Saw this on Buzzfeed today and had to groan:
It’s called the “Mandela Effect,” and a lot of people think it’s proof of an alternate universe.
No, it’s called a false memory, and the only person I see pushing the idea that it’s proof of an alternate universe is Fiona Broome, paranormal researcher and author, who coined the term and is writing a book about it.
According to Broome’s website, the idea behind the Mandela Effect came about through a conversation she was having with friends in which they all realised they shared a common memory that Nelson Mandela had died in prison during the ‘80s. This memory, along with the discovery of other shared memories of non-events, led Broome to speculate that perhaps people were accessing an alternate history or parallel reality. She likens this to the TV show Sliders – the American sci-fi series about a group of travellers who used a wormhole to “slide” into alternate realities.
Don’t get me wrong, I know how weird it is to be totally convinced that something happened that didn’t. I remember years ago arguing with my Year 9 English teacher that there was a character called Heather, who was a twin, in the book we were studying at the time, Picnic at Hanging Rock. I spent an entire lesson flicking through the pages for proof that she existed, only to find that she didn’t (I later realised I was probably getting confused with an episode of Degrassi). And just last week I was baffled as to why everyone was congratulating Ian Thorpe for coming out when I seriously thought he’s been openly gay for over a decade !
On her website, Broome acknowledges that examples such as these “may be false memories and other issues of mental health, or simply erroneous news reports”, but she also argues that “the sheer volume and consistency of them raise deeper and more intriguing questions”. I would argue that trying to validate something just because a lot of people do it is a logical fallacy, one known as the Bandwagon Fallacy, but this hasn’t stopped Broome from creating a website and subreddit in order to collect examples of other people’s false memories for her book.
As you can see from the Buzzfeed link above, lots of those examples include remembering celebrities passing away when they haven’t (like Mohammad Ali), or remembering that those celebrities who really did pass away from a terminal illness actually made a full recovery (like Patrick Swayze). Surprisingly, some really highly publicised events have been misremembered; some people remember, for instance, that the man who stopped the tank in Tiananmen Square was actually run over. Other examples are just plain lame; some people remember the children’s book series the “Berenstain Bears” as the “Berenstein Bears”; others thought there were 51 or 52 states in the US, not 50. But the most unconvincing evidence collected thus far for Broome’s Mandela Effect hypothesis is that some people swear words were spelt differently, like dilemna instead of dilemma and definately instead of definitely.
So Fiona Broome has collected a lot of examples of what she calls a “global anomaly of synchronous memories of alternative histories”. But as the saying goes:
It’s not unusual that people will remember the time or date of an event wrong, or that some celebrity has or hasn’t died. Misremembering Tiananmen Square is surprising given it’s probably one of the most widely recognised pieces of footage from the last century, but isn’t it possible that there might be individuals out there who turned their head the first time they saw it because they were sure the guy was going to get squished and then, years later, instead of realising they’d never watched the footage all the way through, remembered their imagined outcome as the real one?
And as for the spelling errors – it’s amazing the lengths people will go to rationalise their own mistakes…
What Fiona Broome is referring to as a global anomaly is anything but. Anomaly implies an abnormality or deviation, except we know from volumes of research that memory errors are part of the human condition. False memories, also known as confabulation, refer to the recollection of inaccurate details of an event, or recollection of a whole event that never occurred. For the most part false memories are innocuous however their potential for harm is well documented; false memories as part of eyewitness testimony have been known to lead to wrongful conviction or lack of conviction, and in the mental health setting have been implicated in wrongful accusations of child abuse.
Please, don’t let the Mandela Effect become a thing. If you hear anyone invoking the terms quantum mechanics to explain a phenomenon that is already well documented, please slap them with this Wikipedia article about memory errors as a primer into the subject. If they still want to know why multiple individuals can share the same false memory, please explain that given most of us share a similar history and culture, it’s not unusual that there would be similarities in the errors that occur surrounding our memories of these. If they can find a member of the Uncontacted Peoples of Brazil who has a memory of Patrick Swayze recovering from his pancreatic cancer, then yes, I may consider Broome’s hypothesis again, but for now, it’s bunk.
You may consider it bunk but I disagree, even while I admit it SOUNDS crazy. I share a few of the alternate memories listed on Fiona Broome’s site. You can never convince me that I didn’t watch large parts of Billy Graham’s funeral on television a few years ago – not any other evangelist – the one-of-a-kind advisor to presidents – the closest protestants have to someone the stature of a pope. I even remember details, like large amounts of blue in the drapes on the chair and the coffin. (I figured it must have been a favorite color of Mr. Graham), presidents and their wives in attendance, etc. Then to hear one day a while letter a mention of Billy Graham in the present tense on the radio – shock of my life and a bit frightening at the time. I don’t know what this means – alternate realties or that reality changes but at any rate, “reality” is not what we think it is. And Fiona Broome is NOT the only person putting forth these ideas – check out Cynthia Sue Larson or Fred Alan Wolf for more groans. :) Have fun! I believe someday you’ll be in for a shock too. :)
There is a fallacious trend in fiona’s site but that’s not her doing, though she prompted the trend,the responses are authentic.At the end of your article you imply that due to similarity of situations the memories too may become similar,but doesn’t it signify a more sinister happenstance of mind control psy ops or for that matter your insinuation may connote that humans are more of a robot than rational intelligent beings,and if such is the situation how long do you expect to insulate yourself from the bite of the rabid phenomena.Fiona is at least opening up the suppressed memories and its up to you pedants to play the ball properly, now that you have drawn it into your court.
Wow, I’m really intrigued by the direction this discussion is taking!
Julia, thanks for your suggestions about Cynthia Sue Larson and Fred Alan Wolf. I have heard a lot about this idea of quantum “jumping” but wouldn’t have been able to put names to the various ideas out there until now. I was interested to note that Larson invokes the idea of quantum jumping as a means to explain the placebo-effect – I couldn’t help but make the connection that both Fiona Broome and Cynthia Larson are using the idea of accessing a parallel universe or alternative reality to explain phenomena that is already very well described and understood in our own universe. But this is an intriguing area and I’m looking forward to real, measureable advancement in our understanding of it.
Vivek – in terms of the fallacious trend occurring with Fiona’s idea, you’re absolutely right. In this respect, I think the Buzzfeed post that inspired my post does not do credit to Fiona’s ideas. I do think the cultural specificity of these shared memories is relevant though. If the Mandela Effect is explained through the hypothesis that people are accessing alternate realities or parallel universes (and I guess that’s my major gripe with it – not the fact that people can share false memories because I believe that is a totally legitimate phenomenon), then wouldn’t we occasionally see examples of bizarre, non-culturally specific memories? I haven’t been able to find any in the examples put forth so far… I guess that’s because it would be difficult to differentiate these memories from simple daydreams or figments of the imagination. Also, it would be difficult to locate two individuals who have a shared memory that’s not anchored in something culturally specific because it doesn’t come up in conversation that often. If anyone could do that though Fiona Broome should be able to, given her attempts to collect as many examples of it as she can. I’ll definitely be following her research closely!
Samantha, You’re right that the isolated anomalies can easily be placed in the figment of imagination category.But i have personaly encountered anomalies that can be termed hyper synchronicities though “spontaneous wish fulfillment” is the term i would use,i have posted one of them in about.com and by the way i am a regular contributor in fiona and cynthia’s sites.For me synchronicity is a gospel truth and the mandela effect is an intrigue that can’t be wished away.Maybe some day fiona will get her name alongside to c.g jung.
People at buzzfeed are not at all sincere,they have drawn up a list of fiona’s topics and made a blunder and are not responding nor correcting the mistake.In topic no. 13 they say some people remember his death a year before his actual death in 2013,wheras the fact is he died in 2012 and some people remember it as 2013.Seems the buzzfeed staff neither care to look up the facts nor have knowledge of such an important event and in a hurry have misquoted fiona’s topic and worst of all, are not correcting the mistake even after being pointed out.
Or is it the buzzfeed are testing people’s memories by cleverly planting reversed details of neil armstrong smack in the middle of the list?
A friend just told me about this and I’m so glad that this page is one of the first to come up on Google. It’s astonishing that our brains are so developed that we can turn “I am mistaken” into “I have proof of an alternate universe”. What’s the opposite of Occam’s Razor?
Rozar S’macco.
I have asked over 25 people about The Berenstein/Stain Bears in as unbiased a way as I can. I’ve also alternated saying Stain/Stein 1st/2nd. Not one thought it was Stain. Some even laughed because Stain sounds so ridiculous. And it’s not like people would pronounce “Stein” when it was written “Stain.” You can turn your nose up all you want with your dogma of rational skepticism, but I am convinced it was never The Berenstain Bears. Many of the other examples do seem patently ridiculous to me, but it’s possible to account for this. Maybe some of us come from the Stein timeline, and others come from the Mandela/etc. worldline.
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Samantha, if you replace ‘false memory’ with ‘ultra vivid dream’, you get a more plausible explanation.Steve biko,Diane fossey could have triggered the ultra vividness of mandela and goodall,likewise many other ME memories,but the sri lanka intrigue beats me,i have personally done surveys and got anomalous result,haven’t found explanation for this one.
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I read this post and had to groan. It’s all very well thinking we ‘dilemna’ and ‘Berenstein’ people have fallen prey to some mass false memory…but I am convinced it is more than that. I’ve been wrong about lots of things and it bothers me not in the slightest to admit my mistakes. But I KNOW it’s dilemna (say di-lem-na when writing it because the n is silent), and it’s Berenstein (I’ve pronounced it ‘steen’ rightly or wrongly since I was about 5 years old). There’s a difference between thinking you know something and knowing you know something. And only someone who has experienced this, gets it. Hell even my old mum and dad are with me on this or are at least questioning – and my dad is the biggest skeptic out there (also a dilemna person who used to be big on crosswords).
Samantha, There is a short story ‘dawn’ in the collection ‘saint errant’ by leslie charteris, published in 1948.The story has a mandela effect memory event,and allusion to various DARPA projects like:Aurora,Camelot,Excalibur,Looking glass,Ceres(dawn space ship) etc. It even mysteriously introduces feigenbaum the chaos theory scientist in place of fauntleroy that it actually implied.Try to understand the story,i am still trying.
One handicap with mandela effect is that the participants are mostly US residents or few from other anglican countries,the various topics logically derived from within.The entropy generated due to closed user group hinders a concise growth that the phenomena deserves,but then no other site of global dimensions devotes as much energy,ATS is an exception though.Unless the phenomena encompasses global anomalies of localized nature,it may not get worthwhile credit.Including some veridical topics is another way to gain credibility.