Have you ever heard of the Mandela Effect?
However, while everyone remembers this as his contribution to history, a sizeable number of people remember him dying in prison before claiming his title as President. This presents the obvious question: How could someone who died in prison, later become the President of South Africa?
Well, people have theories, and they're not what you might assume.
The Mandela Effect is the idea that multiple dimensions exist, and sometimes merge. So, when you remember something that doesn't quite match what history claims, it's not because of your faulty memory: it's because you existed in a dimension where your memory was true, and then you were integrated into a dimension that doesn't quite match what you remember.
Despite the Mandela Effect being named after the former South African President's legacy, it's best known for the namesake of the Berenstain Bears book series.
Look closely at the name of that book series. Is it spelled correctly, or do you remember it as "The Berenstein Bears"?
If you remember an "e" instead of an "a", you might just be from a different dimension, according to The Mandela Effect.
Not going to lie, when I first ran across this, it felt a little unsettling. I, like many others, knew them as the Berensteins. However, I don't place much faith in human memory or perception, and after puzzling over it for a bit, I was able to rationalize the phenomenon and come up with an argument for my belonging in this dimension, even if I remember an "e".
Most people in North America are familiar with the sound "stein" attached to surnames. "Stain" is less common. When people read, they often use mental shortcuts, such as noting the first and last letter, looking at the length of the word and assuming what it is based on past familiarity. It's a way to speed up our reading, and it's why typos so often go overlooked. With this in mind, it's easy to mistake the abnormal "a" with the familiar "e", especially since it doesn't change the length of the word. It's also often written in cursive which makes it a little less easy to read if you're not used to it. Also, there have been instances of packaging that used the "e" by mistake. So all this contributes to the common misunderstanding of this beloved children's book series.
Another example of The Mandela Effect is Darth Vader of Star Wars' iconic phrase, "Luke, I am your father."
He never said this.
What he actually said is, "No, I am your father."
This one didn't phase me much. The former sounds better in isolation, and the latter makes more sense in context. If repeated in isolation, the phrase that sounds better that way is how it will be remembered.
There are lots of these. Remember when Hannibal Lecter said "Hello Clarice" in Silence of the Lambs? Yeah, never happened. Remember the Monopoly Man's signature monocle? He's never had one.
So in general, I feel above this idea that if you misremember something it's because you're from a different dimension. Have some humility, human memory is fickle.
Until recently. I discovered an example of The Mandela Effect that shakes me to my core.
The Fruit of the Loom logo
*Shudder*
I hate to be the one to inform you, but this classic underwear logo does not, nor has it ever, existed in the fashion depicted above.
This is the current logo.
No cornucopia.
It's not a recent, simplified design either. While the logo has been modified a number of times, there is no evidence to suggest that a cornucopia has ever been featured in the design.
However, many people have distinct memories of learning what a cornucopia is from asking their parents when they saw the logo. Unlike other examples, where a memory was replaced by something more familiar, people learned about something unfamiliar with this memory.
There is a design that was used for a time, where brown leaves backed the fruit, and some people say this design is what people remember, and replace the leaves with a cornucopia. But this doesn't make sense to me, because leaves are far more familiar to most people than cornucopias.
Also, this chart has been used to see if people are consistent in selecting the same logo from their memories:
People consistently choose the first one, which implies a shared memory. The counterpoint to this is that it's the most appealing, which causes people to choose it.
Of course it's the most appealing. Because a panel of experts designed it to be appealing. Because it existed.
While people remember the visual the same, different people have different vocabularies for it. Some people remember it as a cornucopia, but others know it as the horn of plenty, or more simply, the horn. So the subjective parts of memory that would vary between families does change person by person, but everyone remembers the same visual.
I distinctly remember the cornucopia, and everything about how people remember it makes it seem legit, unlike the cases of the Berenstain Bears and Darth Vader.
And yet, there is no concrete evidence to suggest the cornucopia ever existed. In fact, there is only evidence that it didn't.
I definitely come from the cornucopia dimension.
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