[Skepticism] The Mandela Effect

[Jaymann]

The Mandela Effect is where multitudes of people remember something that never happened or actually happened differently. It is named after the first example given. Some people take this stuff very seriously, even to the extent of swearing their memory is correct, and somehow history "changed." Here are some interesting ones, see what you remember:

1. Did Nelson Mandela die in prison in the 1980's?

Spoiler:

No, he was released from prison and died in 2013.

2. When Sally Field won an Oscar for Places in the Heart, did she say, "You like me, you really like me"?

Spoiler:

No, it was "...you like me, right now, you like me." This one got me, as I watched it live. Most likely I was influenced by all the later misquotes.

3. Was Eli Whitney a black man?

Spoiler:

No, he was white. Some people claim he was studied in black history month.

4. Is the Statue of Liberty on Ellis Island?

Spoiler:

No, Liberty Island. This one seems stupid, as anyone in New York could look for themselves.

5. In Moonraker, did Jaws' girlfriend Dolly wear braces?

Spoiler:

No. I didn't remember this, but it would make much more sense in context if she did.

6. Do you remember eating Jiffy peanut butter?

Spoiler:

It never existed, it was Jif.

7. Do you remember the Berenstein Bears?

Spoiler:

Nope, it was the Berenstain Bears. A stain on all your houses!

8. Was there a movie called Shazzam starring Sinbad as a genie?

Spoiler:

Doesn't exist. There was Kazzam with Shaq as a genie.

[msteelers]

8. Was there a movie called Shazzam starring Sinbad as a genie?

Spoiler:

Doesn't exist. There was Kazzam with Shaq as a genie.

This one blows my mind. While I don't remember seeing the film, I remember seeing ads for it and have an image in my head of Sinbad as a genie. When I went to the internet, I found an old video that showed Sinbad just as I remembered him in the genie costume. Only it was a video made in 2017 by CollegeHumor.

And I also distinctly remember the Shaq movie, and don't believe I'm mixing the two up in my mind. I was a 90s kid who loved the Orlando Magic. I knew the difference between the two of them.

[McNutt]

While I understand that my memory can deceive me, none of the examples you showed struck home with me. When did people start thinking Nelson Mandela died in prison?

[noxiousdog]

While I understand that my memory can deceive me, none of the examples you showed struck home with me.

I knew all of these too.

[msteelers]

While I understand that my memory can deceive me, none of the examples you showed struck home with me. When did people start thinking Nelson Mandela died in prison?

You’ve never heard “you like me, you really like me?”

[gilraen]

This one blows my mind. While I don't remember seeing the film, I remember seeing ads for it and have an image in my head of Sinbad as a genie. When I went to the internet, I found an old video that showed Sinbad just as I remembered him in the genie costume. Only it was a video made in 2017 by CollegeHumor.

And I also distinctly remember the Shaq movie, and don't believe I'm mixing the two up in my mind. I was a 90s kid who loved the Orlando Magic. I knew the difference between the two of them.

I had to double-check myself on that one, but only the movie name (I did remember that it was Shaq, not Sinbad). I do remember posters with both Shaq and Sinbad on the walls at the movie theater, since Sinbad's First Kid came out at the same time.

I knew that Mandela died in 2013, since I remember watching the TV coverage. The rest of the examples...it's not misremembering when I don't know them in the first place (I knew that Statue of Liberty is not on Ellis Island; I didn't know that the location was actually called Liberty Island).

[McNutt]

Yes, I've heard that one, but it really doesn't count since I had never seen the Oscars where she said that, so I have nothing else to go on. My memory was never altered.

Mandela dying in prison though, that one is a head scratcher. It's apparently common enough for there to be an effect named after it, but I had never once heard anyone say he died in prison and I definitely never thought that. That's why it's so weird. His life after prison was kind of a big deal and I'm surprised anybody who knows enough about world events to know who Mandela is would be confused about it.

[Jeff V]

While I understand that my memory can deceive me, none of the examples you showed struck home with me. When did people start thinking Nelson Mandela died in prison?

Part of it is the suggestive way the questions are designed to lead you toward the incorrect answer. It's been years now since I was subjected to "Berenstain Bears" and probably could have easily gone alone with Berenstein, Bernstein, Beerstein, whatever. Maybe, just maybe, if you asked me the name of the kids show where the main characters weirdly used pronouns for names while other characters do not, I would have remembered and spelled it correctly.

[LordMortis]

While I understand that my memory can deceive me, none of the examples you showed struck home with me. When did people start thinking Nelson Mandela died in prison?

You’ve never heard “you like me, you really like me?”

Yeah, it's pretty much at the very tip with "Alas poor Yorick, I knew him well." and "Luke, I am your father."

Jiffy Peanut butter is a headscratcher to me, but then I drive by the Jiffy "plant"(?) is that the right word? Enough that Jiffy means muffin mix instinctively to me. That and "choosy mothers choose Jif" and the great big .gif debate.

[Rumpy]

Never had any Jif, but I was curious enough to look it up. Apparently there's a whole website devoted to this effect, and a discussion on Jif. It's fairly interesting. I think it's complicated by the fact that sometimes companies will indeed change names but often try to bury the old, often to avoid lawsuits.

https://mandelaeffect.com/jif-or-jiffy-peanut-butter/

[gilraen]

Jiffy Peanut butter is a headscratcher to me, but then I drive by the Jiffy "plant"(?) is that the right word? Enough that Jiffy means muffin mix instinctively to me. That and "choosy mothers choose Jif" and the great big .gif debate.

I only know Jiffy Lube (the oil change/car maintenance chain).

[msteelers]

I think Jiffy is a combination of Jif and Skippy. I only ever think of there being two major PB brands, Peter Pan and Jiffy.

[Jaymann]

If only there were some definitive evidence - like someone recorded a Jiffy commercial. Unfortunately this was before the age of video recorders.

[McNutt]

I'm a huge fan of Jif peanut butter (just had two Jif PB&J sandwiches for lunch), so that was never a point of confusion for me. I have never mixed the name of Jif with the inferior Skippy.

[msteelers]

I'm a huge fan of Jif peanut butter (just had two Jif PB&J sandwiches for lunch), so that was never a point of confusion for me. I have never mixed the name of Jif with the inferior Skippy.

The best peanut butter is whatever brand is on sale that week.

[Rumpy]

People in that article I link point out that there may have been conflation between Jif and the Jiffy Pop Popcorn, which kind of makes sense.

[Holman]

No offense to the OP, but these examples are all inconsequential, on the order of "Play it again, Sam" vs. "Play it, Sam."

The Mandela example would be interesting except that I've never encountered anyone (to my knowledge) who claimed Mandela died in prison.

I fully agree that we rewrite the narratives of our lives over and over again, changing details and particulars along the way. That in itself is fascinating psychologically, and I can think of examples from my own very local experience that blow me away. (For example, I've described my room as a toddler+ to my parents, and they tell me it was nothing like that.)

But the given examples propose that *shared* cultural memory gets things wrong. I'm sure it does, sometimes, but cultural memory also has the benefit of being checked by public records and public media. It's one thing for me to misremember a line from a movie, but it would be quite another for lots of people to believe that (e.g.) Richard Nixon was sent to prison. There's a reason the latter doesn't happen.

[Jaymann]

Wait a minute, in what universe is it, "Play it, Sam"?

[LawBeefaroni]

People in that article I link point out that there may have been conflation between Jif and the Jiffy Pop Popcorn, which kind of makes sense.

I assumed they were conflating Jif and Skippy. Both kiddy peanut butters. Throw in Jiffy Pop and yeah.



The thing that gets me about Eli Whitney isn't that he was white but that he managed to make gin out of cotton!

[Rumpy]

People in that article I link point out that there may have been conflation between Jif and the Jiffy Pop Popcorn, which kind of makes sense.

I assumed they were conflating Jif and Skippy. Both kiddy peanut butters. Throw in Jiffy Pop and yeah.

Yeah, I can see that too. I personally think it's a combination of perhaps all 3. When you get down to it, Jiffy is a much catchier name and it's easy to see why many continue to have that association with it.

[Holman]

Wait a minute, in what universe is it, "Play it, Sam"?

In Casablanca. No one ever says "Play it again, Sam" in the movie.

(Of course the context is that Rick forbade Sam to play the song some time back and now he's asking for it, so the "again" is almost implied.)

[McNutt]

The thing that gets me about Eli Whitney isn't that he was white but that he managed to make gin out of cotton!

Few posts make me actually laugh. Well done.

[gameoverman]

I personally don't recognize the 'Mandela Effect' as a thing. I think it's just a matter of when you heard something that determines what you heard, and therefore what you know of the thing.

For example, I'm old enough that I watched the news of his release from prison. One of the biggest reasons he was so notable is because he survived all that time in prison and lived to not only get his freedom back but also see apartheid end. Now if you're young enough that all that actually happened before your time then it makes sense your only 'memory' of that event is what you heard somewhere along the line. Maybe you heard he was in prison(which he was for a long time) and you also heard he died(something else true about him), so they got combined and there's your memory. And if your memory of Mandela was formed that way then you can assume so were other peoples' memories.

[Kraken]

In one of the best ironies ever, although that quote is usually attributed to him, there's no record that Twain actually said it, at least not in those words. "The observation has been attributed to several other prominent humorists including: Josh Billings (pseudonym of Henry Wheeler Shaw), Artemus Ward (pseudonym of Charles Farrar Browne), Kin Hubbard (pen name of Frank McKinney Hubbard), and Will Rogers. Yet, it is unlikely then any of them said it. The creator remains anonymous based on current evidence."

[RunningMn9]

Another famous example of this is that Darth Vader never said "Luke, I am your father".

[Trent Steel]

Another famous example of this is that Darth Vader never said "Luke, I am your father".

You got LM on ignore or something? Not cool.

[RunningMn9]

You got LM on ignore or something? Not cool.

Oddly enough, no.

But my scan did not detect his second example.

[YellowKing]

Memory (and how horrible it is) never ceases to fascinate me.

I have a very vivid memory when I was little of being outside and seeing a frog with orange butterfly wings.

Was it:

A) An undiscovered species of flying frog? (Highly doubtful)
B) A butterfly which happened to land on a frog (Unlikely but possible)
C) A poster or drawing falsely combined with a childhood memory of being outside (Likely)
D) A dream falsely misconstrued over time as reality (Also likely)

I know I didn't actually see a frog with wings sprouting out of its back, yet I can conjure up that memory just as easily as I conjure up memories of my first day of kindergarten or other past real events. What's scary is that I know that those real events - that I know for sure actually happened - are also falsely portrayed in my memory and probably actually played out very differently than I think.

[Skinypupy]

I can conjure up that memory just as easily as I conjure up memories of my first day of kindergarten

Wait...is that a thing most people can do? Because I sure as hell can't.

[YellowKing]

Probably depends on the person. I remember flashes of my first day - but likely those are reinforced by photos I've seen of that first day which then get morphed into actual memories.

Overall my memory is horrible though. I have a terrible time pinpointing when things happened, even when just trying to figure out the year. I'd make a horrible witness in court. "Where were you January 7, 2015?" "Ummm....i can't remember where I was January 7th of this year."

I honestly feel sometimes like I do a memory wipe of any life phase that I've moved past. A year or two after I left my old job, I would be hard pressed to give the names of more than a handful of them, even though I'd worked there eight years. I have an incredibly difficult job remembering my kids' baby and young toddler years.

Maybe my brain has limited storage capacity and I have to keep overwriting old data.

[Kraken]

I once read that memory is malleable because when we recall one to consciousness and then re-store it, we're actually storing the newly considered memory of the memory. IDK if that hypothesis held up or not, but it's a fascinating idea.

[Holman]

Investigations into witness accounts of crime have shed troubling light on memory. "Eyewitness testimony" turns out to be extremely unreliable. Stress and trauma make it worse--there are plenty of cases of crime victims being absolutely certain that they're actually describing the criminal when they're describing someone they saw shortly after.

And, of course, law enforcement (unconsciously and not) has learned to exploit its ability to shape memories towards desired conclusions.

[Kraken]

This is another one that doesn't stand up to scrutiny, even though I have a T-shirt saying that it does. "Franklin did write, in a 1779 letter to his friend Andre Morellet (translated from the French): "Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards, and which incorporates itself with the grapes to be changed into wine; a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy"." Similar meaning, maybe, but it makes a lousy T-shirt. What little Franklin did have to say about beer drinkers was not approving.

(I wear my T-shirt even though it's misattributed and I don't believe in God, because I approve of the sentiment anyway. And it gives me an opening to be a smartass in casual conversation.)

[Holman]

Franklin did, however, say "Fart proudly."

[Rumpy]

So, maybe this fits into this category, maybe not. But for a long time I'd thought that the Pinkertons had died out when the Wild West had died out, but surprisingly they're still a thing and now owned by a Swiss security agency. The idea of them still existing blows my mind. Only way I know this is because of a recent suit that they put forward to Take-Two for their use in RDR2.

[Jaymann]

I found a couple more I don't remember that way:

When Mike Tyson fought Evander Holyfield did he:
A) Bite a huge chunk out of EH's ear and spit it out.
B) Bite a small chunk out and blood dribbled down EH's ear.

Spoiler:

B

In Star Trek TNG did Captain Picard carry a large clear crystal around and rub it?

Spoiler:

Yes

[YellowKing]

Investigations into witness accounts of crime have shed troubling light on memory. "Eyewitness testimony" turns out to be extremely unreliable. Stress and trauma make it worse--there are plenty of cases of crime victims being absolutely certain that they're actually describing the criminal when they're describing someone they saw shortly after.

When I was in elementary school, a teacher in another class recruited me to participate in a mock trial they were doing. My job was to run into her classroom, grab a watch off of her desk, then run out. I was to wear a red jacket, which I would then ditch both the jacket and the watch before running back to my own classroom and sitting down.

So, that's what I did. Ran in, grabbed the watch in full daylight view of 25 kids, and ran out. Threw the watch and jacket in a corner, calmly walked back into my class.

The teacher then asked several students in her class to walk through my classroom and "apprehend" and subjects they thought may have been who they witnessed. They grabbed 5 or 6 of us.

Mock trial commenced (I had a damn good lawyer), and I got off because the eyewitnesses couldn't agree it was me who stole the watch. One of the other guys they fingered (and who was the second most likely suspect) probably outweighed me by a good 30 pounds.

So if 25 kids, in the brightly lit safe setting of a classroom, can't positively identify the correct perpetrator, imagine a real life scenario which may not be as well lit, where the trauma of the incident is going to be astronomically higher, etc. etc. It was a real eye-opener for me even at that young age.

[McNutt]

So I was reading a ranking of the Bond films on MSN and it said the following about Moonraker:

Richard Kiel’s Jaws returns and falls in love with a braces-wearing nerd.

The hell he did!

[Jaymann]

In ME-speak that is called a residual effect, where there are third party references to the non-existent realities.

I have been watching a lot of videos about the ME, and of course the vast majority of them are garbage (thank you Theodore Sturgeon), but every once in a while I come across one that blows my mind. For instance, Ed McMahon was never associated with Publisher's Clearinghouse. A residual of this was on the Golden Girls where Betty White said something about getting a call from Ed McMahon.

[Isgrimnur]