- Joined
- Dec 11, 2013
Have you ever been in a situation where you remembered something, maybe it was an event, maybe it was a product name, maybe it was a person and then years later come across it again only to find your memory of it is wrong? Well don't worry it's not because your mind is imperfect and you didn't remember it correctly. No, you're right and you've just experienced "The Mandela Effect".
The name comes from a few years back when a "paranormal consultant" at DragonCon was in the green room with a bunch of other weirdos and some, not all mind you, distinctly remembered that Nelson Mandela had died in prison. This of course would come as a shock to a lot of people who remember him getting out of prison and actually becomming president of South Africa. But no, to these people, him dying had to be true because they "remembered" it so the universe must have changed.
They've gone through different ideas but the most compelling "theories" right now are either dimensional travel in that you either experienced it in an alternate dimension or you're somehow getting memories of it from there, or you were in some sort of holodeck device. The third possibility that they're completely wrong never crosses their mind but that's to be expected. It's a lot sexier to think that you've been somewhere else and experienced something that few others have instead of accepting that your mind is not the perfect recording device that we like to think it is.
There's a reason why eyewitness evidence counts for so much in a court of law and yet it's known to imperfect and prone to errors. Hell, a skilled interrogator can build false memories in you and you actually believe this to be true. Of course it doesn't work on everybody but rarely are these things 100%.
There's a website started by the person that coined the phrase here: http://mandelaeffect.com or just plug the term into Youtube and be bombarded by a bunch of videos blaming things like CERN for causing it.
The name comes from a few years back when a "paranormal consultant" at DragonCon was in the green room with a bunch of other weirdos and some, not all mind you, distinctly remembered that Nelson Mandela had died in prison. This of course would come as a shock to a lot of people who remember him getting out of prison and actually becomming president of South Africa. But no, to these people, him dying had to be true because they "remembered" it so the universe must have changed.
They've gone through different ideas but the most compelling "theories" right now are either dimensional travel in that you either experienced it in an alternate dimension or you're somehow getting memories of it from there, or you were in some sort of holodeck device. The third possibility that they're completely wrong never crosses their mind but that's to be expected. It's a lot sexier to think that you've been somewhere else and experienced something that few others have instead of accepting that your mind is not the perfect recording device that we like to think it is.
There's a reason why eyewitness evidence counts for so much in a court of law and yet it's known to imperfect and prone to errors. Hell, a skilled interrogator can build false memories in you and you actually believe this to be true. Of course it doesn't work on everybody but rarely are these things 100%.
There's a website started by the person that coined the phrase here: http://mandelaeffect.com or just plug the term into Youtube and be bombarded by a bunch of videos blaming things like CERN for causing it.
