I think one of the driving factors behind this is the fact that a lot of people are TERRIFIED of how fallible the human memory is. If they don't remember something the way it happened in reality, then that's the basis for their life crumbling out from under them. I have an absolute trainwreck of a memory due to ADHD + childhood depression + brain fog as an adult, and it can be absolutely terrifying to realise how much is just ... gone, and I think this phenomenon is partly people trying to cope with that fear
The sad part about people going all in on Mandela effects is that they tend to become more susceptible to other fringe beliefs. I’ll admit at one point, I *almost* went down that road. Also, happy birthday!
I did go down that road briefly, unfortunately. When I was a teenager, probably 15 or 16, I watched Shane Dawson, unfortunately. He did conspiracy theory videos and I ate it up. He did one on crisis actors, it seemed compelling, a comment on his channel recommended a "documentary" about a certain incident at a certain school and you can imagine where I ended up. Luckily, my parents told me I was being an idiot when I presented my discoveries to them and it didn't escalate or continue long after that. I am so embarrassed about it now and my mom still won't let me live that down. I am so grateful that I got out of that world and way of thinking.
i’ve spend a lot of time in these groups too. honestly, as funny as it is, it’s also really sad. if these are these people’s genuine beliefs, just think how it must be impacting their relationships with their families. they must be isolating themselves further and further into a world where they genuinely believe they are from another dimension and the only people who understand them are these weird facebook groups. great video, happy birthday.
Happy birthday!!! Also for me, The Mandela Effect phenomenon could have just been a quirky thing that we as humans connect over. Like "wow aren't brains so weird? Isn't it wild how even these nonsensical little moments of misremembering something spans across countries, ages, etc?" Sort of like how it's precious that we have evidence that cavemen lifted their children onto their shoulders to help the kids do cave paintings. But instead it turned into weird conspiracy theory shit that I had to hear at my day job in conjunction with shit like the flat earth theory and blood libel. This is why we can't have nice things.
Craziest thing so far is that i feel like the name "mandela effect" has been around for longer XD Also, about the "mandela effect isn't real, it's just your brain being funky" i feel like the brain being funky IS the mandela effect and just that on its own explains why the thing happens. Especially because most of them are kinda minor details. How many rings in the target circle? Nobody cares until you ask them and they can't pick the right one. Does the monopoly man have a monocole? Well probably, he does have a moustache and a top hat, but nobody paid that much attention, so finding out he doesn't is a "huh" moment. Also also, imagine if some movie studio did a "remake" of the Shazam movie that doesn't exist. People would go crazy about it. I need to pitch this to an executive somewhere lmao
I think the thing with Cruella Deville is that a lot of people creating fan art, Halloween costumes, etc will have a spotted coat and so they feel that’s the correct option.
I’ve asked the people who believe in the Mandela Effect things like “Why is Nelson Mandela the only historical figure this has happened to?” “When did he become president of South Africa in your version of events?” and “What do ‘they’ get out of making you misremember the spelling of Froot Loops?” and none of them have good answers. They all just think their memories are flawless and they refuse to be reasoned with. It’s pretty infuriating
7:25 "one of my best friends growing up doesn't remember me" 😭 When my little brother was like 3-5, my mom babysat for a close friend and one of the kids was a little girl the exact same age. They were the cutest little friends, always getting into mischeif together. One time me and the older kids had a wedding for them. One time they walked back to her house and we were panicking because the two kiddos were missing. Neither of them remember it now. They're both high school graduates.
Im hard of hearing, and i find it hilarious that all you hearies "remember" the Mandela funeral being in thr 80s or 90s, when deafies remember the actual Mandela funeral for a completly different reason, and it makes the name hilarious when deaf people talk about it.
For background: the person who showed up to do the sign-language interpretation was not a real ASL interpreter and just like, literally waved his hands around like jibberish and pretended to be interpreting. In retrospect, also hilarious, but not so much in the moment.
Happy birthday! I'd love more videos of you looking into conspiracy theories. I love learning about them, but not from the people who really believe them... they're interesting to me. memory is so weird and faulty. In a psych class i took in college, we were shown a video of a person. then, two days later we were told to watch another video and identify the guy in the first video. and almost none of us could do it. That really showed me how... unreliable memory can be.
Mandela effect is one of those things I love when someone brings up one I hadn’t heard, because it’s fun to realize I was wrong about a thing I grew up with! What I hate is 6 times outta ten the person bringing it up to me then follows it up seriously believing there’s a cover up or another universe we split off from or something 😭
It’s like how my boyfriend and I find Ancient Aliens to be fun garbage television but it’s hard to enjoy it when we know my conspiracy theorist dad seriously 100% believes the show and watching it will trigger his bipolar manic phases.
Honestly didn't think there was any more to the Mandela effect than it being a weird phenomenon people get a kick out of now and then. I keep forgetting about the dark corners of social media.
I'm bingeing your vids and I swear I can always tell now when someone has gone through dbt. It has done wonders for my communication (my emotion regulation is not mastered yet, so it's dependent on that first off). The concepts and learning the dialectic are methods of re-framing thoughts and emotions that could genuinely benefit everyone. I wish everyone had the resources and access for it that is needed. Over controlled treatment-resistant bpd here; I can only afford it through the generosity of my parents. No point other than to say that I'm always happy to see it. Happy late birthday!
HA- yes, about a month and a half of weekday intensive outpatient DBT over zoom in 2020 and it changed my LIFE. I haven't been diagnosed with anything other than like, ptsd/anxiety/depression but being in DBT for days and taking it very seriously unfried my brain and gave me so much more ability to be like "Okay well that's not how I want to think about this" instead of just being completely led by whatever emotion I felt about something. This comment made me laugh out loud lol feels great to know it comes across in my youtube communication that I've done some of that work
I ran a support group for adults with mental illness and remember the first time I heard someone bring this up about 10 years ago. I tried my best to help the guy understand how unreliable memories are, but he just got more and more convinced that the effect is real. It was simultaneous frustrating and heartbreaking.
So a "Mandela Effect" occurred in my friend group. Last summer several of my friends went to a gay camp called "Vinegar Hill" and one of my friends reached out to ask if I had ever heard of Vinegar Hill before last summer. Basically half of our friend group (including me) had never heard of it before and half swear they've known about it for years. My theory is just knowledge of this camp is starting to move beyond gay men to the wider queer community. Or maybe half of us have just switched universe from one where Vinegar Hill doesn't exist to one where it does. 😅
I went down this rabbit hole before because I found it entertaining like oh no we're in an alternate timeline where we have collectively different memories of pop culture references
Ok, I’m an all-but-dissertation PhD student in cognitive psychology, and my research lab is focused on the fallibility of human memory (with a focus on eyewitness memory, but also just general quirks of memory). So I’m very aware of the fact that almost all of these stories are genuinely just failings of memory. But…. You cannot in good faith and conscience try to tell me that that certain app-controlled sex toy has always been Lovense, not Lovesense. My husband and I are well-acquainted with it, and both of us know damn good and well that it was Lovesense! The current way doesn’t even make… well, sense!!! 😂
I’ve been saying for ages now, how it’s so sad that we can’t have a fun goofy time about ‘oo what if we’re in an alternative timeline’ because there’s always people who take it too seriously and take it too far. And a good percentage of the time it quickly slips into danger territory. I fear that someone in the conspiracy crowd will watch XFiles one day and claim that it’s ‘all been in plain sight’ the whole time and take it all as fact. Edit: and happy belated Mandela effect birthday!!
ayyy happy birthday!!!! 🎂🎂🎂 A deep dive on this would be utterly fascinating, I've heard of it casually, but it's p shocking how deep it seems to go with people XD I get stuff wrong all the time, song lyrics especially, so it's no surprise when I realize I've been singing them wrong for years. But then again, the mind does love a mystery... perhaps that's why the effect endures with such a mystic feeling haha
The concept of the Mandela Effect is so funny. "I couldn't possibly be misremembering, I must be from an alternate timeline." Fun idea for a story though, or a running gag if/when I ever start making videos again lmao
I saw a Mandela effect post recently that Richard Simons dying was a Mandela effects. Several times in the comments, people said him not wearing a headband on the picture was also a Mandela effect as if Richard Simons had a head band grafted on in the last timeline and never took it off.
It's all so beautiful. Why is Funyuns spelled differently now? "I think quantum physics. Everett's many worlds interpretation and the first law of thermodynamics is where the answers are." I hope Emily Louise sees this, she'll love it, and you! Have a happy birthday!
I honestly think some TV news show might have mistakenly played an obit spot for Mandela. They have those things ready to go for every single public figure so this wouldn't surprise me. I'm not 100% about it but it seems like as good an explanation as anything else. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ETA: Legit dying over the 101 Dalmatians coat!! LOL!! Great fun video, Ophie!! So glad yr channel came up on my recs!! ETA: 💜🎂💜 HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!! 💜🎂💜
I'm kind of stressed about the Mandela Effect (even when we put aside super problematic thing of reducing an activist and politician fighting with Apartheid to a weird fruit of the loom conspiracy). But one of my highschool friends and two of my partners suffered from psychotic delusions (I'm sorry if I'm using wrong language, if someone knows the proper terminology, please correct me, English is not my first language). And the groups like that seem like a space that enables delusions and in consequence adds to suffering. And also show how gullible we are all (and ignoring and rationally explaining the delusions of those close to me was a scary thing). Like, don't get me wrong, I found some of the examples really funny (Cruella's coat and friends' surname? Wonderful), but the unsolved thing literally has sent chills down my spine.
I had no idea this was a conspiracy theory and was so confused at the start of this video. In psychology, it's just the phenomenon of the same false memory being shared by many people. I knew about how the term was coined, but had no idea the one who coined the term thought it was paranormal! Btw, I'm not a native English speaker, but I learned the word 'cornucopia' from reading The Hunger Games in English. Maybe you did too? :)
This is wild, I always thought the Mandela Effect was just noticing that it's interesting how large groups of people can misremember stuff! Not that it like... Means something about timelines or reality changing???
Happy birthday! I've spent the last couple months working on a long video essay on conspiracy fiction and its effects on / relation to real world conspiracist beliefs and after all that reading I find it harder and harder to laugh about the more ridiculous parts of the conspiracy sphere simply because they so often are the gateway to far more sinister and dangerous ideologies that almost always end in antisemitism. Nevertheless, the one about manifesting the song was really funny.
Also I would definitely like a Gaylor video from you. Just as someone who is bi/genderfluid and has seen myself in some of her lyrics WITHOUT assuming she herself is bi or gay! (Something lgbt do literally all the time! Music is for anyone to interpret!). I’m not a Swiftie but my best friend is so I went to the Eras tour with her (right after she came out as bi herself woo!!!) and have been fully indoctrinated in the Gaylor lore and insanity. Edit: happy belated bday!! You and Ten Minute Worlds are my favourite creators I found this year!
Omfg PLEASE do a deep dive on this jxkxnhxhk the Mandela effect is my favorite conspiracy theory bc of how fucking funny it is. Like, just how deep it goes with the concept of alternate timeliness, universes, and dimensions just from misremembering something. The Berenstein bears one actually isn't because of misspelling errors, but simply from not knowing how to pronounce that name. AVGN has a really really good video on that whole thing jxmxnhzh There are even weirder ones, like completely warping what Pikachu's tail looks like. There are actual fucking people out there who think that Pikachu's tail (the giant lightning bolt part) is black when it's been yellow this whole time hxkmxbzhkx I mean, it is brown getting lower to his butt, but I have no idea how anyone could ever envision this super mainstream mascot character looking completely different from its original Canon design. Imagine being in the worst fucking timeline where the iconic electric mouse type Pokémon has a black lightning bolt tail bjKHgJzknzhxhkxk Also, happy birthday!!! 🎉🎉🎉. It's really interesting, I can actually picture you being born in the summer bc of your sunflower hair!!
I fully believe that there is a difference between people who set aside a portion of their brain to believe in something without a lot of solid basis and allow that thing to fit into their understanding of reality and people who take that thing and shape their understanding of reality around it. A specific example is a person who believes god put the pieces in place for the big bang and evolution vs people who literally believe god created the first humans from the dirt. I think some people are wired to believe in things or want to believe in things and some people aren't and that religion and spirituality is a very complex thing. I don't believe that ending religion as a whole and demonizing it is anywhere near as productive or beneficial as many atheists think it would be, but I don't think all belief systems are created equal. I'm not even talking about just spirituality vs organized religion. The progressive christian who doesn't believe in biblical literalism and thinks you get into heaven for trying to be a good person? Just fine by me. The new age spiritualist who thinks you manifested all the bad things that happened to you in your life or are getting karma from being bad in your past life(usually grew up christian or around christians and didn't do the necessary deconstruction)? Not cool. The skeptic who thinks there might be something to intuition and shared dreams but doesn't necessarily believe in ghosts or a god? Pretty cool actually, I'd like to have that conversation with them even lol. The atheistic pagan who believes in paying respect to nature and believes in spells, but only in the sense of them being an affirmation or placebo effect? Love that. Sikhs have pretty solid beliefs too, though I don't know much on the subject. And I'm sure I don't even need to mention biblical literalists who love to cherry pick the bible and can't accept new information into their worldview. Hard pass. Anyway, forgive the only vaguely related tangent, it's something I'm pretty passionate about(I find the subject interesting, even just found out that in a very small study, IQ negaltively correlated to religion but not spirituality, though I will reiterate said study is small and I believe IQ is misunderstood, overhyped, and overused by the vast majority of people, it's not the be all end all of intelligence but can be useful to measure someone's ability to solve logical puzzles and identify their processing speed). I would indeed like to see a deconstruction on Mandela effects eventually, provided enough other people show interest in the topic as well. Happy birthday!
The way you pronounced CERN with a hard c like a cernal of corn gave me a little chuckle. Just for future reference, it's pronounced with a soft c like it's spelled like SERN. If you hadn't heard it outloud, it's an easy mistake to make.
Omg the personal Mandela effect. I know someone who, whenever she’s wrong about something, says it’s the Mandela effect. Like you can tell her the capital of Australia is Canberra and she’ll say “but it’s Sydney! I know it’s Sydney! This is the Mandela Effect!” Like girl NO being wrong is not the Mandela effect that’s just not knowing shit.
I don't understand the cornucopia one. People act like clothing is the only place they could have learned the word. I have vague memories of coloring in cornucopia in school. When I think of cornucopias I first think of US Thanksgiving. Pretty sure around Tday was when I colored in a significant amount of cornucopias, because as a child I wanted a cornucopia at Tday. Never got one. But think about it, schools want to teach kids to eat fruits and veggies. Cornucopias is a cool word and it is visually appealing to have fruits and veggies spill out of one. It would be weird if kids did Not color in cornucopias as a child in school.
actually you're probably right that it was some coloring book page about thanksgiving!!!!! and I agree with you that's probably what it was for everyone else- I don't have school memories bc i was homeschooled the whole way through but like. it makes sense to me that something might have been printed off and gotten in my hands somehow lol. also yes cornucopia is such a cool word lmao suzanne collins was so right when she used it in the hunger games
Happy birthday!! Maybe I’m spreading misinfo from Tik Tok… but there’s a creator on there that “proved” fruit of the loom did actually have a cornucopia in their logo and they were actively covering it up for Reasons (she gave reasons I just can’t remember rn lol)
As a South African, the Mandela Effect rubs me the wrong way, particularly the origins of the name. If Nelson Mandela died in prison in their timeline, like they believe, then who was the first democratically elected president of South Africa in their timeline or universe or whatever? Why is it always just "I remember Mandela dying in prison" and not "I remember [Specific Person] becoming the president" or "I remember Apartheid never ending"? Like if you claim that you aren't remembering wrong or that you weren't just paying attention, then why don't you remember those details? I need them to be so foreal. I also find it really funny that the thing the "phenomenon" is named after is this massive historical event that very likely would have changed the trajectory of an entire country and the rest of the stuff is just misremembering logos or the colour of a cartoon character's pants.
I have PTSD and my memory of growing up in high school and stuff erased itself mostly so yea I feel like memories are not very good for some of us. I hear something about myself from people from time to time about me when I was younger and I'm always like that's not real right?
Okay I need to find the source for this, but people looked into Fruit of the Loom's patents and apparently they did have a cornocopia the whole time and just decided to gaslight the public. Possibly to create publicity and/or draw attention away from their unethical practices. It was always the one "Mandela effect" I found actually convincing too, until I learned that.
Happy birthday! Another great video. I had my own, eerily similar, Mandela Effect incident with Mikhail Gorbechev. I thought he died decades ago and got a bit of a surprise when he died for real in 2022. But when I actually thought about it, I realised I couldn't remember where I got news of his "death" from and it was just an assumption that had become a certainty in my brain. It was a strange one, for sure, and might not even be a genuine "Mandela effect" and it was certainly no excuse to go falling down conspiratorial rabbit holes. I was just wrong about a thing.
I think the whole thing probably started with trolls messing with mentally ill people. And I am begging people to stop invoking quantum mechanics unless they have a doctorate in physics, and honestly sometimes even those people need to chill the fuck out. A good rule of thumb is: if you encounter someone who claims to understand quantum mechanics in any way that isn't using math to make predictions about experimental results, they're a liar or a scammer. Not even physicists understand quantum mechanics, they know how to use math to make predictions but its implications are so unlike anything we experience in our day-to-day lives that I doubt any human will genuinely understand it any time soon.
omg you should watch s1e3 of how to with John Wilson (very people watchy silly show), he goes to a Mandela effect conference and the people there are absolutely wild
IDKY it took so long for the algorithm to send me Ophies channel (as well as a few more including QUEEN COKE FRANCIS who I feel anyone who loves Ophie night also love!) but I'm glad it did! I feel like you're a very good, genuine successor to the late, not very lamented James Somerton. I love to hear queer voices & I always truly enjoyed James' videos very very much. I feel like Ophie has some of the same focus with the plus of not being misogynistic & not a ripoff scammer. I don't think James should have been piled on the way he was & bc I had been a massive fan of his, I missed cultural content thru a queer lense like he did & I feel like Ophie fills that void for me but femme & so much better & not a lying grifter. NGL, I feel VERY bad for James. I know what he did was absolutely reprehensible but my heart breaks for him anyway. I canNOT even imagine being so publicly shamed & driven off the way he was. I think threatening suicide was a total shit move but I don't think it was 100% manipulative. I think he probably was truly thinking shit was so terrible& ppl hated him so much that he didn't have anything left to live for. I think he went about EVERYTHING in the wrong ways but I still feel bad for him. No excuses for what he did but its not like he was a hardcore journalist. He was making queer focused entertainment essays on RU-vid. Still, very wrong to rip off other queer creators. So theres my bit on James Somerton for what its worth! LOL!! Thank you, Ophie for filling a void in an even better way than I could have even hoped for💜🌈💜
Wait I don’t know what the Mandela affect is ! I watch your channel ! I’m smart ! For randos like me who have not really learned about the Mandela affect with such name (like maybe I know what it is and didn’t know it was named but I have to google first cause I still don’t know) - it would have been helpful for just a few sentences on what it is. The awareness of not summarizing was nice cause I knew when to pause before continuing
i remember when i was 14 i was really into the mandela effect & i told my mom about it & why it’s called the mandela effect and she had my favorite take: “the mandela effect is real, but the origin of its name is dumb, because who the hell thought nelson mandela died in the 80s?” obviously, my mom is from the 2013 timeline (sarcasm)
happy birthday!!! my personal theory is that there was another african leader who died in the 80s and some americans just kinda assumed or misremembered it as nelson mandela. human brains are fallible and we often make things up to fill in gaps.
“they’re not sure where else they would’ve learned the word cornucopia if there wasn’t one on the fruit of the loom logo” .. i do swear there used to be a cornucopia on the fruit of the loom logo, but i know the word cornucopia from reading the hunger games 😎
You should watch the sandlot. It's a decent movie I think. I haven't seen it in a long time, but the important part is that a lot of it was filmed in my hometown, so it has a stong cult following there, regardless of whether it's good or not lol
is there any chance you could speak on the Melanie Martinez allegations? There's so much misinformation and victim blaming being spread about Timothy Heller :/
yes! I am looking into it and planning on making a video about it -- it was further on my backburner before Timothy came back online so I got deep into the new Alexa video and the Armie Hammer video I was looking into but I'm planning on digging in and making a video soon. I believe Timothy, a few others in my comment section on a recent community tab post also expressed that/wanting me to cover it so I think it's a really good fit for what we usually talk about on the channel. I just personally very much hate Melanie Martinez's whole sexy baby gimmick so had been offput from doing the deep dive but it's getting closer to the top of my current stack
I disagree with this! Especially with Halloween costumes, when someone puts effort into dressing exactly like a character when it turns out they were wearing the wrong thing. Like the microphone in the Brittany Spears video that wasn’t there was replicated in so many Halloween costumes! Though I disagree with this video, you seem very cool so I’ll go look for another one of your videos to watch.
So, if i witness (in real time) a shift happen in front of my eyes, changing fact A into fact B, PROOVING that such a phenomenon can and does happen, am i supposed to ignore it and live in denial just so that i don't sound silly? Because that *did* happen to me!
There are much more likely explanations than the Mandela effect though. I'm thinking optical illusions or a hallucination. Optical illusions can be caused by something as simple as light hitting the wrong way. Halluciantions are not limited to the mentally ill either, humans are known to hallucinate when under stress and duress. For example, lack of sleep or in grieving. Certain neurodivergent conditions can do something similar to what you described too, like dyslexia.
@@arowace498 No, my case has nothing to do with illusions of any sort. I know it's hard to believe this to be legit because i was a skeptic too (until i had proof). In fact, something happened in my life that made me very susceptible these glitches (5 years ago) and the things i found out rocked my whole view of this world. My story would be long and here isn't the place. Drop a mail or some contact and i can share it.
I've been in many of these groups myself for many many years and fear I recognize a post or two here lol However I cant agree with your thoughts in the video where a majority of individuals in these groups are "right wing" types. In my experience its been quite the opposite and have a plethora of screenshots ive kept for more or less the same reasons you have.
