The Mandela Effect

For years, I’ve loved reading about and watching videos on conspiracy theories. Though I don’t believe a lot of them, I always find them fascinating nonetheless. I just think it’s fun to hear people’s weird ideas and perspectives on things and to entertain the what-ifs. One of my favorite conspiracy theories is the Mandela Effect, which I believe might be the first one I ever heard.

The Mandela Effect is a conspiracy theory that began to gain popularity back in 2010. The theory is based around false memories and why they’re not actually false. It was coined the “Mandela Effect” by a paranormal consultant who claimed she, and supposedly thousands of other people, remember Nelson Mandela dying back in the 80s even though he died in 2013. One of the biggest and most well-known examples of the Mandela Effect is a children’s book franchise called The Berenstain Bears. Tons of people, including myself, remember the title being The Berenstein Bears, not The Berenstain Bears. Other examples include the T.V. show Sex and The City, the meat company Oscar Mayer, and the Looney Tunes cartoon, as a lot of people remember them being Sex in The City, Oscar Meyer, and Looney Toons.

It doesn’t stop there. Not only does the Mandela Effect include names and titles, but it also includes auditory and visual memories. For instance, a lot of people recall the Monopoly man having a monocle, or Pikachu having a black-tipped tail, but in fact neither of those memories are accurate. Others quote lines from movies, such as, “Luke, I am your father,” from the Star Wars series, or, “Mirror, mirror, on the wall” from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. However, they’re actually, “No, I am your father,” and, “Magic mirror, on the wall”.

How is it that so many of us remember these things and yet they’re inaccurate? Well, conspiracy theorists believe it has something to do with the universe. It’s sort of complicated, but the most common theory is that we’ve switched parallel universes, which causes little things to change that usually no one notices. Others believe that a time traveler from the future could have traveled back in time and changed something minor, causing a butterfly effect. Though I think both of these ideas are farfetched, I still find the Mandela Effect to be very interesting, as it’s odd that we all seemingly share these false memories.

Article by Riley Harris