Mandela Effect — Glitches in the Matrix?
Written by Lekhya Reddy
The sound of the school bell echoes across the ground, bringing the students out of the reverie of the short break before the next class commenced. Ved and Arya make their way from the canteen, where the students were packed like sardines, towards the lecture halls. It was a miracle that they were able to get their hands on anything. Although they hoped to buy samosas, they settled for the chocolates and began to open them up.
“Hey, look, Arya, KitKat has a new logo.”
“Um, no Ved.”
“What do you mean Arya? Look, they removed the hyphen between the words!”
“Ved, don’t mess with me!”
“What?”
“What do you mean by ‘what’, there never was a hyphen.”
Like Ved, if you too are confused about the existence of the hyphen between ‘Kit’ and ‘Kat,’ you are not alone. The hyphen never existed, but many have an explicit memory of its presence in the logo, it is all credit to the Mandela effect.
What is the Mandela Effect?
The Mandela effect is a phenomenon that makes us question the credibility of our memories. It refers to the situation when a large section of the population believes that an event happened, while, in reality, it did not. Its power lies in that it creates a conflict between the past and one’s memory of the past.
The term first sprang up in 2009 on a website owned by the writer, paranormal consultant Fiona Broome. Broome recollected her vividly remembering news of Nelson Mandela’s death in the 1980s while in prison.
Here, things take a turn and become eerie; the death of the South African anti-apartheid leader stirred up a debate on the internet.
It is true that in 1962, Mandela was arrested on conspiracy to attempt to overthrow the government and was given a life sentence. He was released in 1990 and was soon elected the President of South Africa. He passed away in 2013, aged 95. But, people all over the world, in agreement with Broome, were convinced that Mandela had passed away in the 1980s while in prison.
Broome also argues that she remembers the sensationalization of Mandela’s ‘death’ in the 1980s, followed by speeches from his widow, and world leaders. While her claims could have been brushed off if she were the only proponent of the memory, this is not the case, as many share the same false memory.
The Internet has played its part in popularizing the existence of the phenomena, with people sharing their experiences with falsified memories. A debate ensued over the presence of the black detailing on Pikachu’s tail. This is just another case of the Mandela effect as the detailing on the Pokémon’s tail never existed. Those who thought otherwise, have fallen trap to what is considered one of the biggest conspiracy theories of the century.
A trip down memory lane can revive the nostalgia from the days when we would stay glued to the TV watching Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and Tweety go about their antics — the show beloved by many — ‘Looney Tunes’. However, a large section of the population is convinced that the name of the show is ‘Looney Toons’! This contradiction between reality and our memory is a clear-cut example of the Mandela Effect.
To drive this point home, the next time you ride shotgun in your car, looking out, enamored by the setting sun and the marmalade oranges skies, take a glimpse at the side view mirror. The words etched on to the mirror are NOT “Objects in the mirror may be closer than they appear.” Instead, the words are “Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear.”
Broome has tried to rationalize the effect. She believes that at any given instant, there are multiple realities of each Universe; within each Universe, there is a disparity among the people, objects, and events. So, essentially, our memories of an event that seemingly never took place aren’t false per se. They may have been the result of a momentary misalignment when parallel universes crossed paths.
Further, she puts forward another explanation — that the distorted memories could be a sign of our world being run by a computer. Glitches in the matrix may result in people remembering different versions of an event.
Other theories claim that the Mandela Effect stems from changes in history caused by time travelers while attempting to rectify paradoxes. Then there are claims that these distortions are caused by Satanic activities associated with black magic and witchcraft.
A common perception of the phenomena is that we have somehow been thrust into a parallel world where the false memories are true. Conspiracy theorists are under the impression that this could corroborate the multiple universe model, put forward by quantum mechanics.
Many-worlds Interpretation, MWI:
MWI is a concept that originated from quantum mechanics that advocates the existence of a single wave function for the entire Universe. It postulates that the Universe as we know it is just one of the many branches born out of the splits in parallel worlds that occur every nanosecond i.e., every time a quantum incident occurs.
This paves the way for us to believe that there exists an interminable number of universes where all bets are off if in accordance with the laws of physics. Thus, the existence of a universe with Nelson Mandela’s 1980 death isn’t an absurdity.
This proves to be a reasonable explanation of the Mandela Effect, but there’s a catch.
This theory vehemently forbids the information transfer between the universes. So, we cannot communicate with our alternate versions or transfer our consciousness from one world to another, for this would violate the laws of quantum mechanics, conservation of energy, and information.
To explain the branching of the Universe, consider an electron. If an electron spins clockwise along its axis, it refers to spin-up, else spin-down. When one studies electron spin, they are caught up in a quantum event. As suggested by MWI, a split occurs, and now there are two versions of you. One of you sees the electron spin up, the other, a spin down.
This happens in two separate universes that are closed systems, compelling the conservation of energy and information in both. In no way can information leak out from one universe to another, let alone your consciousness.
Glitches in the matrix:
Imagine yourself aboard a Federation starship. Think about the technology that works as a transporter, replicator, and holographic system. If you are thinking about the ‘Holodeck’, you Star Trek fans are right!
Similar to this is the idea that our reality is a computer simulation controlled at the cosmological level. Maybe what we remember is the result of an erroneous program, or perhaps the ones controlling it want to mess with our heads, hence the false memories.
Experts believe this to be a more plausible explanation than that proposed by MWI, as theoretically, we could be living in a simulation. But, this would imply that the simulation controls everything from your thinking to your memories, and you yourself would be a simulation.
Naturally, the presence of a glitch in any program would be followed up by its restart. We wouldn’t have the memory of this as our thinking would reset and start from scratch after the restart.
Thus the idea of the programmers playing tricks with us is ruled out unless the Mandela effect is precisely what they hope to simulate. While this theory can’t be tested, we can speculate about it.
What does Science say?
Memories are stored in neurons in our brain, with similar memories located in nearby ones. Studies have used MRIs to conclude definitively that similar words are stored in adjacent areas of our brains.
The roots of the Mandela effect lie with Mandela’s supposed “death” in the 1980s. Steve Biko, just like Mandela, was another anti-apartheid proponent, who was imprisoned around the same time as Mandela. Biko, almost as famous as Mandela himself, died in 1977, while he was in prison. This was more or less in the same timeline as Mandela’s “death.” It is probable that people actually recalled Biko’s death. Because of the similarities in Biko and Mandela’s achievements as leaders, the memories about them may have been stored in the vicinity to each other in the brain and got meddled during recall. Moreover, science says that recalling one memory may trigger other memories in the process, interweaving various situations and people, amalgamating these ‘fresh,’ fallacious memories.
The 21st century is fueled by the power of the Internet and social media, both of which have been game changers as a means of acquiring information. On the flip side, misinformation from such platforms can make it easier for false memories to be proven wrong. Websites, communities, and groups are formed around deception. False events and fallacies are more likely to be accepted when they confirm the consumer’s pre-existing opinions or share their sentiment, and facts don’t seem to alter this.
This is one reason why many attorneys and judges look down/don’t allow leading questions that suggest a specific answer. An example of the same would be the:
“Do you remember Alice stabbing Bob?”
This suggests the fact that Alice stabbed Bob to be true, creating a false memory.
It only makes sense to say that human memory is vulnerable, unreliable, and rather fickle.
A study published in the journal ‘Science Magazine’ (https://www.sciencemag.org/) analysed over 1,00,000 news stories from Twitter for over 10 years. Surprisingly, or not so surprisingly, hoaxes and rumors were 70% more accepted over the truth by the consumers. The blame doesn’t lie entirely on bots but also on people with verified accounts who spread misinformation. While there may seem no harm in holding false memories, having them stem out/reinforced by false memories can do more harm than good.
The Mandela Effect is no doubt fascinating. Maybe you skipped the 8 am class as you knew you had enough attendance. It is only when you check later that day and realize that your memory failed you. But we never know, maybe this is proof of MWI or maybe there was a glitch in the matrix. But until then, let us hope that the very existence of the Mandela effect isn’t a Mandela Effect in itself.
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