Informative Article
What is the Mandela Effect? Is it real or is it just a figment of our imagination?
by Tanvi Prem
Conspiracy theories in today’s world are widespread and ever-changing. They have become commonplace in the political atmosphere, used by some as logical reasoning to support their opinions. However, before this polarized and inaccurate atmosphere, conspiracy theories touched on lighter topics.
When I was first introduced to conspiracy theories at the prime age of 10, I learned about the “Mandela effect”. According to The Conversation, this phrase refers to a “collective misremembering of common events or details” by a large group of people.
This phenomenon is coined with Nelson Mandela’s name. This happened because numerous people inaccurately remembered the political leader passing away in prison during the 1980s—he was actually let out of prison in the 1990s and passed away in 2013. Many people even claim to vividly remember Mandela’s funeral, fueling further confusion.
As the “Mandela effect” popularized, more people noticed these mass false remembrances, creating the plethora of examples that are there today.
This phenomenon could be caused due to confabulation, “the unconscious manufacture of fabricated or misinterpreted memories”. It manifests in many ways, but mainly through correlation: people might unconsciously assume that the word “food” is used when correlating words like “table” and “spoon” are written.
This circumstance could apply to memories, forming the misinterpreted recalls.
However, some people attribute the Mandela Effect to the theory of a multiverse. They believe that the remembered event occurred in a separate reality in an alternate dimension.
In this trilemma, we will be analyzing three significant examples of the Mandela Effect.
The Berenstain Bears
Many remember this children’s book series as “Berenstein Bears” when it has actually always been named Berenstain.
The Mandela Effect explanation is that “the books changed over time as the world we are in transitioned into another parallel universe where the books are spelled differently.” The Berenstain Bears is a frequent piece of evidence for this alternate universe.
However, this occurrence could be explained logically:
“Stein” is used more often as a suffix than “stain”, so it is fairly easy to recall “stein”. Additionally, most readers of this series are young children, so their illiteracy could have contributed to this misinterpretation.
Snow White
In the iconic Disney movie Snow White, the evil queen symbolically says “Mirror mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?” right?
Actually, no. She says “Magic mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?”.
This could be due to confabulation and just an apparent example of a mass misinterpretation. Or, it could be a result of “Mirror Mirror” being used at a larger scale than “Magic Mirror”, further reinforcing the incorrect phrase.
“Mirror Mirror” has been used in many popular shows as a reference to Snow White, such as in a Snow White play shown in Saved by the Bell. Also, an episode of Star Trek in 1967 was called “Mirror Mirror”.
More importantly, many modern Snow White reenactments such as Snow White and the Huntsman, Descendants, and Once Upon a Time use the incorrect “Mirror Mirror” line.
This recurring incorrect usage in collaboration with confabulation could account for the collective false recollections.
The Monopoly Man
When thinking of the iconic board game character, I always picture the suit, top hat, handlebar mustache, and monocle.
But actually, the Monopoly man has never had a monocle or glasses.
Some experts suggest that this misinterpretation occurs because people confuse the Monopoly Man with the Planters Peanut Man, another famous logo character.
Alternatively, it could be due to the stereotype of a classic 19th-century man:
This would associate a monocle with the other markers of this era (top hat, suit jacket, handlebar mustache) which the character wears.
The three examples given, are just a few of the hundreds of discovered Mandela Effects.
Have you personally witnessed any of them? Do you think these situations could be attributed to logic? Or do they actually provide evidence for a multiverse, as many believe?