The Mandela Effect: What, Why, and How?

• The Mandela Effect is the phenomenon of shared false memories, particularly about social and pop culture events.
• The term was created by self-described paranormal researcher Fiona Broome when she noticed that her pervasive, powerful false memory of Nelson Mandela dying in prison in the 1980s was shared by thousands of other people. 

What are the theories?

• Theorists remain puzzled by the phenomena, offering multiple theories over the years: crowd psychology, confirmation bias, environmental cues, and even parallel universes.
• Memory is not infallible and does not work as an objective ledger of subjective experiences. False memories can be planted by asking guiding questions or introducing an element of doubt.
• Physicist Ramirez notes that the hippocampus not only creates and stores memories but also changes key information in reconstruction and recall. He says, “every memory is a kind of almost mild false memory.” 
• The enduring mystery is how millions of people make the same errors in their memory of events, logos, visual artifacts, and quotes. Why do we misconstrue the same weirdly specific, arguably insignificant element of a past cereal label, for instance?

What's the connection with the Hadron Collidor?

• Some theorists posit that the Large Hadron Collider, and even advances in nuclear fusion, have transferred us to a parallel universe with a past timeline subtly different from our own.
• Physicists argue that the parallel universe theory doesn't hold water because, by their nature, a parallel universe would exist completely independently of our own observable universe and cannot interact or swap information.

Check out these examples

I Love Rock 'n' Roll

• A karaoke hit that we all know the words to: "I saw him standing there by the record machine." But what Jett actually sang was, "I saw him dancin' there by the record machine."

We Are the Champions

• This famous pub and sports day anthem is familiar fare. You may think it ends with the lines, "We are the champions...of the world". Go back and listen to the recording. "We are the champions" is the final line. 

Risky Business

• In this famous scene from Risky Business, Tom Cruise is wearing sunglasses, right? Wrong.

Snow White

• The Wicked Queen says, "Magic mirror, on the wall," and not, "Mirror, mirror, on the wall." Who knew?

Chartreuse

• Do you recall being told that chartreuse was a light-magenta pink? You're not alone in your shock upon discovering that it is, in fact, a shade of green.

Fruit of the Loom

• Countless people have sworn that the Fruit of the Loom label had a cornucopia behind it. But the cornucopia never existed.

Pikachu's tail

• Pikachu has a black flourish on its tail, right? Again, wrong.

Monopoly Man

• Thousands of fans of the game Monopoly would put money on the Monopoly Man having a monocle. But there has never been a version of the game where the monocle existed.

Febreze

• The Febreze bottle on the left never truly existed. It has, in fact, always been Febreze, not Febreeze.

The Bernstain Bears

• The Berenstain Bears is one of the first and most famous manifestations of the Mandela Effect. You could have sworn it was 'Berenstein,' right? No, it has always had the letter 'a' in the title: Berenstain.

Have you ever experienced the Mandela Effect? 

-Emma Kansiz