I poked into this a little. Not a “Fatimah Sun” level investigation, more like “will a couple Google searches confirm my funny hypothesis.”
Firstly it’s possibly less old than you might think: it was first described in 2009 by paranormal researcher Fiona Broome. It refers to the widespread belief that Nelson Mandela died in prison, when in reality he was alive when this widespread belief was being believed.
But is that actually a widespread belief? Well, Broome had this mis-memory herself, and interviewed others who also had this mis-memory. Her archive of interviews is presently offline, and I’m not positive she didn’t pose her question simply like, “hey did you think Nelson Mandela died in prison?” and she could probably get a few hundred yes’s that way.
The Mandela effect was, disappointingly, not hallucinated into existence. Now THAT would have been cool. But its eponymous effect was. So, the effect that the Mandela effect is named after is a Mandela effect.
Is the Mandela effect a Mandela effect?
I poked into this a little. Not a “Fatimah Sun” level investigation, more like “will a couple Google searches confirm my funny hypothesis.”
Firstly it’s possibly less old than you might think: it was first described in 2009 by paranormal researcher Fiona Broome. It refers to the widespread belief that Nelson Mandela died in prison, when in reality he was alive when this widespread belief was being believed.
But is that actually a widespread belief? Well, Broome had this mis-memory herself, and interviewed others who also had this mis-memory. Her archive of interviews is presently offline, and I’m not positive she didn’t pose her question simply like, “hey did you think Nelson Mandela died in prison?” and she could probably get a few hundred yes’s that way.
The Mandela effect was, disappointingly, not hallucinated into existence. Now THAT would have been cool. But its eponymous effect was. So, the effect that the Mandela effect is named after is a Mandela effect.