to not get the Mandela effect when it comes to Nelson Mandela

[cakeorwine]

People thinking he died in prison...

His leaving house arrest was a big news event.
Winning the Nobel Peace Prize
The first elections after apartheid
Becoming President.
Presenting the Rugby World Cup to the winning South African team in South Africa
His death in 2013

All massive news events.

I get some people thinking certain people had died before they had and misremembering other stuff and events...

But thinking Nelson Mandela had died in jail in the 80s....Seriously?
Meeting the Queen
His death and funeral in

You do see the devil's face in Rosemary's baby, but you see it a minute or 2 after she looks in the cot, not at the same time she looks in the cot.
Mirror mirror isn't Mandela effect. It's what anyone would think who had read the book not seen the film. I haven't seen the film so never heard "magic mirror"

I remember Mandela being released, him being President and all the rest.

Yet, when his death was announced, I was genuinely surprised because I thought he'd died a couple of years prior. Not years before in prison like others.

I'm neither thick or ignorant, I just (mis)remember it happening before it actually did.

It's like the "Walkers changed salt and vinegar crisp packet from blue to green" thing. Despite endless postings from people explaining that different companies used different colours, and how people are probably remembering Golden Wonder which were a more prominent brand in the 80s, and Walkers themselves saying their s&v has always been in green packets, you still get the posters convinced there is some sort of conspiracy of silence because they CLEARLY REMEMBER the change over.

It's crazy.

@Motherhubbardscupboard

But Mirror, mirror on the wall is correct. That's what it says in the fairy tale (the book). It's the film that changes it to magic mirror. So if you have read the fairy story or had it read to you, you might have missed that the film is different.

Agreed

Frankly I put it down to general ignorance about international affairs or just news in general.
I agree, how could someone who followed current affairs think that? Then I remember that most people don't.

I agree there is a significance about the access to news.

Now if we aren't sure about something we can Google it, but we also have a much wider scope of news. Prior to fairly recently most people got their news from the one tv news bulletin. Some people read papers (but no one in my family did except one uncle who read the news of the world).

Maybe 6 news items came to the BBC bulletin each day which was very uk focused, now we see hundreds of smaller pieces of news daily with a much more global outlook

If you miss remembered something like Nelson Mandela it might be years before you came across a news article that challenged that belief

It's an important phenomenon that shows the real nature of how memories work.

The poster above with the britney thing is a good example, the memory is 100% there. To the extent that they assumed it was edited out of new videos, even when they found one that they personally recorded it doesnt shake the false memory. She knows it isn't true but the memory exist completely still

All human memory works like that. Its why different family members recall the same event 100% differently and can have blazing rows in which they all believe they are right.

It's an important political phenomenon because it shows that its fairly easy to get 1000's of people to be 100% convinced of an idea, and argue that idea to others even if it didn't happen.

Most of the examples we have are trivial eg crisps, celebrity facts because that's something that lots of people remember together and is easy to identify as false because of the ease of accessing such information on line. However whole recollections of history have been re written (some interesting ww2 examples where the accepted truth now is clearly not what was documented at the time), court cases have been won, public favour has been changed etc. There are lots of things we know to be true that aren't from family dramas, to national events but we don't have the ability to Google it

I wonder if people mixed it up with Steve Beko?

Until Mandela was released I can only remember seeing one black and white image of him, possibly his arrest photo.

Now Steve Biko and Mandela do / did not look alike but a black and white photo of a black man with a beard on 1970s TV would not be that clear.

So you might have seen pictures of a funeral of an anti apartheid protester and thought it was Mandela.

Although that doesn't account for people remembering a court case about a book.

Yes, many people would get news once a day, watch the 6 or 9pm news, or just pick up one newspaper in the pre-24 news and wide access to the Internet. If Mandela had died in prison, he was famous enough at the time for that to be covered on the national news /put in national papers, it would probably would have been on the day he died and unlikely to have been the main story on the news programmes outside of SA.

Thinking about it further, did someone else die in prison in the early 90s/late 80s that many people could have misheard as Nelson Mandela? If that was the only name of the many south Africans in prison for political reasons, hearing a news report about a different person's death could lead to some to fill the blank of missing the name with the one they knew.

But its an interesting one as so many people had the same experience world wide when he was released, the akward feeling that they were sure they'd heard he was dead already.

@WomanStanleyWoman yes it did happen. It's not that long ago and I can clearly remember asking DH how he thought Hillary was spelled (he thought 2 Ls), showing him that it was one L, our confusion, then showing him again when it changed back. I remember sitting at the computer. I haven't fabricated that entire chain of events in my mind, it was only a few years ago and he remembers it all too.

Lots of people witnessed it happening, it's a famous mandela effect. Like I say, there's no explanation for it.

What's more likely, @fourofwands - that one of the most famous political figures in America sneakily changed the spelling of her name, then changed it back and lied about it, or that you have got it wrong?

Totally totally agree! I can see plenty of other examples of the Mandela effect. But I cannot believe it when it comes to Mandela himself. Being released and becoming president is just such a central part of his story. I don't know how you could follow the news enough to know who he was and that he was in prison, but have the whole being elected president thing pass you by as though you'd been living under a rock! He met the spice girls for christs sake, that's how big news he was!

Lots of people witnessed it happening, it's a famous mandela effect. Like I say, there's no explanation for it.

But if you’re acknowledging it as a famous Mandela Effect, you’re acknowledging that it didn’t happen. The whole point is that several people misremember the same thing. It’s not that these things actually happen and are then wiped from history with some cosmic reset button, but some people still remember.

@ToInverness

Totally totally agree! I can see plenty of other examples of the Mandela effect. But I cannot believe it when it comes to Mandela himself. Being released and becoming president is just such a central part of his story. I don't know how you could follow the news enough to know who he was and that he was in prison, but have the whole being elected president thing pass you by as though you'd been living under a rock! He met the spice girls for christs sake, that's how big news he was!

That's not the Mandela effect.

It comes from his release, no one has any Mandela effect about him being released and becoming president, it's that at the point of release, or when they saw news coverage coming up to release, they thought he was dead and so were surprised.

I wonder how people who believe Mandela died in prison explain him becoming President of South Africa afterwards!

Do they think that he became President posthumously, or are they just thick? Or a bit of both?

I remember it going all round college that Freddie Mercury had died, then about a week later he actually did die, and everyone was like 'huh, but he died last week?'.

@Topseyt

I wonder how people who believe Mandela died in prison explain him becoming President of South Africa afterwards!

Do they think that he became President posthumously, or are they just thick? Or a bit of both?

They don't need to explain it. When Mandela was released they thought, "Oh he's not dead, I thought he was, I'm sure it was on the news 20 years ago" and then carried on with their lives.

Maybe people who cannot grasp this idea that they stopped believing he was dead when they found out he wasn't should be described as thick?

@Topseyt

I wonder how people who believe Mandela died in prison explain him becoming President of South Africa afterwards!

Do they think that he became President posthumously, or are they just thick? Or a bit of both?

I don't think people still believe he died in prison. More like when he was released etc. a large enough group of people had the shared false memory that he was already dead. So they were like 'huh but I thought he was dead!'. And because enough people thought that it becomes this story about alternative timelines when it's just a lot of people had the same thing wrong. They didn't continue to believe he was dead obviously.

@CharityShopChic

It's like the "Walkers changed salt and vinegar crisp packet from blue to green" thing. Despite endless postings from people explaining that different companies used different colours, and how people are probably remembering Golden Wonder which were a more prominent brand in the 80s, and Walkers themselves saying their s&v has always been in green packets, you still get the posters convinced there is some sort of conspiracy of silence because they CLEARLY REMEMBER the change over.

It's crazy.

Unfortunately there are some people who are willing to believe any explanation, no matter how outlandish, other than ‘I was wrong’. It’s just too unpalatable to contemplate - even if the alternative is looking like a loon.

With the crisps one, there isn’t even a potential motive. With the ‘Mandela died in prison’ example, you can at least imagine that a pro-apartheid faction spread misinformation somehow. Even if you take a similar example to crisps - the common misconception that Cadbury’s Crème Eggs used to be a lot bigger - you can at least imagine why Cadbury might want to lie about that (even though they’ve confirmed other products have ‘shrunk’). Why would Walkers be so desperate to hide the fact that they had a packaging redesign 40 years ago?

Another one here who doesn’t know anyone who thought he had died in prison!
I do wonder if this false “memory“ comes, not from those of us old enough to have seen the news reports of his release from prison and followed his subsequent swift trajectory to becoming President, but from those who heard about him (possibly even after his actual death) when memorials were being erected/street names changed in his honour, Etc.

They don't need to explain it. When Mandela was released they thought, "Oh he's not dead, I thought he was, I'm sure it was on the news 20 years ago" and then carried on with their lives. Maybe people who cannot grasp this idea that they stopped believing he was dead when they found out he wasn't should be described as thick?

But the whole theory behind the Mandela Effect is that people don’t just ‘get on with their lives’. They obsess over the idea that they remember it happening and won’t be convinced otherwise. ‘But I remember!! It haaaaappened!!!!!’ If they just realised they had just heard wrongly and that was that, there wouldn’t be a whole phenomenon named after it, would there?

Several times I’ve seen an older celebrity has died and thought ‘Oh, I was sure s/he was dead already’. But they obviously weren’t, and I move on. I haven’t convinced myself that there was a huge conspiracy to cover up Patrick McNee or Eddie Large having died years before it was announced.

My recent Mandela effect story is that I found out that Dunelm mill hasn't been called Dunelm mill since 2013, but every one I know still thinks our local one says Dunelm mill. Drove past the other day and there's a really weathered, old sign that just says Dunelm!

I've been questioning reality ever since.

Video footage and archive "news" can easily be faked. The technology already exists and is getting cheaper all the time. I would expect some people who believe Mandela died in the 80s have seen the "video" of him being released a few years later but either think it's either been digitally manipulated or a lookalike was used.

How effective this is can be shown by another example where faking has definitely convinced a large number of people, the Starburst sweet example. Many people are certain it used to be called Opal Fruits - there are mocked up pictures of alleged "Opal Fruits" labels, the Wikipedia page is full of "Opal Fruits" references, even though it's never actual been the name.

@Notjustanymum - no it tends to be older people who have it. People who felt they had already heard he had died in the 70s/80s. He was in prison from 1962 to 1990, some point in that, lots of people are sure they heard he had died, so were shocked in 1990 to hear he was being released.

Most people who think they had heard he had died seem to agree it was at some point in the late 80s. So it could be a news article about poor health, or rumours about his release they misheard. It could be a different political prisoner who died.

I definitely had a strange moment when I heard the news Vera Lynn had died, I was sure she was already dead. It could well have been a news report about something been named after her, or her being too sick to attend something and I wasn't listening properly so I thought I'd heard she'd died. Now I've looked it up, she was 103 when she died so it was probably news reports about her 100th birthday. The video compilations were probably a bit like the ones they show when a celeb dies.

Never read a thread that was such a huge load of bollocks. Mandela effect? It’s just people getting facts wrong. Possibly not people who take time to research etc! Anyone who is actually spending time reading the news/events know when Mandela lived and what he did etc

How effective this is can be shown by another example where faking has definitely convinced a large number of people, the Starburst sweet example. Many people are certain it used to be called Opal Fruits - there are mocked up pictures of alleged "Opal Fruits" labels, the Wikipedia page is full of "Opal Fruits" references, even though it's never actual been the name.

I’m assuming this is a joke?