I know a lot of people out there make videos on a wide variety of topics, and there is a Mandela Effect community on YouTube. I check in on that from time to time. I see a lot of grasping at straws with stuff, but I've seen enough to make me wonder if there is truth to it.
When I say that, I'm not losing sleep over this topic. Life goes on. I'm not stressing hard on the whole thing, but I'm not dismissing it because I've got better things to do with my life as some people would say. Occasionally, I engage my curiosity on the subject.
Two examples of Mandela Effects that strike a nerve with me are Morpheus supposedly never saying the line "What if I told you" in the movie The Matrix when he is explaining to Neo what is really going on in the world. Also, there's this whole deal where Ed McMahon never worked for Publishers Clearing House.
I vividly remember that being the case, because comedians used to tell jokes about it, while Ed was still working for the company. Not jokes being told years later, but while he was working for the company. What am I saying? It's weird, and it feels wrong.
Let me ask you this question before you attempt to shoot me down. I'm sure most people will see it the way it's presented, but I'm very curious if anybody remembers it differently. Who do you remember as the romantic interest to Matthew Broderick in the movie War Games? Presently, Ally Sheedy is listed as his co-star.
Because I've been curious about what old franchises they might bring back and vandalize by "modernizing" them, I've been looking year-by-year on Wikipedia at different movies. I'm curious how much money certain movies made and what critics were saying about them and other interesting facts from the time.
Dabney Coleman came up recently for some reason, and I've always been a fan of his. He was that quintessential jerk in some movies, but he played a really cool guys in others. I really loved Short Time and Cloak and Dagger, but he was good in War Games as well.
I'm looking through the War Games Wiki and I see Ally Sheedy listed as Matthew Broderick's co-star. What the hell? I remember it differently. I remember the star of Nightmare On Elm Street 1 and 3, Heather Langenkamp, starring in this movie.
I don't think it registered with me the first time I saw the movie. I didn't think too much about it. Two or three years later, after I'd enjoyed Nightmare On Elm Street 3, I looked and saw her name in War Games. I thought it was pretty cool that she was in that movie. It's always registered in my mind since then.
One of the things skeptics do is to just flat-out say your false remembering it. Well, I'm not false remembering the memory that Heather Langenkamp was in another 1980s movie that I enjoyed.
The other thing they say is you're conflating it. This is what they say about lines from movies like "what if I told you" in The Matrix, or "no, I am your father" in Star Wars.
They claim you're just remembering it that way because pop culture started putting it out that way. Okay. I believe that's possible in the case of Star Wars, but "what if I told you" comes out of left field to me. It's not one word being misquoted in a line, it's a line that they say doesn't exist now.
I looked through the 1980s to see what else Heather had done. Maybe I'm remembering it differently? Rumble Fish and The Outsiders could be possible movies, but I never watched either one of those movies.
I remember thinking the The Outsiders just didn't interest me, even though I remember other people loving the movie. There is no movie for me to have confused her in. There's nothing else I would have seen her in that I enjoyed like I did War Games.
Am I saying this is a Mandela Effect? No. I'm saying it's weird. This is not how I remembered this movie. I remember her being in the movie. I remember mentally registering that she was in another movie I liked in addition to the Nightmare On Elm Street movies. I recall thinking that was cool.
The fact that there is not another movie I could have been confusing this with makes it that much stranger. I looked within the community, and nobody remembers this. I'm sure if I posted my observations, somebody might step forward and say they remembered it that way too. I was hoping to see something organic pop-up, because it would almost be confirmation that I'm not alone.
That's the thing about the Mandela Effect. Once you tell people that you've experienced it, if you get enough people to look at it, others are going to confirm what it is that you say you saw. Sure, there will be some people who genuinely remember it the way you do.
Others will vaguely remember something similar and go ahead and agree with you because it makes sense. It's a frustrating thing about the Mandela Effect, because we can't scientifically study this. It's not like we can compare timelines or that sort of thing. We can come up with possibilities, but documenting real evidence skeptics would consider is difficult to do.
For the record, War Games does have a Mandela Effect linked to it, although it didn't seem like many people agreed with it. It's when the computer asks the Matthew Broderick character, "shall we play a game?"
Others are remembering it as, "would you like to play a game?" I think there's another line people remember as well. For the record, I remember the first line. I can still hear the computer voice in my head, because I watched the movie so many times.
I totally understand people's aversion to this topic. They don't want to discuss it because they have other things to worry about. In some instances, a Mandela Effect will strike a nerve with somebody, and they realize that it's strange. They get defensive and take it personal when you push them on it.
I don't believe this is something that needs to be obsessed over. However, it doesn't hurt to look into things and try to come up with an answer that is satisfactory to the people who are looking for answers.
Telling people they are false remembering or conflating something will reassure the skeptics that the people who think something is going on are wrong, but it doesn't do anything for the people who are experiencing the phenomenon.
It's understandable that people are questioning reality these days. The fact is, our politicians, people in power and the news media lie to us so often that they make it an art form. People are seeing through the lies, and some people are taking it further and saying that everything they're being told is a lie.
This has led to people questioning whether we went to the moon or even if the Earth is flat. In fact, those two ideas along with the possibility that we're living in a simulated reality have been linked to the Mandela Effect. Personally, I think that's not the way to approach this.
The biggest question to be asked in regards to the Mandela Effect is, is this really happening? If there is enough consensus that even a few of the suggested Mandela Effects are happening, there's another question to follow.
What's making this happen? Or, why is this happening? Some people will go to their Bibles for answers.
Here is a head-scratcher for you Bible readers. What animal is it that lies down with the lamb? The answer blew me away, because what it says it is isn't what I remember. Strange days indeed.
