Explaining the Mandela effect
By: Luisa Lafaurie 10ºA
I am sure we have all heard at least one Mandela effect in our lives that may have been shocking when you first heard it, but have you ever wondered why this happens? As most already know, this phenomenon can be defined as the collective memory of a fact or event that never happened or happened differently than people remember it, and it is named after Nelson Mandela, the South African leader who died in 2013 because a lot of people remember Mandela dying in prison in the 1980s, decades before his actual death.
There are some technical explanations for this. According to psychology, our brain can modify our memories since they are made of pieces that are put together, and because of the new information, beliefs, and imagination in our brain, that can interfere with our perception of what happened.
Now, this explains individual memories, but what about the collectiveness since many people do remember things differently? Two theories explain this phenomenon, one more feasible than the other. The first one states that the collective false memories are formed through confabulation or “honest lying” when someone attempts to fill a gap in their memory and unknowingly creates a false memory which they share with others who start believing them and remembering things that way. In the other, least accepted, theory conspirators, believe that this is proof of the existence of alternate universes. Some people think there are endless universes aligned with the one we know, and they are almost identical except for some details. Their theory says that we shift in and out of them, meaning our timeline in a constant state of flux between the different realities, and that is why we remember other events or details.
All in all, the theories and explanations are as many and varied as the effects themselves, and we will probably see more and more of them, but for now, these are some of the most popular Mandela effects:
In Queen’s song “We Are the Champions,” there is no “of the world” at the tail end.
Pikachu’s tail is solid yellow, not yellow with a black stripe at the end
The Monopoly man doesn’t have a monocle.
The robber emoji doesn’t exist
its Looney TUNES, not Looney TOONS
There is no Luke in “Luke, I am your father”