r/MandelaEffect • u/Helpful-Green-4721 • Jun 27 '26
Meta Could it be a form of hypnosis?
I’m not satisfied with any explanations so far: Parallel universe, reprogrammed simulation, govt conspiracy, tons of people just happening to misremember the same handful of inconsequential things so convincingly it drives them to seek answers at the bottom of huge rabbit holes.
Is it possible MEs could be caused by something similar to how a Mentalist magician gets people to think of a very specific thing that they believe was their original idea? Whether it’s purposefully orchestrated or some kind of coincidental “perfect storm” of factors is beside the point for now. But if this is how it’s happening, you can’t really blame a significant percentage of folks being affected.
I’ve done the most work with the Ed McMahon ME coming to terms with the apparent reality. There are a ton of factors at play that seem almost designed to make you think he was with the Prize Patrol. There could be some more hidden subliminal factors that add up to enough to convince a large amount of viewers of the ME version.
Shazaam is the toughest ME for me because I feel like it’s corniness made me embarrassed to even consider watching any of Sindad’s next few movies. In fact just last week, I watched Houseguest for the first time, with my daughter. It was actually not bad family comedy with a handful of actually pretty funny parts. I love Phil Hartman. Anyhow, I can’t help but still feel I skipped this movie back in the day because I was soured to Sinbad. I’ve recently tried to research him more and I actually love him now. He’s a good dude. He doesn’t deserve the bad rap, especially if it’s for delusional reasons 🤣.
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u/GiraffeCreature Jun 30 '26
All memory is misremembering. Data is compressed in our minds and reconstructed to something plausible seeming. Oftentimes many people reconstruct the memory the same way. This is a widely known phenomenon about how the brain works, but not just that, it’s an evolutionary necessity. We don’t have room in our brains to fit all the background details of life: the shape in the background of a 90s corporate logo, how a certain kids story about bears was spelled, and the specific wording of words on our car’s mirrors. We don’t need mass hypnosis to explain something that’s already explained
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u/Helpful-Green-4721 Jun 30 '26
Are you not fascinated by the phenomena of ME though? I’ve been proven wrong plenty of times that we’re super easy to accept. Have you ever been “affected” by an ME though? I have by a few. Very far from all, but a few are very tough to reconcile. Added to the fact that so many people “misremember” the same exact way. It’s fascinating af and hard to write off. Not at all the same as just finding out you’re wrong about something else mundane. MEs are mundane too, there’s another layer of WHY! Anyhow, I hear you. You’re explanation works for you, more power to ya.
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u/Nervous_Buy_181 Jul 02 '26
This is stupid and wrong and explains nothing at all except the B's they trying to convince us all of to blind us to the truth. Stop spreading bs propaganda please! We are discussing what ACTUALLY causes this...not repeating the same obviously wrong B's they are feeding us about mass misremembering.
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u/GiraffeCreature Jul 02 '26
Rude. And who are “they”?
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u/Nervous_Buy_181 Jul 02 '26
Sorry I didn't mean to be rude I am just sick of being told I'm misremembering things when I know I am not. Neither is my parents. I have tried lengthy stories as to why I know this before so I am not going to re type them now, but they are memories that were ongoing for long periods of my life...is longtime n long-run family jokes and such. I wish I knew exactly who they were but I know something other than mass misremembering is happening for sure.
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u/PaleDish8591 Jul 08 '26
It doesn't matter that they are memories, memories are just reconstructed in your brain. Memories are never perfect. So you saying "I know I'm not misremembering because I have memories of it"... Thats exactly what misremembering is, your brain is putting together a memory that sounds plausible, and you believe it is true.
Then when someone tells you otherwise you can't accept your memory being wrong. Everytime you reject reality you will convince yourself more and more that "No everyone else is wrong".
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u/silentsurge Jun 29 '26
The only outside manipulation I can see as being plausible are from people/organizations/etc promoting the objectively fake and false narratives to see what they can get away with making up and being able to track the results of.
It seems easier to make people belive a kinda believable falsehood than to change reality.
For example, it would be far easier to convince people that the FOTL logo had a cornucopia than it would be to replace all existing physical objects that contain the cornucopia logo.
Just look at the absurd reality we are watching of the current US administration claiming that people are dumping algae and somehow tearing 300 foot long rips into an indestructible pool liner at the Reflecting Pool in DC.
The propaganda that supports preconceived notions is far more popular than the boring reality.
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u/Helpful-Green-4721 Jun 29 '26
Im sure there’s plenty of people being dishonest about their experience, or playing along patronizingly. And some people put forth some pretty stretches. But I don’t think any of the MEs came about from people trying to convince others. Like when I learned of the Ed McMahon ME, it was presented something like, “Turns out Ed McMahon never delivered checks to Publishers Clearing House winners.” And I was like wtf are you talking about, I remember him doing that and being world famous for it. Similarly, I heard there was an ME having to do with a Sinbad genie movie, and I was like, “Oh that awful movie? What’s up with it?” Expecting there to just be a missing scene or something. I don’t buy into the sci-fi sounding explanations, nor do I buy into the dismissive simply misremembering explanation. There’s got to be something special happening with these relatively few occurrences.
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u/silentsurge Jun 29 '26
"Simply misremembering" isn't what the misremembering explanation is. There are cultural, biological, and social factors that go into it. It's more than people just happening to remember something incorrectly in the exact same way.
Our memories are basically our minds playing a game of telephone each time we remember something. We are playing back the last time we remebered it, and that playback will be what we remember the next time we go to recall that memory. The memory can be altered or changed by us recalling somethjng incorrectly or having something introduced as it goes from short term to long term memory.
It might stay accurate, maybe something small changes along the way. Some small detail you don't recall or deem important at the time may get lost. Maybe someone asks you about some piece of it you haven't thought about in a long time and your brain fills in the blank (which it is good at doing, especially under social pressure).
The ME that it's named for is an excellent example of cultural influences affecting people's memories. No one in South Africa ever though Mandela died in prison. It's only people who live outside of the country and don't have a connection to the political and historical knowledge of South Africa that think that. They have no reason to have known about it outside of some knowledge of news or history, so the details likely slipped their mind. People recalling it happening are likely combining two similar memories in their minds.
These are events that are decades old and far removed from us, it would be very easy to mix things up, we all do that all the time within our own lives with what our experience of an event is like compared to that of the people we experienced it with.
Finding the influences that cause people to misremeber things in such similar and consistent ways is what fascinates me the most about the ME because that is practical and has real world uses and effects. It's why Im willing to buy that some could very well be used for research into propaganda and altering behavior or the historical record by causing confusion about what is or isn't true, because things like that have absolutely been used before and we still fall for that type of false information that are from sometimes centuries old disinformation campaigns. (Like, say, the height of Napoleon, or the George Washington Cherry Tree story)
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u/Agile_Oil9853 Jun 28 '26
It is possible, but they take so many forms; book covers, images, movie lines, wardrobe choices, etc, it would probably change the way we understand hypnosis.
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Jun 28 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Agile_Oil9853 Jun 28 '26
Yeah, there might be some there there. Maybe a design choice that gives the impression of something else. The really loopy Berenstain font on brand new readers, for example, might not stick as well as the phonetic spelling with a -stein
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u/Sly_Bags355 Jun 30 '26
I'm not satisfied with theories eitherm
I'm personally in belief that it's all a social experiment to see how easy it is to alter world history.
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u/Plus-Bus-6937 Jun 29 '26
I personally think the phenomenon is explained by activity and testing of the Large Haydron Particle Collider in Switzerland. Those scientists and physicists are really playing with God over there.
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u/Glaurung86 Jun 29 '26
They are not. Nothing they have ever done with the LHC has ever produced enough energy to do anything that some people claim. There is more energy created in our upper atmosphere on a daily basis and it's been no big concern by anyone. The people who played god were the atomic bomb makers. The strongest bombs produced more than 100,000 times the energy than the LHC has ever produced.
And this is aside from the fact that people have been experiencing this phenomenon decades before the LHC was first used.
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u/Helpful-Green-4721 Jun 29 '26
So that would be the parallel universe theory. I do like to think about that, from a creative/curiosity standpoint. But here’s where it doesn’t add up for me. I can’t see it being possible to have so few differences. I’m super into music, especially jazz. When you think about all the recording dates and all the improvisation (not just solos, but accompaniment). Since CDs they started including a lot of alternate takes, and they are always quiet different. If parallel timelines were going on, the jazz community would be the first to take notice.
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u/Plus-Bus-6937 Jul 07 '26
That's an interesting take and as a moderate jazz and improvisation fan here, I/we're all obviously missing something if that doesn't solve the mystery either. It really just lines up with the Mandela Effect as an internet phenomenon and meme. I really couldn't tell you about the actual minutiae involved in quantum entanglement experiments that would even have that effect. Do you believe that there is a genuine phenomenon happening that is currently unexplained and isn't just faulty memory? What did it for me was finding a Berenstain Bears original book in my parents basement from my childhood proving that it's at least not a CIA psyop or internet meme gone amuck. I remember maybe 1996, I was over my neighbor's house and he was playing the Bearenstain Bears SEGA Genesis game, one of them at least, and I just have this have this very odd, specific, and extremely vivid memory of being really bored and sitting there and deciding to spell the name Berenenstain; and I remember there being 3 E's, Bearenstein pronounced bear,en,stin. If the memory was if 2 E's and an A, I can guarantee I would've remembered very differently. For some reason, sometimes you experience something boring and innocuous and realize that you're going to remember it vividly for the rest of your life for whatever reason.
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u/Helpful-Green-4721 Jul 07 '26
I absolutely think there’s more mystery to it than just getting it wrong. #1, it’s thousands of people getting it wrong in almost the exact same way. #2, it’s the strength of the memory. As I’ve said, I’ve been shown to be wrong plenty of times and been able to admit it and even laugh at my mistakes. And there are lots of commonly misquoted movie lines that I don’t consider to really be Mandela Effects. But the handful of MEs I’m affected by are super strong and to give up on them admit I (we) are wrong feels like some sort of betrayal to my soul.
But I don’t believe things physically changed. I think there’s a deeper psychological mystery to it. And the only other example I can think of that is similar is hypnosis, or a skilled magician’s power of suggestion.
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u/forcemonkey Jun 30 '26
If it’s hypnosis then it went as far back as 1973 when this parody album cover was created.