The Mandela Effect

[Bellver888]

Has anyone experienced it?
I’m currently sending my head backwards and forwards because I thought “Vimto” was “Vimpto”

How in the heck do you live a life like that, with all the subsequent accomplishments and news coverage, or live through coverage of something like 9/11, and have so many people have the same false memory? It is really interesting

It's quite simple really: large numbers of people don't pay attention to the world around them and have no real idea what's going on. Certainly before it was so simple to get "news" in your news feeds and rolling coverage. So people heard a lot of fuss about Nelson Mandela st some stage, vaguely, and then later on when someone else says something about remembering that NM died back at that time, they attach the vague memory to that. Then they have a new "memory" of having seen on the news that he died or the funeral etc.
There is only lots of people misrembering NM because they've been talking about the Mandela effect in the first place! It's all back filled memories that they never had in the first place.

I wonder if the 9/11 ‘false’ morning memories are from the following day. Remember that footage was on the news for days. So OP you may have been watching that eating your cereal but on the 12th Sep and not the 11th

As time passes it all merges into one memory

Mr Peanut!!! Yes that would explain it.

I'm sorry everyone I got the Gone With the Wind one wrong. A false memory of a false memory ...

I saw a programme about this a few years ago, about how open to suggestion the memory is. I think the programme was looking at how reliable repressed memories of childhood abuse during therapy was. In an experiment they showed the subjects a number of photos of them with a favourite grandparent but one of the images was photo shopped, showing the pair in or next to a hot air balloon basket. This had never happened but curiously when then speaking about their memories all subjects claimed to "remember" the hot air balloon. It was quite uncanny. I suppose it's the sort of experience you think you should never forget, you see the photo and your brain "fills in the gaps". ???

I think urban myth also plays a part. Used to work with someone who really did think Master Bates and Seaman Staines were characters in the children‘s TV series Captain Pugwash.

@Cactus1982

I’m sure Worcestershire sauce used to be ‘Worcester Sauce’.

Some brands are. L&P is definitely Worcestershire though!

I find it interesting reading about these things happening, and I have a few (although more personal family memories). It irritates me when people just will not accept their memory is flawed. Human beings are, in general, absolutely terrible witnesses!

@CounsellorTroi

I think urban myth also plays a part. Used to work with someone who really did think Master Bates and Seaman Staines were characters in the children‘s TV series Captain Pugwash.

No Seaman anyone, in the books or programme. There is a Master Mates. The cabin boy is called Tom.

Even if you have an excellent memory - which I generally do - you can find things have merged in your brain somehow.

Those of you active on the Telly Addicts forum will see me crop up a lot on the Corrie threads. When they started showing Classic Corrie in the daytime, it was amazing how often I could remember scenes almost word for word - and I mean ordinary scenes; not big moments regularly reshown on clips shows or tributes. But a couple of years back they showed a scene with Gail and Alma that I would have sworn on my life took place in Gail’s garden. The scene was exactly as I remembered it - yet it all took place in the cafe. I was genuinely really shocked.

In the next episode, there WAS a scene in the garden. So on one hand, you could say my memory is amazing for it to have all stuck with me 30 years on - but on the other hand, my brain had combined two separate memories as one, so my memory was wrong.

I lived near a Midwestern air force base on 9/11, and there were - I'm not sure they were sonic booms, but two similar noises that were reported to be planes from base -- but when those booms happened and what those planes were sent for, even in just the months directly afterwards seemed to have gotten very confused to the point I'm not really sure (I think I may be mixing when I heard them and discussions then to when I heard the news report explaining them) though I do remember that people thought either the base or one of the local hospitals had been hit in a missed attempt on the base which is likely why it had to be widely reported that they were planes leaving the base.

Not sure it's Mandela Effect as it may just be me and it feels awkward to write out, but the recent Shannon Matthews media coverage threw me off, because I "remember" her being found dead under the bed.

I didn't really follow the case at the time, I can only guess that plus a similar enough tragic story must have mixed up my memories, but I've no idea who else I can be mixing it up with. I do remember terrible news of a girl of about the same age going "missing" with big family searches and the girl being found dead under a bed.

This is part of why as an adult, I looked up court records for some events that happened to me as a child - I know my memories can be all weird and I really needed something solid I can look at to say yes, that did happen, as part of working through it.

The Captain Pugwash myths come from a magazine that made some jokes in the 1970s. Clever ones, but bunkum.

I'm surprised they persist, because you'd think people would check the books out to see if they're true. They're also such brilliant books, everyone should read them even if you don't have small people around. Absolutely joyous.

I remember (or do I?) reading somewhere that memories become less accurate the more you remember them. Like a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy......

@CounsellorTroi

I remember (or do I?) reading somewhere that memories become less accurate the more you remember them. Like a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy......

I can believe this. You'll be amplifying whatever the most salient feeling was, and what provoked it. Stories do tend to grow taller in the retelling and I don't think it's because people are actively trying to lie or mislead.

Jaws’ girlfriend 100% had braces in Moonraker (James Bond). I remember seeing it as a child and her mouthful of metal has stuck with me all these years. Why else would he have been so delighted to meet her?! It makes no sense otherwise. Truly weird shit!

The one that gets me is Australia. I saw someone talking about New Zealand being at '4 o'clock' to Australia, and I thought to myself 'haha! It's at 2 o clock'.

Thought nothing of it, until I heard about it as part of the Mandela effect - I immediately ran to my globe, and OMG! New Zealand is at 4 o'clock! And there's loads of islands almost touching Australia!

Now I know that New Zealand was at 2 o'clock, and Australia was in the middle of nowhere - nothing anywhere near it, certainly not almost touching it.

So I phoned my sister and asked her to look at my brother's old globe and tell me where New Zealand was (I wouldn't explain further). She came back going 'OMG, it's in the wrong place and so is Australia!' We have that same memory of their positions.

Next time I saw ex-DH, I asked him 'if Australia is a clock, where is NZ?' He thought 2 o' clock too, and was just as amazed when I showed him.

My impression is that older people remember Australia out on its own, with NV at 2 o' clock, and younger people remember it the way it is now - but not 100 per cent either way.

We spent a term doing Australia as a project in Geography at school. I don't care if it makes me a narcissist to trust a memory I had no reason to doubt until recently, and having so many of my peers share the memory must mean there's a lot of us Ns about!

Or maybe 70s maps are wrong? But that doesn't explain the change to my brother's globe.

Except she 100% did not.

@SlothWithACloth

It used to be only walkers that had them switched then everyone else copied, I’m sure golden wonder salt n vinegar was blue and cheese onion was green.

You are absolutely right - Golden Wonder salt & vinegar crisps (the finest crisps of my childhood) were definitely in blue packets.

I should know, I ate enough of them

No idea what the Mandela effect is but crisps definitely swapped at some point. Even in my cupboard now, s&v hula hoops are blue, s&v walkers are green.

Golden Wonder was the bog brand in the 80s and cheese & onion was green, salt & vinegar light blue. Then Walkers came along and messed with our heads.

Ready salted was always red, though .

big brand

I remember Sarah-Lou’s daughter in Corrie was Bethany.
Then it switched to Britney.
Then back to Bethany.

I’m 100% certain this happened, as Gail was talking about ‘Britney’ and I remember thinking ‘I thought her name was Bethany’

It was Britney for a few weeks then went back to being Bethany.

Is it Mandela effect that I remember people wrongly remembering Mandela's death differently?

I thought that it came from Mandela's 90th Birthday celebrations in 2008. When he died in 2013 lots of people had forgotten about his Birthday and just vaguely remembered there having been a big fuss about him in the news and everyone saying how great he was a few years earlier and couldn't think of any other reason for that other than that he must have died then.

I've never heard of people "remembering" Mandela's death in the 80s before reading this thread. Did these people not notice him becoming the first black president of South Africa?

@Cactus1982

I’m sure Worcestershire sauce used to be ‘Worcester Sauce’.

I've always called it Worcester sauce. I wondered if there was a knock off version when I was young.

@CounsellorTroi

In Gone With the Wind the line "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn" is never spoken.

Yes it is! It was a bit scandalous to say the word damn on film in those days so Clark Gable said it as “Frankly my dear I don’t GIVE a damn” to take the emphasis off it.

Thank you! I was going to point this out.

Tender hooks .....tenter hooks

I really recommend that podcast episode that this article refers to - all about a song that a guy remembers all the lyrics for but worries he's imagined so he investigates whether it did actually exist

www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/mar/10/reply-alls-the-case-of-the-missing-hit-could-this-be-the-best-podcast-episode-ever

@FancyPuffin

The o my one that really weird for me is that I clearly remember Disney VHS movies having Tinkerbell spell out Disney and then use her wand for the dot. Didn't happen

Yes it did.