By Professor Doom
I’m in the mood to
talk about something besides higher education (it does happen), and something
recently just blew my mind. The Mandela Effect is a relatively recent (or at
least recently defined) phenomenon, where a certain proportion of the
population doesn’t remember what is considered “accepted” reality, instead
recalling things slightly differently.
It comes from when
it was (more or less) first reported, by people that swore Nelson Mandela died
in the 80s, instead of in 2013…so this all started a few years ago, or so it
seems.
I too, am a
victim of the Mandela effect, but not with Nelson.
First issue for
me, was C-3PO. I saw Star Wars when it came out, and I had the toys, including
C-3PO, a robot with a shiny gold colored casing. At, least that’s how I
remember it, and I played with C-3PO and R2-D2 quite a bit; I doubt I’m the
only kid who stuck a firecracker in R2-D2’s convenient firecracker-sized
opening.
Anyway, C-3PO is
not solid gold, although lots of folks besides just me remember it that way. He
has a silver leg. Perhaps my memory failed…childhood memories can be quite
unreliable, and I must have just missed it when I saw the movie again and again
as well as on my toy.
There’s a famous
line in Star Wars, said by the iconic villain Darth Vader: “Luke, I am your
father!” James Earl Jones, the voice of Darth, remembers the line, you can even
see him saying it on video in interviews.
But, he never said
that line. Instead, the line was “No, I am your father.” Now, I was never a
hard core fan, but there are people who have seen the movies hundreds of times,
freaking out because they don’t remember the line not having “Luke” in it. Again,
I can see misremembering a line, but I know Star Wars fanatics that don’t just
memorize the lines, they memorize the lightsaber duels well enough to simulate
them while the soundtrack plays…that’s some weird misremembering, there.
There are many
whispers on the internet, but it’s so weird how much I don’t remember exactly
the same way the videos say it is.
I used to watch
Sex in the City (guilty pleasure), at least for a season or two. I called it
“Sluts in the City” because the show was about these four females copulating
with darn near everything IN the city, all the time. The show was never about
the city. I even watched it when it came on “normal” TV, over a decade ago, I
can still hear the actress’ voice saying “Sex in the City will be right back.”
A few years ago,
I saw a licensed slot machine in a casino, called “Sex and the City.” I thought that there was probably some licensing
issue, and they had to change things slightly (this sort of stuff happens all
the time, perhaps I’ll someday rant about how Intellectual Property Law will
probably be the ultimate cause of the collapse of civilization).
Anyway, I was
wrong. There’s no such show called “Sex in the City.” It’s always been “Sex and
the City.” I’ve always gotten it wrong, and everyone I watched the show with
got it wrong too? Huh. It’s possible, I guess, it’s a tiny detail, although I
was an adult when I watched it, so less prone to missing details than when child-me
saw Star Wars.
Ok, how about
another one.
I was a big fan of
James Bond films. One of my favorite villains was Jaws—as iconic for Bond as
Vader is for Star Wars. I sort of resemble him, except he had garish,
shark-like, metal teeth, which he would use to bite people, even a steel cable.
Before killing
his targets, he would smile…and it was a toothy grin that would strike fear
into victim’s hearts as he killed yet again.
In one of his
final scenes, he narrowly escapes Bond (every bit as much a killer,
incidentally), and runs into a girl in a German costume. She helps him a
little, and he smiles at her.
She’s not afraid
of that horrible smile, and I remember being confused at that, momentarily. It was only a moment, because she immediately smiles
back at him, and my confusion evaporated: she has a set of braces on her teeth.
Except,
actually, she doesn’t. Those braces don’t exist. She smiles a perfect smile at
him, and is unafraid of his grin because? Well, the scene doesn’t even make
sense now. But, how do I argue with the film? She clearly doesn’t have braces,
and my memory has failed yet again.
Now, the previous
Mandela effects on me I can attribute to a faulty memory, I’m willing to
concede that. But how do I “remember” something that never happened? I’m hardly
alone, at least, as others also distinctly remember the girl with braces who
humanized the otherwise monstrous Jaws.
Another? Sure.
I can close my
eyes and recall a picture of Henry VIII, with a large drumstick in one hand. I
can describe his clothes…and this description is the same as others have given.
No such picture
exists. What the hell? How are people I’ve only recently met, raised in a different
part of the country than me, able to describe the same picture that I remember,
if that picture never existed?
There are even
Bible quotes that people are claiming have changed…you can dismiss the Star
Wars people as geeks, but Bible people tend be real particular about
remembering Bible quotes (I was paid money to memorize them, as a child).
The double
slit experiment does indicate that human consciousness has a bit more
influence on “reality” than we might want to believe. That said, I completely
respect that, maybe, this is all just “mass hallucination” or a bunch of people
missing some detail, but such explanations strike me as unsatisfactory when I and
people I’ve never met share memories of things that never happened.
That these “mass
hallucinations” seem to be occurring more often, is yet another problem with
dismissing it all. The internet has been around a few decades, film and books
have existed for a very long time…it seems like the Mandela effect would have
existed many decades ago. Even if it is complete bunk, the question of “why
now?” is still valid.
I encourage the
reader to check out a few YouTube (or is it YouToob?) videos and see for
himself if anything strikes a chord…it sure is weird, and explanations
provided, from dismissal to advanced physics experiments altering our shared
reality, aren’t particularly satisfying.
Oh well, classes
start soon, and I’ll back to doing honest work and asking questions about
things I see with my own eyes every day, instead of my apparently very
unreliable memory.
But do any gentle
readers have any Mandela effects?
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