The Mass Memory Discrepancy Effect

The phenomenon popularly being termed "The Mandela Effect" is characterized by a significant number of people collectively "mis remembering" Nelson Mandela being reported as dying in prison in the 80's, and not in 2013 after being released.

Anyone familiar with this, though, would recognize there is fierce disageement regarding the "mis remembering" label. This is taken to the point at which people are arguing that their memory isn't in fact faulty, and records of the original event have somehow been altered at a later point in time. In other words, the memory of the group concerned is correct and it is the physical evidence today of that event which has been changed. Although they have an alternative memory of the event, these memories are just as real to them as any others.

Fiona Broome popularized the name back in 2012 when she noticed several people being certain of his 1980's death. The term took hold after the concept was seen to apply to many other memories. Check out mandelaeffect.com for more of these.

Pyschology

With so many people claiming to remember Nelsons 80's prison demise, this is clearly an area worthy of proper investigation.

If it were just one person's false memory involved, nothing special is thought of it. Forgetfulness is normal and happens to us all, as does getting some details wrong. It could even be dismissed when it happens to a small number of people too, especially when the event took place years earlier. An example might be a few friends who later in life meet up and remember things from when they were at school together, only to find somehow the details were not accurate.

When this happens to many people, however, we are seeing the Mass Memory Discrepancy Effect (MMDE) in action. The internet is making this easier to identify and discuss, but still proper research and references are not organised centrally. That's where Alternate Memories comes in - a place to register each of these incidents in a controlled, central way whilst allowing discussion and further investigation to help find some answers. It's not only the Mandela Effect type discrepancies that are of interest here - often "memes" become ingrained in the public consciousness which most people actually know never happened, a good example being "Beam me up Scotty!".

The Mandela Effect database

With so many reported incidents, the need to study them required a classification system.To facilitate this, a process was created to assign each eligible one a reference id and add it to the database, which this site documents. A process was created whereby each was vetted, a broad category was assigned to it and an AM Ref id allocated. It also was automatically entered into a pool in a form which facilitated later retrieval in a survey.

The survey was publicly made available in Jan 2018. Analytics from this survey were produced daily and published on the same site. All this data is anonymous and largely automated, i.e. new entries to the main database automatically become questions in the survey.

The goal of the site is to facilitate analysis into the Mandela Effect by promoting the search for any identifiable patterns.

Trademarks and Copyright

This site serves to document and reference Mass Memory Discrepancy Effect incidents of the kind popularised by "The Mandela Effect". Purely to illustrate this phenomenon and for research and educational purposes, some images and quotes may be shown relevant to the incident in question. All copyright and ownership rights of these remain solely with the original owner. Fair use applies, and in no way is this site attempting to pass off or imitate the material it appears alongside to illustrate. 

#mandelaeffect #alternatememories #mmde