See title. For those who don’t know, the Mandela Effect is a phenomenon where a large group of people remember something differently than how it occurred. It’s named after Nelson Mandela because a significant number of people remembered him dying in prison in the 1980s, even though he actually passed away in 2013.

I’m curious to hear about your personal experiences with this phenomenon. Have you ever remembered an event, fact, or detail that turned out to be different from reality? What was it and how did you react when you found out your memory didn’t align with the facts? Does it happen often?

  • paddirn@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    The Berenstein Bears one and the Fruit of the Loom not having a horn are the ones that have me questioning reality and my childhood.

    • hactar42@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      There is a theory that the Fruit of the Loom one is actually a viral marketing thing. Like the company scrubbed it on purpose and is playing into it to build brand recognition.

  • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Somehow I had always thought it was Klu Klux Klan instead of Ku Klux Klan. I’m not sure where I got that or if anyone else thought the same thing though.

  • xmunk@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    I remember there was an AskLemmy question on the Mandela effect, but a week later we all realized it was just a dream.

      • BertramDitore@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Heh yup! That’s part of the effect, a whole generation potentially conflated Shaq’s movie with a movie that was never made. Scroll down the link I posted, they mention it. So bizarre.

      • BertramDitore@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Lol I got into a pretty heated argument with a group of friends, half of whom definitely remembered the movie and even started recounting some of the plot. The other half had no idea what the hell we were talking about.

          • BertramDitore@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Oh I definitely remember seeing the movie. I even remember the VHS dust jacket on the shelves of Blockbuster. But who the hell knows lol

            • crusa187@lemmy.ml
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              1 year ago

              Dude yes!!! I remember that same jacket! Thanks for preserving my sanity for another day Bertram, hero.

  • Varyk@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    I just found out that you can’t take someone’s lead in order to behave like they are behaving, you can only follow their lead.

    I thought that taking someone’s lead, “I’m taking their lead”, is an actual expression, while apparently it is not.

    • Mechanismatic@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Taking someone’s lead sounds like a British saying indicating the opposite of following someone’s lead. It sounds like you’re taking someone’s leash in your hands and directing them where to go.

    • twice_twotimes@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      It may not be the original idiom, but it’s definitely something people say. If the core expressions are “(I) take the lead” and “(you) follow my lead,” that lends itself easily to a merge: you take my lead. It’s not as common as the originals but it’s definitely out there. It will stick around because it’s really easy to unambiguously infer what it means in context.

      • Varyk@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        I agree that it’s used, I’m sure that if we looked in movie scripts or novels, we would find examples of that phrase, but I can’t find a single dictionary that agrees that the phrase is a legitimate phrase, and that’s what really boggled my mind.

        Boggled and boondoggled over here.

  • nycki@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I had some Berenstain Bears books as a kid and I remember noting at the time “huh, weird name but okay”. So like, I don’t get why people think it was “Berenstein”? It looks wrong, but it’s always looked wrong.

  • General_Shenanigans@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I could’ve sworn Jim Beam whiskey was Jim Bean. A friend of mine had a poster of a whiskey bottle on his wall that I stared at every time I was there. He was a minor at the time and didn’t drink, so I always wondered why he had it up. Years later I saw a Jim Beam bottle and had a Mandela moment. The Berenstein Bears and Mandela dying in jail were things I believed, too, but I think the whiskey one is one I haven’t heard from anybody else, yet.

    • vladmech@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      I had to go look it up to double check you weren’t trying to pull a fast one; I was 100% sure it was Bean.

  • Resol van Lemmy@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    I genuinely remembered there were 5 main characters in the Little Einsteins cast, even though there were only 4.

    I guess I was imagining random weirdness.

  • TheDarkestShark@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Here’s one I just experienced, was watching Star Wars: A New Hope and my brother asked me if I remember C-3PO every having a silver leg. I told him no, hes always been all gold. Next scene we watched his right leg from the knee down was all silver. Like wtf never have I noticed that before, I said meh maybe it was a Lucas later edit. Revenge of the Sith comes on the TV next and C-3PO’s leg is so vibrantly silver that I could not even comprehend not noticing that contrast in past viewings.