Have you ever had a false memory?

[reecejackox]

so just watching youtube and was hearing about the mandela effect where someone thought he had died in the 1980s instead of the real date in 2013 , so i was just wondering if anyone else has had a memory they had of something which later turned out to be false

 

[Squirlz]

You mean mistaken about something? I'm sure everybody has.

 

[ols386]

I’m sure I have about many things throughout my lifetime.

 

[Jdbsfw]

I don’t get the Mandela thing specifically, I was a kid in the 80’s in Texas and I knew he had been in prison for years....

 

[3 MEN AND A BOAT]

Maybe I’m just dense, but how did anyone ask him when he thought he died?

 

[Hook326]

so just watching youtube and was hearing about the mandela effect where someone thought he had died in the 1980s instead of the real date in 2013 , so i was just wondering if anyone else has had a memory they had of something which later turned out to be false

The latest season of X-files did a very funny episode (The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat) discussing the Mandela Effect. I started googling it and there’s lists of common collective “memories” people have that aren’t real (such as Mandela dying earlier). Some were ones I thought I knew the true answer to but are false! It’s neat to read about and the theories behind these collective memories.

 

[McNs]

I have false memories about almost everything my wife says...

 

[TipsyTraveler]

False/mistaken memories, I'm sure I have. The Mandela Effect specifically, yes to that too.

For years, I had (well, still have) such a clear memory of the Columbine shooting. It happened my sophomore year of high school. I remember talking about it the day after with classmates and I remember details of our conversation, I remember which hallway we were standing in when we had this conversation, I remember the time of day. Then, just a few years ago I realized the Columbine shooting took place in 1999. And that made no sense to me because I graduated in 1998, so there's no way I was ever discussing the Columbine shooting with high school classmates because it didn't even take place until after I'd graduated. So it's a false memory and I accept that, but it's still so baffling because I can't for the life of me figure out how I could have such a detailed memory of something that never happened. As if it wasn't already sufficiently weird enough, I then learned that one of the Mandela Effect memories is that Columbine happened in 1996... AKA, my sophomore year. Freaky.

Also, I would've bet money on it being "Berenstein Bears."

 

[indimom]

I actually do have some of these same memories also.

I had heard about the "Luke I'm Your Father" one a few years ago. It surprised me because it's so clear in my head...
Then I realized that I had a book & record kids version of the story when I was a kid. I listened to it all the time, I'm not even sure if I went to the movie theatre to see it, but I listened to the book over and over again. It was a short/quick version of the entire movie.
I honestly wonder if some of the lines were changed for the book to keep it short/sweet/simple and if that's where so many of us "heard" this line...
If only I still had the record, I could check... sigh.

We are the Champions: Dang, I really thought it ended that way...

Monopoly Man has no monocle? What??

BerenstEin Bears. I refuse to believe that hasn't always been an E...

Hello Clarice... Dang it, I know I've heard that too... Could it have been in a trailer, and cut from the movie??

 

[tvguy]

All the time. I am on a local "THINGS I REMEMBER GROWING UP" Facebook page. I've lived here 60 years. I remember one thing, then someone posts a picture showing something different.

 

[BrianL]

The Mandella Effect is generally nonsense. It's just the way human memory works. Like, I have memories of WDW from when I was a kid. Some of those things that I "remembered" weren't really accurate. They were similar in some cases, but as I experience things more recently, I realize they were off. Like I can remember the "blue tunnel" on Space Mountain being more in the middle of the ride and I thought it was "hyperspace" even though we know that that is the "charging tunnel" and you're not even going fast. This even applies to my first trip as an adult in 2010, where I have memories that I know are not accurate after subsequent visist.

Another example: A friend of mine insists that the first roller-coaster she ever rode was at Disneyland and was called "Mickey Mouse Ears" and it had two big loops. Now, I am pretty certain that this ride was "California Screamin'" and she is conflating that with the giant Mickey face on the Fun Wheel. I have convinced her the ride was at California Adventure and not DL proper, but she insists they must have changed it since she was little (and that wasn't too long ago in her case).

 

[gmboy95]

I believe they call these things "alternative facts"

 

[TipsyTraveler]

The Mandella Effect is generally nonsense. It's just the way human memory works. Like, I have memories of WDW from when I was a kid. Some of those things that I "remembered" weren't really accurate. They were similar in some cases, but as I experience things more recently, I realize they were off. Like I can remember the "blue tunnel" on Space Mountain being more in the middle of the ride and I thought it was "hyperspace" even though we know that that is the "charging tunnel" and you're not even going fast. This even applies to my first trip as an adult in 2010, where I have memories that I know are not accurate after subsequent visist.

Another example: A friend of mine insists that the first roller-coaster she ever rode was at Disneyland and was called "Mickey Mouse Ears" and it had two big loops. Now, I am pretty certain that this ride was "California Screamin'" and she is conflating that with the giant Mickey face on the Fun Wheel. I have convinced her the ride was at California Adventure and not DL proper, but she insists they must have changed it since she was little (and that wasn't too long ago in her case).

Your examples are just false memories. For it to be an example of the Mandela Effect there has to be a collective element to it. E.g., a quarter of the people who have been to Disneyland remember there being a coaster called Mickey Mouse Ears.

****

Also, Eli Whitney being the black man who invented the cotton gin is another one. I've talked about this one with many of my friends and those who went through the same school system I did all remember it the same way: Eli Whitney was right there with Harriet Tubman and George Washington Carver on the shortlist of notable black figures that we learned about every February. There would've been no reason to teach us about the white guy who invented the cotton gin during Black History Month or, for that matter, any time of the year, so I believe that one is easily explained as a school curriculum screw up. There's really no reason I would've even heard that man's name, let alone celebrated his "accomplishments" in school, if he was being presented as yet another white guy who invented yet another way to further exploit slaves. They were definitely teaching us that he was a black man in the late 80s.

 

[amberpi]

I had a TBI, I get dates and chronology of my own life confused all the time.

 

[jaiminee krikit]

I am certain I was taught that water freezes at 36 degrees. I've thought it my entire life. Then one day I said something to DH about how it was probably going to snow and not rain because it was 35 degrees out. He said, "No, water freezes at 32 degrees, it'll rain". I had to Google it because I didn't believe him.

 

[BrianL]

Your examples are just false memories. For it to be an example of the Mandela Effect there has to be a collective element to it. E.g., a quarter of the people who have been to Disneyland remember there being a coaster called Mickey Mouse Ears.

****

Also, Eli Whitney being the black man who invented the cotton gin is another one. I've talked about this one with many of my friends and those who went through the same school system I did all remember it the same way: Eli Whitney was right there with Harriet Tubman and George Washington Carver on the shortlist of notable black figures that we learned about every February. There would've been no reason to teach us about the white guy who invented the cotton gin during Black History Month or, for that matter, any time of the year, so I believe that one is easily explained as a school curriculum screw up. There's really no reason I would've even heard that man's name, let alone celebrated his "accomplishments" in school, if he was being presented as yet another white guy who invented yet another way to further exploit slaves. They were definitely teaching us that he was a black man in the late 80s.

But, the Mandela Effect isn't real. All of these people who "remember" it are just mistaken, even if they are mistaken about the same thing. It's a combination of the faultiness of human memory and suggestion (or just people who like making junk up to stir the pot). It's just a way of explaining something that makes people feel better about being wrong.

If your Eli Whitney story is true, then your school system failed you. Given the state of education, that's much more believable than some alternate reality crossing into our own per the Mandela Effect people.

 

[Niltiac]

I think most of the Mandela Effect can be easily explained because many people have a common experience that does not come from the source material. For example, "Luke, I am your father" - that's a famous line from a famous movie that gets quoted all the time. But if you just say "I am your father" out of context it's not clear what you're quoting, so people started adding "Luke" for context. That quote is so popular that most of us have probably heard it quoted or parodied more times than we've actually seen the movie, so the memory of the mis-quote is the memory that sticks.

 

[DisneyHardin]

Your examples are just false memories. For it to be an example of the Mandela Effect there has to be a collective element to it. E.g., a quarter of the people who have been to Disneyland remember there being a coaster called Mickey Mouse Ears.

****

Also, Eli Whitney being the black man who invented the cotton gin is another one. I've talked about this one with many of my friends and those who went through the same school system I did all remember it the same way: Eli Whitney was right there with Harriet Tubman and George Washington Carver on the shortlist of notable black figures that we learned about every February. There would've been no reason to teach us about the white guy who invented the cotton gin during Black History Month or, for that matter, any time of the year, so I believe that one is easily explained as a school curriculum screw up. There's really no reason I would've even heard that man's name, let alone celebrated his "accomplishments" in school, if he was being presented as yet another white guy who invented yet another way to further exploit slaves. They were definitely teaching us that he was a black man in the late 80s.

I'm almost 40 years old and until this moment when I Googled it, I also thought Eli Whitney was a black man.

 

[Klayfish]

Listen, I struggle to remember breakfast, so if you're gonna ask me if I have false memories from years ago...I'm lucky to have ANY memories of years ago. False or not, I'll take whatever my brain cooks up.

 

[TipsyTraveler]

But, the Mandela Effect isn't real. All of these people who "remember" it are just mistaken, even if they are mistaken about the same thing. It's a combination of the faultiness of human memory and suggestion (or just people who like making junk up to stir the pot). It's just a way of explaining something that makes people feel better about being wrong.

If your Eli Whitney story is true, then your school system failed you. Given the state of education, that's much more believable than some alternate reality crossing into our own per the Mandela Effect people.

I might be getting into semantics here but the Mandela Effect is a real thing -- that being the terminology for a collective false memory -- it's the reason it happens that's debated.

I know human memory isn't very reliable so mistakes, even when they're shared by a large number of people, are to be expected. Berenstain vs. Berenstein would be one such example in my mind. Perhaps the teacher who read those books to us in school pronounced it in such a way that the name had more of an E sound to my ear and I just assumed a different spelling than what was actually on the cover of the book. That seems like a likely enough explanation that could apply to other people as well. Also, I imagine the "stein" suffix is more common than "stain" so it's not surprising to me that many people are making the same mistake.

Eli Whitney, as I already explained, is an example of how people could be remembering something accurately, the issue is that the information was given to them incorrectly in the first place. I've heard that many people a generation or two older than I believed for a long time that the correct spelling of dilemma was dilemna, and they are so sure they were taught this spelling that they think it's likely they were taught this spelling as a result of a textbook misprint. That sounds plausible to me.

The Columbine one is the one that leaves me scratching my head. How strange to have had this very detailed memory for well over a decade before realizing it was false, but I can accept that I was wrong and perhaps I'd conflated that memory with something else. To then learn that so many other people made the exact same mistake about the date being 1996 doesn't make me feel better, it frustrates me. Because, why? What happened that made so many of us think Columbine happened in 1996? It's just so random. Trust me, I'm not looking for company to make me feel better about being wrong. I'm okay with being wrong, I'd just rather think I'm dumb all by myself.