What Mandela Effect example gets you the most?

In My Humble Opinion
101

Coincidentally enough, this week’s episode of the Our Fake History podcast cold opens with a discussion about the Mandela effect. It’s ultimate connection to the subject of the day is the Snow White “Magic mirror on the wall” vs “Mirror, mirror on the wall.” Both exist as accurate quotes; the double mirror is the English translation of the written Grimm version.

Similarly, I think the Hamlet line about poor Yorick is often changed when it’s done as a solo soliloquy (like for an audition) without a Horatio around.

102

The Mandela Effect that gets me the most was I never thought Nelson Mandela was dead. I knew he was alive. So when I heard about people who had thought he was dead it surprised me.

103

Similarly, many people associate the famous Hamlet soliloquy (“To be or not to be…”) with a skull that Hamlet is holding in how hand and contemplating; but in the actual play, the skull features in the “Alas, poor Yorick” scene (which, as you say, wasn’t written as a soliloquy).

104

I know not everyone believes in anything remotely supernatural or otherworldly but what interests me about Mandela Effects isn’t when someone remembers something trivial like a name, logo or movie scene being different but when they remember an extremely personal event being different than it is. Take it with a grain of salt but there are countless glitch in the matrix stories from people who aren’t mentally ill and have no reason to lie about family and friends being alive when they explicitly remember them being dead (or vice versa), having more or fewer family members and friends than they remember, visits to locations that shouldn’t have been possible because they turned out to be shut down or completely different, etc.

These accounts along with time slips and random visits to what seem to be other worlds entirely make me believe there are other universes besides this one (some virtually identical and some extremely different) and people can slip in and out of them seemingly at random or as a result of unknown forces we can’t understand. Could you randomly switch places with you from another universe where a certain celebrity died or a corporate logo had a different design and the other you is noticing their own Mandela Effects? Could some number of people who seemingly vanish in thin air really be the result of them going to another reality and never coming back?

105

Occam’s razor would indicate that this is caused by people simply misremembering things, which is also IMHO backed up by scientific evidence that our memories are very very unreliable.

106

At least society seems to have collectively figured out that “wherefore” means “why” and not “where” in “wherefore art thou Romeo?” (and that it’s not “wherefore ART thou, Romeo?”).

107

I always knew the correct version. The funny thing for me a

is later, when I had kids and was on WIC, it looked a lot like Chex which I like. So I got some. Life cereal to me is gross and nasty. My kids wouldn’t eat it either.

108

There is also the red packaging and the fonts are similar.

109

Coincidentally enough, this was the main screen of our FireStick just now. Even Amazon refers to him as Zimmerman (even though the actual title on the right says Zimmern) so it’s quite likely others did mistakenly refer to him that way as well.

110

I think that’s more like gaslighting. Although I have a hard time believing anybody ever took it seriously.

111

This reminded me of this thread, and I had to share:

112

I think there’s more to it than that, although I’m not at all arguing our memories are reliable.

I have a suspicion that it has something to do with how we store and retrieve memories beyond simple conflation of things we know. Like we store the “abstract”, and when our brains are tasked with retrieving the whole thing, it fills in the gaps with what it thinks ought to be there, based on our knowledge and experience.

So for example, with antiquated quotes, we remember the information content of the quote but not the exact wording, and when we go to remember it, our brains fill it in using modern day language. Like for example the Berenstain Bears. We may remember how it’s pronounced, but when we retrieve it from memory, we fill in the actual spelling with how we would normally spell a word pronounced like that - Berenstein, even though it’s incorrect.

Or Curious George having a tail. We recall that he’s a monkey, he’s naughty, and that he’s drawn with a certain art style. If we don’t explicitly notice that he does NOT have a tail, when we remember what he looks like, we’ll assume he’s got a tail, because duh, he’s a monkey.

The flip side is when you DO explicitly notice those differences- I did notice that it’s Oscar Mayer at some point, so that stuck in my head. Otherwise, most people would remember “Meyer”, since that’s the most common way you spell the word pronounced like that.

Most of the examples of the Mandela Effect are things that are outliers- spelled weirdly, phrased weirdly, or otherwise out of the ordinary, and unless someone specifically recalls that they’re unusual, their brains will fill in the commonplace spelling/phrasing.

I don’t have an explanation for the events- I mean, I recall Mandela being released from prison and going on to a political career in South Africa, so that one never happened to me.