The Mandela Effect

Do you know anything about it?

There's three sides to a story: your side, my side and the truth.

It all started with the man in the picture. His name is Nelson Mandela and he was a South-African revolutionary and philanthropist. He served 27 years in prison. He was first arrested because of treason and after he was released, he was later arrested once again for trying to leave the country illegally.

Countless people believed that they remember Mandela dying in the 1980s in prison. They even remember watching his funeral broadcasted on television.

The reality was that Mandela was released from prison in 1990 and even became president of his country. He died in 2013.

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It is "Magic mirror on the wall"!

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Well, it's LOONEY TUNES! (That makes no sense!)

Tell me your theories.

Fiona Broome is a self-identified "paranormal consultant" and she coined the term "THE MANDELA EFFECT".

She says she remembers even watching Mandela's widow give a speech at the funeral. She was convinced of this in 2010. The truth was that Mandela was still alive at this time.

Nothing would be weird if it was just Broome who believed that Mandela was dead.

Some scientists say that it's normal for certain memories to appear if people are part of a group or a collective. In one way or another, they've convinced themselves (as a group) that this is how an event occurred.

But, not everyone who believed that Mandela was dead was part of the same group. In fact, most of the people had nothing in common.

Some conspiracy theorists believe that the Mandela effect proves the existence of multiple universes.

Some of us have moved between parallel universes and remember things differently (because we've seen them differently in the parallel universe).

Some doctors believe that the Mandela effect is a typical example of confabulation. Confabulation is also known as honest lying.

This happens when people don't invent things to deceive others, but instead they're just trying to fill holes in their memories, so that they can make them more rational.

Confabulation is very common on everyday life and it's just our brain's way of filling in the gaps. Our brain fills the gaps in a way that's most logical to it. It's not known how does it choose to make a memory one way and not the other.

In "The Empire Strikes Back" it is common to remember one of Darth Vader's most shocking lines as "Luke, I am your father."

In fact, in the film he says, "No, I am your father."

In one study, people had to learn a list of words. Two of the words were "pillow" and "bed". After the participants were shown the words, they were asked to recognize the words that were shown in the list of words. More than half marked the word "sleep" as part of the list, even though it wasn't.

The brain put the word there just because it made a semantic (semantics is the part of language connected to word meaning) connection between the word "sleep" and the words "pillow" and "bed".

Some theories point that the internet is to blame for some of the false memories we create. (Not the Mandela effect though).

In today's reality, we are often exposed to fake news, false information, and doctored pictures. Not doing your research online can lead your brain to become convinced of something that didn't really happen.