The Mandela Effect

[Bellver888]

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

100% walkers used to be green for cheese and onion i remember them switching.

That line was a really big thing. Hay's wanted it to be changed to "I don't give a darn", and Selznik actually flew to New York to explain why he felt it had to be "damn". He actually filmed it both ways, in case Hays didn't agree (but didn't tell him that!).

I've killed off Lionel Blair a few times in my head, and been surprised when he pops up.

I’ve thought cliff Richard was dead for years turns out he’s not. Weird

There are various causes of the Mandela Effect, the honestly-held memory of an event that did not happen. The three most plausible are:

a) Your memory is correct. In the case of Mandela dying in the 1980s,
this could well have happened but he was too useful a figure for the post-Apartheid era so a doppelganger was used and official records adjusted. Alternatively, the original death could have been a hoax to try to stamp out the anti-Apartheid protests, which failed.

b) There is an unproven theory that there are an infinite number of universes where every possibility is played out. In other words, there is a universe that is exactly the same as ours, except for the fact Mandela died in the 80s. Somehow, people's memories from one universe have been merged with our own.

c) We're living in a computer simulation. (This is actually highly possible, arguably it's more likely we are living in a simulation than this being reality.) In our reality, computers are reset, saved data is wiped, but traces are still left on the hard drive. It's equally possible that our data from one fork of simulated reality has traces from another fork.

Personally, a) seems the most likely, if only because it's the easiest to understand. History gets written and rewritten - "facts" can be changed. It reminds me of Nineteen Eighty-Four, where Winston Smith knows for a fact that aeroplanes were invented before Big Brother turned up, but officially - and in most people's mind - Big Brother invented them because every record says that he did. He who controls the present controls the past, and he who controls the past controls the future.

100% walkers used to be green for cheese and onion i remember them switching

You don't, because they didn't.

There are various causes of the Mandela Effect, the honestly-held memory of an event that did not happen. The three most plausible are

You forgot the actual most plausible (and correct one): Your honestly held memory is wrong.

ersonally, a) seems the most likely, if only because it's the easiest to understand
You think it's easier to understand massive cover ups and conspiracies than to understand memory is extremely fallible? Your example doesn't even make sense: if the SA government covered up NM's death and used a stand in, how would Bob down the pub remember him dying? Do you think the hush hush cover up was on the news?

I wrote a Disney round for a quiz, where one of the questions was "In the opening titles, a semi-circle appears over the castle, is it drawn from left to right or right to left?"

The ones who'd got it wrong were very unconvinced when I gave the correct answer.

I think a lot of people have never really noticed, but it's a 50:50 chance, and they know the opening sequence well enough to imagine either scenario onto it. So the more they played it back in their heads, the more they 'saw' their version as the right one.

(It goes from right to left.)

The Bernstain bears used to be called The Bernstein bears, I'm sure.

@AleynEivlys

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!

I have only just found out this is not true, I would have said she did

@HarrietSchulenberg

I was one of the many people who swore salt n vinegar crisp packets swapped colours with cheese n onion. Apparently they didn't.

this 100% happened, i remember it too! i was so confused for a while as to why cheese and onion were now green!!!

@Awwlookatmybabyspider

Me too Harriet. I remember as clear as day Cheese and onion crisps were green and salt and vinegar were blue. The colours were switched in about 1992.

Wrong! I live in the city where they are made. Salt and Vineger came out around 1965/66 and were in Green packets. Cheese and onion were blue. There was, many years ago, a cheese flavour crisp which IIRC were in orange or possibly yellow packets.

*not

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

Well her name is Bethany Britney Platt! and Sarah Lou did originally want her called Britney.

I’m sure golden wonder salt n vinegar was blue and cheese onion was green.

Still are:

www.amazon.co.uk/Golden-Wonder-Salt-Vinegar-32-5g/dp/B00N0VKLPU?tag=mumsnetforu03-21

www.amazon.co.uk/Golden-Wonder-Cheese-Onion-Crisps/dp/B00N11M4VI?tag=mumsnetforu03-21

@FedNlanders

100% walkers used to be green for cheese and onion i remember them switching.

They really didn’t!!

I was thinking about this phenomenon yesterday (I didn't know it was called the Mandela effect).

I can clearly remember watching Princess Diana's funeral on a particular television set in a particular flat. Only her funeral was in Sep 2007, and I moved out of that flat in Jun 2006 (and never went back). So my very clear memory is obviously wrong.

When Johnny Briggs (Mike Baldwin in Coronation Street) died last week we both ‘remembered’ him dying years ago

i dont recall the mandela one at all-i did believe about the crisps till i read it somewhere that it was golden wonder which made more sense

@TakeTheCuntOutOfScunthorpe

There are various causes of the Mandela Effect, the honestly-held memory of an event that did not happen. The three most plausible are:

a) Your memory is correct. In the case of Mandela dying in the 1980s,
this could well have happened but he was too useful a figure for the post-Apartheid era so a doppelganger was used and official records adjusted. Alternatively, the original death could have been a hoax to try to stamp out the anti-Apartheid protests, which failed.

b) There is an unproven theory that there are an infinite number of universes where every possibility is played out. In other words, there is a universe that is exactly the same as ours, except for the fact Mandela died in the 80s. Somehow, people's memories from one universe have been merged with our own.

c) We're living in a computer simulation. (This is actually highly possible, arguably it's more likely we are living in a simulation than this being reality.) In our reality, computers are reset, saved data is wiped, but traces are still left on the hard drive. It's equally possible that our data from one fork of simulated reality has traces from another fork.

Personally, a) seems the most likely, if only because it's the easiest to understand. History gets written and rewritten - "facts" can be changed. It reminds me of Nineteen Eighty-Four, where Winston Smith knows for a fact that aeroplanes were invented before Big Brother turned up, but officially - and in most people's mind - Big Brother invented them because every record says that he did. He who controls the present controls the past, and he who controls the past controls the future.

Or D) The internet is a magnet for baseless ideas, and once a few people shared their confused ideas (for example, misremembering a news story that Mandela was very ill and close to death as him actually having died), they egg each other on (‘Yeah, I remember that too! What happened?’) and it becomes fact in their brains. The media picks up on the story that there are people who believe this, the story spreads even further, and the idea spreads with it.

As a PP suggested, if it was a cover-up and the post-80s Mandela was a stand-in, it can’t have been a very good cover-up - otherwise they’d have done it before the supposed announcement of his death. And why, even if thousands of people ‘remember’ it happening, do millions, or even billions, not remember? Who’s more likely to be wrong?

@NoNotHimTheOtherOne

I was thinking about this phenomenon yesterday (I didn't know it was called the Mandela effect).

I can clearly remember watching Princess Diana's funeral on a particular television set in a particular flat. Only her funeral was in Sep 2007, and I moved out of that flat in Jun 2006 (and never went back). So my very clear memory is obviously wrong.

And your timeline is ten years out

@Couchbettato always been Berenstain, I still have my childhood books from the early 80s upstairs!

"I can clearly remember watching Princess Diana's funeral on a particular television set in a particular flat. Only her funeral was in Sep 2007, and I moved out of that flat in Jun 2006"

@NoNotHimTheOtherOne did you live there in 1997?

Walkers crisps were not sold where I live when I was wee and I remember as a child in the 1980s going to England and being bemused because Walkers had cheese and onion in blue packets.

Princess Diana died in 1997.
I had a couple of instances of honestly mistaking 2 separate pieces of personal information within the last 2 weeks. Things I'd read, and double checked, then when told I was mistaken feeling like I'd been transferred to another universe, because I had checked, and don't usually misread things like that. Very odd feeling, but 100% cock-up on my part.

The crisps one is as ridiculous as it gets.

The company who make them say they never swapped the colours. Why on earth would they lie? What possible benefit is there?

So, either

1 a large company for some bizarre unknown reason have decided to do some weird gaslighting thing over the colour of their packets of crisps. Or

2 people are passing between dimensions willy nilly. Or

3 - they're wrong. They are mixing up two different brands.
It was years ago and memory is notoriously unreliable!