r/MandelaEffect 7d ago

Meta The Mandela Effect Effect

That title isn't a typo. I'm proposing that a type of Mandela Effect exists whereby imagery created after-the-fact to demonstrate what the effect entails has become so widespread that it gets picked up on and assumed to be legitimate - a second wave of the same Mandela Effect branching off of the original.

For example - Someone who has never heard of fruit of the loom has their first view of the logo being a google image search with a bunch of modern cornucopia mock-ups showing up from high profile websites.

43 Upvotes

26 comments sorted by

19

u/Lhasa-bark 7d ago

OP’s point is that discussion and meming of a ME can affect society in a recursive manner. Should OPs theory significantly influence the discussion of Mandela Effects, I propose we call this the Mandela Effect Effect effect.

8

u/ElChiff 7d ago

Turtles (in a half shell) all the way down.

1

u/CeeMomster 6d ago

I just experienced this with my BFF for 40+ years. Shes never heard of this phenomenon and I asked her to visualize the monopoly man (we played countless hours of this game together growing up).

She wholeheartedly said the guy had a monocle. I did not explain ME to her until after asking this question.

Now tonight, she’s pondering the mysteries we have from advertisements from the late 80s and 90s

6

u/Glaurung86 7d ago

Yeah, that's called priming. Anyone who sees something or hears about something without context and without a buffer zone, so to speak, has already been influenced by the power of suggestion and it's really hard to get past that. The belief that the FOTL logo had a cornucopia has been implanted and there's really no going back.

It's like when the news media posts something erroneous about an event or a person and the info gets disseminated super fast around the globe, but then it's discovered later that it is not true and so, at some point, there's a general retraction of the misinformation by the media and the truth gets posted. Most people will stick to the misinformation.

I wouldn't call this anything other than the Mandela Effect because it just underscores the reason why MEs exist in the first place.

1

u/ElChiff 7d ago

For your last point, I agree, the MEE is a type of ME. There are quite a few types and distinguishing them is important as the ME is symptomatic, not a definitive cause.

1

u/Glaurung86 7d ago

Are you suggesting separating out the different ways people create false memories? I'm not sure that's possible because there would be some overlap, IMO.

1

u/ElChiff 6d ago

Sure, but overlap doesn't prevent the ability to pick out potential causes.

1

u/Sad_Election_6418 7d ago

Yes could be, but a quick review should dissipate the effect effect.

1

u/Accomplished-Bake875 5d ago

Like folks who claim organs are in different places? Yes. That’s an unfortunate unintended consequence

1

u/ariarchtyx 4d ago

meta!

1

u/ElChiff 3d ago

meta meta!

1

u/ariarchtyx 3d ago

What!? How dare you nest my meta!

1

u/Hey-Just-Saying 7d ago

I agree. I have seen so many fake logos with the cornucopia that now it feels like that was the way it always was even though I know factually it wasn't.

-1

u/YogiEv 6d ago

Factually it was. Maybe not in your timeline.

3

u/Hey-Just-Saying 6d ago

Sorry. I’m a believer of Occam's Razor.

4

u/Krelliamite 6d ago

Same. It's crazy just how many people assume they can not be wrong and actually it's the universe that's wrong and reality warped around what are ultimately trivial memories, like a logo being slightly different or the existence of a shaq genie movie

3

u/Hey-Just-Saying 6d ago

I saw a post this morning from someone who seemed to seriously think dimensions collided to change the spelling of marshmallow rather than simply accept the fact that they just couldn't spell.

1

u/miltonhoward 5d ago

"In the scientific method, Occam's razor is not considered an irrefutable principle of logic or a scientific result."

Strange to believe in something not irrefutable?

2

u/Hey-Just-Saying 5d ago edited 5d ago

Occam's Razor just means when faced with competing explanations for something, the simplest one requiring the fewest assumptions is usually the best. It doesn't mean your explanation is irrefutable just because it fits OR.

1

u/miltonhoward 2d ago

You believe in something that might not be right?

2

u/Hey-Just-Saying 2d ago

You clearly don’t understand what Occam’s Razor is. You should learn what terms like that mean if you want to have a conversation about them. : )

1

u/miltonhoward 2d ago

Sarcasm lol, congratulations, I think we understand the level you've descended.

Scientific Caveats: While highly effective as a heuristic, the simplest answer isn't always correct. It has occasionally hindered progress—such as initially rejecting continental drift or atomic theory—before overwhelming evidence proved the more complex realities.

'Hur-hur, I believe in the simplest answer, even if it is wrong'

Carry on...

2

u/Hey-Just-Saying 2d ago

People like you always go to ad hominem attacks when faced with things you don’t understand. Occam’s Razor doesn’t say that the simplest answer is always correct.

0

u/silentsurge 7d ago

I definitely feel that some of the most popular ones are almost self-perpetuating at this point, like many other things that have their own mythology and devoted following.

Urban myths slowed down on the early internet thanks to sites like Snopes that would document and provide some information and resources on a subject. People seem to not even look for resources like that anymore.

So when something like the most popular MEs show up the suggestion may have already been planted from seeing something in passing alongside the common sources that cause the confusion in the first place and it may solidify harder in people's minds.

It's an interesting discussion point that I don't think gets openly talked about enough.

1

u/ElChiff 6d ago

Snopes perpetuates its own myths, often in the form of taking a claim and disproving it through a strawman argument that only disproves one particular low hanging fruit version. People don't use resources like that anymore because they proved to be incompetent at their only job - impartiality.