?

There's something to be said for visual familiarity (as in, I actually remember things looking a certain way). And something else to be said about change blindness.

 

[Unveiled Artist]

"Beam me up, Scotty."
"Luke, I am your father."
"Play it again, Sam."

Not only do we misremember things, it is even possible to "implant" false memories. Anybody who thinks s/he has a good memory has just forgotten how often they were wrong in school - were memory gets constantly tested.
(And could easily test themselves by trying to recall binomial formula or the capitol of Slovakia.)

Wait. Kirk never says "beam me up Scotty??"

 

[George-ananda]

As far as I can tell, the fundamental basis of all these phenomena seems to be people refusing to accept that they could ever have been wrong about something, regardless of evidence to the contrary.

I am sure my memory is erroneous on many things. But I believe the Mandela Effect is something beyond the normal errors we all make.

 

[Stevicus]

"Beam me up, Scotty."
"Luke, I am your father."
"Play it again, Sam."

I think about this whenever I rewatch a TV show episode or movie that I hadn't seen since I was a kid, and the way I remembered it was often different from the way it actually was.

It makes me wonder how many of my own personal memories are truly accurate. I could be misremembering my whole life.

 

[Stevicus]

Wait. Kirk never says "beam me up Scotty??"

Not that exact phrase. He always said it somewhat different.

 

[Heyo]

I think about this whenever I rewatch a TV show episode or movie that I hadn't seen since I was a kid, and the way I remembered it was often different from the way it actually was.

It makes me wonder how many of my own personal memories are truly accurate. I could be misremembering my whole life.

You probably do. At least the finer details. Your episodic memory is very much compressed. Details you didn't focus on are not stored but they are added by your brain when you try to recall the scene. That's why this can happen:

and this:

 

[Samantha Rinne]

I've got another theory beyond the original four. This one's more down to earth.

5. Piracy. Large scale unchecked piracy because most people don't do due diligence. Ideally, a library would be there to prevent such things, having a firm grasp on their stock, and protecting the integrity on products. However, I remember working at the library, occasionally we would get back books that didn't scan in. They had barcodes, they looked right I guess, but sometimes the name would be entered wrong, like it was Oracle of Tao, The instead of Oracle of Tao. I didn't know what I was looking at then, but now I wonder how possible it would be to "return" a knockoff and sell the original. This happens enough times, the public assumes that Berenstain Bears is right and Berenstein Bears is wrong. And the frightening thing is, we'd actually cooperate with this, because we couldn't prove what had been changed, we could only see that the numbers didn't scan.
​

Brand piracy - Wikipedia

To give you an idea on how rampant piracy is on things like product name, Rolex watches are frequently bought on markets as Rolecks or Rol-ex or Rollex. Or some knockoff Tide product called Time (this happened in China). These products, obviously are not quality, they are cheaply made. But if they are allowed to outsell the original, sooner or later, the original becomes forgotten. "Time has always been the name of this (cheap quality) cleaner, what are you talking about? There's never been any Tide cleaner!"

Yes, it is easy to implant memories. But how do you know that I am the victim, and not yourself? Suppose I remember events correctly, because I've been observant, whereas you've been paying more attention to pay bills or something.

 

[George-ananda]

Another popularly discussed Mandela Effect is the Flintstones/Flinstones official spelling flip/flops between the two spellings. Growing up with the Flintstones I thought this was just people not paying attention to the details UNTIL I had the following event I will share below, that has convinced me beyond reasonable doubt that the Mandela Effect is real and mysterious and can not be explained away in our straightforward understanding of how reality works.


On Aug 2, 2017 at about 16:40 EST, I was on reddit discussing the Flinstones/Flintstones flip on another thread. My position was that it is and always was the Flintstones. The guy sent me a reply saying at the time it was the Flinstones you could look at Wikipedia, and all official TV show and vitamin sites and it was always Flintstones; he used the word Flintstones in all four examples given.

I said 'I Know' you are confirming my point that it was always Flintstones.

Then when I was done with my reply and I looked up at his original post and all four 'Flintstones' had changed on my static display to 'Flinstones'. Did I just see it wrong?? I looked away and came back and it was 'Flintstones' again. I would just look away, blink, change my focus looked back and it would flip again. I was able to do this 6 or 7 times in under five minutes each time looking slowly and cautiously for this controversial 't' IN ALL FOUR PLACES. Essentially impossible to me that I made a mistake slowly and cautiously each time. I felt something was trying to wake me up.

 

[Samantha Rinne]

I was typing one of the above posts and fully intended to write Fruit Loops, and found that instead I had typed Froot Loops. This wasn't a retroactive correct, and I corrected it before posting... BUT STILL.

The struggle is real.

 

[Heyo]

This just popped up in my YouTube feed. Coincidence?