The Mandela Effect

Since there's no thread for this, here's a place to discuss the 'Effect and whether you've been affected by it yourself, theories on what it is (Large Hadron Collider, people's faulty memories, Quantum Leapers changing things in the timeline). Let's keep it somewhat serious and not diverge into intentionally stupid theories, please.

I've personally experienced the Mandela Effect on a few levels: Mandela, Berenstein Bears, and maps as a kid. I distinctly remember the world map being different as a kid. Specifically Europe being a part of the Soviet Union, all the way to the Atlantic (unsure about the UK but I don't think it was included). I remember seeing maps that showed this, as well as Korea being one large country. It was enough for me to go a couple years thinking these things as a kid, when you'd think I'd have access to lots of correct maps. Was a surprise to me in 1st grade when I studied geography and discovered Korea was split in two and the USSR did not include Europe. This might have been a case of me reading maps wrong as a 4 year old, which is pretty explainable at the end of the day. I still REALLY feel like I saw these maps, though. And maybe I did, but maybe they were "zone maps" or something like that and weren't properly bordered. I'm going to say it was almost definitely something like that, but at the same time, the particular things I remember seeing actually make a lot of sense if Germany never rose to prominence in the 30's and the US didn't become a superpower as a result.

As for my actual experience with Mandela: I distinctly remember Nelson Mandela dying in prison in 1988 of tuberculosis and how upset everybody got about it. My mom was friends with his niece and yet I had zero idea he was alive and president until around 2003 when GW Bush said "Mandela is dead" and got all kinds of flack because it wasn't true. I was like "but he is dead" and people thought I was crazy, pointing out that he had just been president for years and years.

Also Berenstein Bears was 100% spelled with an E.

Those are all my experiences with the 'Effect, those 3 things. I'm not sure when things "course-corrected" and reality was at odds with what I remembered on all 3 counts but it seemed like the early 2000's for Mandela and Berenstein and 1989 or 1990 for the maps.

Aldarion said:

Growing up, my parents sometimes discussed this book

Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television

A total departure from previous writing about television, this book is the first ever to advocate that the medium is not reformable. Its ...

www.goodreads.com

(except just like Berenstein Bears used to be spelled with an E, I could swear this used to be "101 arguments.." but anyway)

This was something we discussed often, that the medium itself was the problem and fundamentally irredeemable.

In hindsight, they were absolutely right and didnt go far enough. I only wish someone had the wisdom to stop social media before it became something so much worse than TV, we would all long for the good old days of TV propaganda and violence.

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Rajaah said:

Berenstein Bears was 100% spelled with an E. Later when I started seeing it with an A I was very confused and wondering why they changed it.

Also I distinctly remember Nelson Mandela dying in prison in 1988 of tuberculosis and how upset everybody got about it. My mom was friends with his niece and yet I had zero idea he was alive and president until around 2003 when GW Bush said "Mandela is dead" and got all kinds of flack because it wasn't true. I was like "but he is dead" and people thought I was crazy, pointing out that he had just been president for years and years.

Yeah. I should probably post this in the UFO thread or something, but there it is.



The "are we the baddies" meme perfectly encapsulates authoritarian leftists now, so it's no wonder they suddenly hate it.



TBH I can't tell the actual woke people apart from the trolls pretending to be them, and the Chinese bots, anymore. I think the first one is an actual wokeist and the second is a troll, but it could also be a bot.

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Intrinsic said:

I mean, it is literally called the Mandela Effect.

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Aldarion said:

Pretty sure he was directly referencing that, not introducing it as a new observation.

Personally I think its one of the most intriguing and believable conspiracy theories out there. No fucking clue what it all means, but its something.

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Intrinsic said:

I do my best posting directly after waking up and missing the context of things.

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Gravel said:

That the LHC smashed two dimensions together in 2012 and everything changed. Those from the alternate dimension are the ones who seem to have no issues with things like Joe Biden sniffing kids, or massive pedophile rings, because that was totally normal in their dimension.

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Aldarion said:

I like to imagine it this way.

In Multiverse discussions people often talk about events that lead to a divergence in the timeline, and the universe splits into two versions. Some action in one timeline caused events sufficiently different from another timeline that they split into two.

But given enough time that leads to an awful lot of universes. Maybe some of these universes converge over time, when the differences that caused their divergence become small enough. e.g. a short lived revolution in one time line. Over time the differences fade away and the two universes are similar enough they merge again.

Whatever the mechanism, it sure seems like theres a bunch of people walking around who grew up in a different universe than I did.

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Bandwagon said:

A fundamental concept of fantasy cartography is that rivers always converge....they never diverge.

(The reason I'm talking about fantasy cartography and not hydrology is because the concept is typically correct and useful for pulling fantasy worlds out of your ass and making them more believable, but it's also false...)

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Varia Vespasa said:

Heh, thats something I learned a couple months ago myself. Apparently there's one that splits while its just a small stream and one half goes to the Pacifc and the other ends up in the Atlantic.

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Rajaah said:

2012? I feel like it was more like early 2000's or so, before whenever the "Mandela is dead" Bush quote happened. I mean that was the first moment I can remember of people saying Mandela was alive and well and talking about him being a former president rather than a freedom fighter who died in jail.

We should probably have a Mandela Effect thread on here if there isn't one.

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I was watching those V/H/S movies a while back, which are basically groups of found-footage short stories. One of them, can't remember which but I think it was the otherwise-terrible third one Viral, had a story vaguely similar to what Gravel is talking about. A guy created a dimensional portal and was able to cross over into a mirror version of Earth (after waving at his alternate self on the way who had also created the same portal at the same time). Guy gets to the other side and everything seems normal except there's this loud porn moaning getting blasted from speakers in the streets for some reason. He talks to his wife and she's invited a bunch of guys over for "tonight's action" and asks if he's going to watch or partake. The guys show up with a big bag of like, bloody something-or-other, with the implication that they're going to spread out the guts and gang-bang his wife on them.

The guy gets increasingly confused and ends up running into the street, where he discovers that everyone in the alternate world is an empathy-deprived sex-crazed satanist, while this zeppelin flies overhead with an upside-down cross on it. The guy is mortified and runs back inside and back through his portal, realizing his alternate universe self is alone with his wife in the other house. Back in the other house, the alternate universe guy tries to rape the prime-universe wife and his penis is like this giant barbed monstrosity, basically what you'd think a devil penis would look like. She stabs him to death and runs away, then her real husband emerges from the portal, sees her covered in blood and crying and goes to help her, and she stabs him too.

Pretty much went completely off the rails by the end, but it was a fascinating concept to see put into execution, the idea that we have alternate universes where everyone is completely fucked-up because they had a different dominant religion for the past however many centuries.

Koushirou said:

I swear to god, I have watched the movie Shazaam, starring Sinbad. No one can tell me otherwise.

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The fact that there's a new Shazam movie now just makes it even more confusing.

This is one I don't remember myself. I vaguely remember Kazaam, which I think had Shaq in it.

Asmadai said:

This is one of those crazy theories I completely subscribe to.

It's Berenstein, Curious George had a fucking tail, they never found the Lindburgh baby.

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Curious George had a tail, can confirm.