What do Tilderinos theorize regarding the Mandela Effect?
I came across this phenomenon naturally once again when I saw an article asking why people thought a cornucopia was once a part of the Fruit of the Loom logo, going on to describe the Mandela Effect. I was flabbergasted as my mother frequently bought me this underwear brand throughout the 90s and I distinctly remember the logo being that way. Specifically as rendered in this image. The company says this was never the case and yet thousands remember it to be true and more disturbing still, there are articles going back decades that describe the logo having a cornucopia. (Conspiracy theorists call this 'residue', or the lingering of the 'truth' after some psychic or interdimensional catastrophe)
Now with other cases of this phenomenon, I'm skeptical. So what if so many kids misremembered how a childhood book series was spelled (Berenstein/Berenstain) or misattributed when a famous person died.
This Fruit of the Loom one rocked my world. Is this mass hysteria? Government conspiracy? Time traveler interference? Parallel universes colliding?
I'm not really sold on any of it and normally I'm a skeptic who believes in rationality and generally agrees with Occam's Razor. This underwear logo though...it scared me.
People have extremely imperfect memory and choose to romanticize an elaborate story about why their memories are incorrect rather than admit that their memories aren’t perfect.
That’s all.
Yeah, I don't remember the same as others, I guess. That rendered Fruit of the Loom logo looks weird to me. I only really remember the fruit. I also knew the spelling of Berenstain Bears because I always pronounced it phonetically (though, probably incorrectly). Most of the "Mandela Effect" things people being up make me just go, "ummmm, no."
My simple theory on the Berenstain bears thing:
People heard the tv show intro song sung by Dolly Parton with her southern accent and country backing music, and assumed she was pronouncing "Berenstein" with a southern twang, which their brains corrected. In actuality she was pronouncing it correctly.
I think it's just that we don't pay too much attention to the spelling, and surnames end with -stein much more often than -stain. The fact that the two look so similar makes our brains kinda autocorrect it when we aren't paying close attention to the spelling. The fact that there's record of people using "Berenstein" going back decades supports that–we were just as likely to misread it then as we are now.
Also, our memory is very fallible. It's easy to talk ourselves into believing that we know we saw something that we never actually did. See: the hot air balloon ride you went on as a kid.
Yep, Mandela effect is textbook false memory. That and we all want to be "main character." The idea that I could be faulty is more insulting than the rest of the world being right, so the world/our time must be wrong and I must be right.
Absolutely. There are real simple rational explanations for these stories that do not require multiverses or supernatural phenomena.
The one that sticks out to me is the Berenstain Bears. People remember it as Berenstein because stein is a far more common family name suffix than stain.
I find the Mandela Effect unnerving for two reasons:
It shows how malleable and unreliable human memory is. Someone says "hey, remember this thing, right? You remember it." Your brain makes a memory on the spot. Chances are very few people even thought about the Fruit of the Loom cornucopia until someone suggested the memory, and the listener's brain then makes a memory on the spot. I'm paraphrasing in a very sloppy manner here. Better info: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5248593/
It shows people's willingness to believe in tantalizing fantasy rather than face the reality that their memory is shit. Interdimensional time-travel shenanigans make the world seem more exotic and vibrant, especially if you're one of the special ones. But the truth is, we're all capable of being manipulated, even accidentally.
The fact that people would rather believe in fantasy rather than face the fact that their memory is wrong is what I find most disturbing about the Mandela Effect.
It's just human nature. If it weren't, conservative politics would look dramatically different to what it looks like today. Which is not to say it's a problem exclusive to people with conservative attitudes and beliefs.
Whoa, I'm guessing I'm not alone but this thread is the first place I learned that there's NOT a cornucopia in the Fruit of the Loom logo. So obviously I did what anyone would do and searched for vintage tighty whities on ebay and found this logo... which is not a cornucopia but does kinda look like one at first glance.
My curious side wonders how much more views vintage fruit of the loom underwear gets on eBay compared to other underwear brands because of this conspiracy theory.
My evil side wonders how much a fabricated logo on a pair of used old underwear would fetch. How unethical is to con money out of conspiracy theorists?
I guess I’d say that’s still unethical since you know you’re being disingenuous and taking advantage of someone’s misinformedess, but I’m sure some would argue that it’s a grey area.
I do question if you’d even have enough customers to make it worth your while though
Oh yeah, it is very unethical, and probably not worth the time to do it. However, it made me think of a scene from King of the Hill of a Dale ordering a hat over the phone:
Conspiracy theorists have been getting milked since they were around I guess
I mean, this is essentially what grifting is. I feel like most folks would agree that grifting is unethical
Same here. TIL
Honestly, how often did you think of the cornucopia before people started talking about it in regards to the Mandela effect? The memory is far from perfect, and humans are very vulnerable to false memories and suggestions. Other people talking about an event can be confused with one's own memory of that event. I think it's very likely that many have not given much thought to the fruit of the loom logo since they were young, and being pretty unimportant it's hard to remember much more than there was some fruit. When you hear someone ask "Do you remember the cornucopia on the fruit of the loom logo?" your brain takes that half-remembered image of a pile of fruit on your briefs or whatever and fills it in with a cornucopia, since it would absolutely make sense for something like that to be there. I think the Mandela effect is a cool phenomenon that shows how flawed human memory can be, but I think the community around it looks for all these different explanations because they are afraid to accept that their memory may be flawed. Memory makes up a big part of identity, so it's no surprise people want to feel that their memories are accurate.
Edit: s/bloom/loom
Agreed - I find it hard to take seriously anyone who claims to have a crystal-clear memory of something so inconsequential as the picture on the label in their childhood underwear. It's just not something anyone pays that much attention to, and so of course the memory gets distorted over time.
Similarly, the "original" example of the Mandela effect is regarding Nelson Mandela supposedly dying in prison in the 80s. There are many people online claiming to share this memory, but they all seem to be Americans who were young children in the 80s - i.e., people who simply would not have paid that much attention to news from South Africa. I'd be much, much more interested if an actual South African claimed to have experienced this.
This right here!
I had a manager fail to give me a discipline letter (union contract says they have 30 days otherwise it's tossed) and I found out about this discipline several months or a year later. He kept on insisting that he had an excellent memory and he remembered calling me about it. Then he checks his notes (he kept a spreadsheet as a call log and set of notes for this exact situation) and couldn't find the call. Another month or 2 goes by and I bug him again and this time he says he remembers giving me the letter in his office and he remembers it distinctly because I was angry about it. Suuure.
This guy would say he has a very good memory (in general) or that he has a crystal clear recollection or whatever similar descriptors. In dealing with the guy (as part of the union) over the years it was painfully obvious that his memory was average at best, while we watched him manufacture details. Usually it was nothing of consequence, just his recollections of doing the job (and though processes) before he went into management.
I had heard about the unreliability of witnesses before, but seeing it play out so plainly in front of your own eyes really cements how fucked up our memory can be.
So I'll just chime in here that I actually had someone ask me about this before and without telling me there was/wasn't a cornucopia in the logo and without mentioning the Mandela effect, they asked me to draw the Fruit of the Loom logo and then explained why afterwards.
I drew it (badly) with a cornucopia because that's what I remembered.
I of course don't buy the silly alternate reality stuff but I do find this sort of shared incorrect memory fake. To me it indicates there must be a reason why people remember it that way but I have no idea what it could be. With Fruit of the Loom my mind instantly thought well... maybe there's one particular country where they used a cornucopia or something and people had clothes from that factory. But not so.
There's probably another company with a fruit logo, or a common clip art or something that a lot of us saw and confused with the fruit of the loom logo.
There's also the possibility that counterfeiters played a part in this false memory. It was probably a lot easier to get away with selling counterfeit clothing before the internet became ubiquitous.
Interestingly, there's a quote from the artist of that album cover where he is sure that the logo looked like that, hence his spoofing of it. Chicken or egg?
The part that I find fascinating is the idea that it's multifaceted false memory. My own recollection is that I've never heard of this example of the Mandela Effect before and that I independently always had this memory of the logo looking this way and only am now questioning it after hearing that it's wrong. How deep does the false memory hole go?
I've never seen the Ant Bully or that Album Cover before...or have I?
Regardless of it being some conspiracy of natural or paranormal order or just the realization that our memories are quite easily manipulated and useless...either way I find it disturbing. I'm usually the one everyone in the family comes to to help recollect something but without anyone to actually verify perhaps even my "Oh I remember, X happened" and they all nod their heads, I could be implanting false memories into them at that moment.
I'm in the same boat. I think the majority of them are dumb because a lot are just misspelling things. The Fruit of the Loom logo is the hill I'll die on though. I remember being in Kmart and asking my mom what the cornucopia was and a lot of people have similar memories. Plus you have a lot of things that reference the logo like that jazz album "Flute of the Loom". I find that much harder to explain than something like simply misspelling a word or name or getting a minor detail in a movie wrong.
I too remember the horn. I have to wonder if maybe there was some competing company or a knockoff.
Or I slipped into the worst timeline. Woo.
I think the phenomenon of the mandela effect can be attributed to a mass, collective false memory formation and over time it being reinforced. I think the name of Fruit of the Loom combined with random imagery of cornucopias throughout the years of advertising on Thanksgiving planted the seed, and sometimes throughout time, this relationship was reinforced through different avenues (people talking, media representation, etc.). I think with Berenstein/Berenstain, someone couldn't pronounce the name correctly and it was a common enough experience to be shared with other people, that it stuck.
The bottom line is that @Akir is right in that memory is imperfect. Our brain constantly fills in the gaps with our senses and our minds to save energy and due to limitations in data processing. For example, I have a plate full of biscuit crumbs in front of me. I can see there are many crumbs, but I don't know the exact amount. If I look away, I am not going to know there are biscuit crumbs, but I am not going to know what general shape they are in. I could draw you a picture of the plate of biscuit crumbs, but it isn't going to be exact, or close.
We have limited ability to process the world around us and our brain takes a lot of shortcuts. It is not unreasonable to believe that we are similar enough that we all take very similar shortcuts due to similar stimuli we experience.
When I think of America pre 2000's, I see we had a much more cohesive and relatable world across the entire country. We shared a culture that is much less cohesive now. So this phenomenon may not be as present in a post-internet world. Maybe we could test this hypothesis by studying this effect in cultures that are even more collective, such as those found in Asia?
I've always assumed it's related to the Illusory Truth Effect
Governments and companies definitely employ this effect to change the narrative around bad press.
I think mostly it's simply people posting on the internet about things they misremember. If it gets picked up and repeated enough you'll get the Mandela effect. Don't forget there are also plenty of trolls who will willingly lie, edit pictures or videos and do whatever else they can for the lulz.
For example I can't imagine a valid reason why Fruit of the Loom would say there was never a cornucopia. I'm not saying they aren't lying. But what do they stand to lose or gain from lying about this?
I think you've just come across one such example that's snowballed enough that it's gained traction and you've become aware of it.
I'm diving into murky water now. If someone knowledgable can back it up or disprove I'd appreciate any feedback. Our memories are not accurate. I also remember reading somewhere that every time we access our long-term memory it can (and maybe even always does) get altered according to our current situation, state of mind and other brain connections we've formed . I vividly remember seeing a monkey on the roof of house a few doors down when I young and went out with my family. My parents both said it never happened but there was rumour among schoolkids going around that a family nearby had a pet monkey. Again my parents say that wasn't true either. I remember it though.
Re: reading something about every time you access a memory it can/does get altered, could you be thinking of this Radiolab episode about memory? It’s been years since I’ve listened to it, but I remember (hah) a segment where they compared accessing memories to a tape being overwritten (or maybe degraded?) over time. I’ll have to give it a listen tomorrow, as I’ve thought of that part of the episode often when it comes to memory but now am having trouble remembering the fine details!
In fact I didn't read about it. I used to teach English (ESL) to a Professor whose PhD was related to neuron behaviour.
Of the many things she told me about were this effect. If I remember correctly it's concerned with the way neural pathways change over time and both creating and recalling memories affect the memory.
The other thing that absolutely blew my mind (ha ha) was when she told me about the effects of mirror neurons.
Really looking forward now to listening to that Radiolab episode.
The Mandela Effect selects for people who forcibly misinterpreted or misremembered the past, either through their own efforts or the efforts of others. The cornucopia was a brown thing between the fruit, but it was leaves. The evidence suggests a forced misunderstanding rather than a post-Harambe alternate dimension.
Sinbad's Aladdin movie? He did a block of movies on TNT dressed in middle eastern attire. I distictly remember seeing that. Funnily enough this one didn't work on me because while I saw Kazaam and First Kid, I never had any cross-polination with them.
I have a fun Berenstain Bears story, actually. When I was the age to read those books I knew a little cursive as my older brother was learning it in school. I always struggled with the title of these books because of that funny A, and when I asked my dad's girlfriend one day she insisted it was an E. I didn't buy it but she was an adult so I believed her. And she believed somebody else or even just herself when she misread it. It tripped me out when I saw the books again when I was older and people were talking about it because I fucking knew it was an A, and had asked to confirm what it looked like.
And the death of Nelson Mandela? Back then if you didn't know it you checked a book, likely an encyclopedia. Who is doing that when idly thinking about a foreign world leader in the 1990s? Bobby McFerrin died a few times as well, but he's still alive. Is it a conspiracy or does collective memory and perception mess up occasionally in the presence of unverified rumor? I have experience that directly suggests the latter.
My theory is that the Mandela Effect is just a fancy name for a collection of issues related to memory and false information. It is supposed to refer to a collective false memory, which would suggest that people independently remember things wrongly but in the same way. While I'm sure this happens, it's probably impossible to tell to what extent it happens because you can't tell whether people are remembering something completely independently or whether they have been influenced by other people's misinformation.
A lot of the examples of the Mandela Effect are also in the realm of urban myths, conspiracy theories, lies intended to deceive, and humorous distortions of the truth. Famous lines like "Play it again, Sam" and "Do you feel lucky, punk?" have been used to show the Mandela Effect in action (neither of these lines are the correct quotes), but are they really collective false memories? Or were they just misquoted early on and repeated so often that now lots of people think they are the correct quotes?
Memory is certainly very imperfect, but how do we know when we are actually dealing with memory problems and not just misinformation passed down and disseminated?
With quotes like this specifically, people gotta realize too that there are people will hear them and repeat them without even seeing the original. This cultural osmosis makes misquotes way more likely to propagate.
I do remember that Nelson Mandela died in prison. I was pretty young and heard it by a classmate. I don't know where he had it from.
I'm convinced that it was disinformation he read or saw somewhere.
It's weird for me because I ONLY remember the Cornucopia, going back to the 1970s. Until I heard about this new controversy I didn't even know they changed logos, I thought it was STILL the Cornucopia.
I remember asking my mom about the cornucopia underwear around Thanksgiving, many years before this Mandela Effect thing was a thing. She had no idea what I was talking about.
My hypothesis is that as brains develop, they become better at separating wholes into parts and the cornucopia thing is an artifact of this. We look back and think this detail was significant and so surely it must be true, but it's only significant to us now. I think we confuse a lot of stuff when we're young because we can't tell this from that. We see cornucopias with fruit and a general collection of fruit as more similar when we're young.
Another example, when I was maybe 5-6 years old, I told the mall Santa I wanted the "marble game." Turns out there are multiple different marble games. I wanted the marble run toy--where you drop marbles in and they roll down all kinds of chutes and funnels. I got Hungry Hippo, which was fun, but not what I wanted. In the eyes of 6 year old me, there was only one kind of marble game, how could Santa not know?
That said, I find any expectation of reality's consistency to be unhealthy. I'm firmly in the hope for the best, plan for the worst camp on that one.
I swear just a moment ago this thread referred to us as Tilders, rather than Tilderinos...
I must've shifted dimensions, it's the most logical answer ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Topic Loglocated on the sidebar (click it show all the edits and who made them).With the Fruit of the Loom cornucopia thing though, there literally is an image of the logo that somebody made showing it with a cornucopia. It's a fake, it's not the real logo and never was, BUT that could conceivably be somebody's early experience with it, without even knowing it's a fake. Then they'd hear later on that it's not real, look it up and be like, "I swear, I've seen it with the cornucopia before!" And the internet will be like, "Nope, that was the Mandela effect." Meanwhile, they actually did experience it and it's not really the Mandela effect, but they're getting convinced that their memories are bad. Similar to misquotes that just get endlessly repeated until people assume the misquote is the real quote.
In the nineties some logos had something brown in the background, I believe that's wheres the confusion comes from. I think it's whine leaves or something
Examples I found online
Love Captain Disillusion's video on it.
I think our brains are very complex pattern recognition machines and this is just one of the ways that thing can go awry. Similar to having feelings of deja vu and prescient dreaming. Brains are doing an enormous amount of work filtering and categorizing sensory information beneath our conscious experience of things. Any/every possible fuckup happens at some point or another - a memory is incorrectly associated with a place, one memory is mixed up with another, part of a memory was actually a dream, etc etc.
With something like the Mandela effect, I tend to assume its an unconscious fuckup of pattern recognition, I guess is the best way to put it. May not have the necessary info to say much more than that, but in general that's how I choose to understand those sorts of phenomena.
That it happens with a bunch of people makes sense from that angle. We're all people. Got relatively the same hardware chuggin along. The more of us there are, the more often we'd see it, is my assumption there.
I agree with most that the Mandela Effect is simply a misunderstanding or misremembering of history that has propogated memetically.
One of the best X-Files episodes in my opinion explores the Mandela effect. Season 11's "The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat" by Darin Morgan is an over the top meta breakdown and self-parody of the X-Files involving a forgotten 3rd member of the X-Files, Alien Trump and an acapella version of the X-Files theme. Highly suggested viewing.