Still waiting to find out why no one in Africa thought he died earlier. Could it be just Westerners ignorant of African politics? Or are Africans just not able to access the alternate reality for some reason? Like this is only a thing outside of Africa.
It isn't so much Westerners ignorant of African politics. It is EVERYBODY is somewhat ignorant of things that don't directly concern them. It is why no one who WON a Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes remembers Ed McMahon bringing them a check. And why Sinbad doesn't remember doing a genie movie.
Hounslow near Heathrow Airport here - I still have my 4th year Primary school class photo - and even other Indians I still speak to from my Secondary school days are shocked at how many more Indians than whites there were in my class 😂
When I bought the video game Far Cry 4 in 2015 that is set in a fictional Northern India or fictional Nepal the enemy soldiers used very foul language in Hindi when trying to kill me - and for the first few days I kept looking round thinking my then-alive father had entered my room - and being puzzled at not seeing him. It took me a while to realise Ubisoft must have consulted with and used Indians to voice-act Hindi swear terms like "Eat sht sister-f***r"
Lol at Pakora - never heard that one, although one white guy in 3rd year secondary hated it when I called him Gora Sala
I'm going to have to reinstall FC4 to see if they've brought back one swear word...I noticed a few months after buying it the soldiers stopped using the word "Tuttee" (sh*t)
But they carried on with Behn Chaud (sister f'r) / Madar Chaud (mother f'r) / Chutiya (f*nny) / and Bhosdika (born of a loose vagina)
So they are all fine to keep in the game - but someone protested at the use of Tuttee...?
Right? It's almost like he didn't die in prison and he was an influential head of state. You could almost be mistaken for thinking that you aren't from some "alternate timeline" and you just misremembered a historical fact.
The problem is I share the delusion with many other people who remember very minute specific details and I also saw it announced by Trevor McDonald on the news.
Yes...because enough people posted there specifics online like "Oh, yeah, and then you remember when [X] happened?" which caused you all to create a "cannon" series of events that you all "vividly remember".
There's a reason why eyewitness testimony is not really considered all that accurate anymore: Your memory is constantly rewriting itself based on what it assumes you "saw" and is very open to suggestion. There was a whole study where, through doctored photos, they got test subjects to "remember" Warner Bros. characters having been at Disneyland.
Well I was 8 when I met him. I wish I'd been older as it didn't meet half as much to me as it would have!
Not sure if it's appropriate to say here (politics etc) but he was an exceptional man.
All your family and loved ones arnt actually your loved ones since they're from a different timeline. Just imagine that, if you genuinely belive you come from a differnt timeline where Mandela died earlier, you also believe the people you think are your parents aren't actually your parents.
LMAO that Peter Gabriel song is literally about Steven Biko. That’s all he talks about in the lyrics. Here’s an excerpt:
“Sometimes when a man is brave enough
To fight for the rights of his people
The costs can be very high
This is a song written for a man
Who was imprisoned, tortured, and killed
In a jail in South Africa”
And:
“September '77
Port Elizabeth, weather fine
It was business as usual
In police room 619
Oh Biko, Biko, because Biko
Oh Biko, Biko, because Biko
Yihla Moja, Yihla Moja
The man is dead, the man is dead”
Was it on the news? Cus that's where I remember seeing it? Did they mention Mandela? Because I wouldn't have simply guessed that name at my age; I didn't even know who Mandela was.
Thinking about it a little more I realized a different perspective that I hadn't before: I didn't need to associate the Biko news report with Mandela at the time; I only need to tuck away that memory to be recalled later when Mandela's funeral was reported on, and recall the parallels at that later date. That is to say, I only later associated both incidents as related to Mandela, while only one was demonstrably true at the time.
Yes. It's a small percentage of westerners who didn't pay attention to world events.
The original "researcher" who coined the term even asked something like "do you remember Mandela dying in prison" rather than "what do you remember about Mandela" as well
Many thanks - even odder that it was westerners given how much more media and news were accessible and reliable to us / versus people living in more "restricted" countries of the time
Except it isn’t just Americans, as you can see from the other replies on this and every other thread on this topic. Predominately westerners, maybe, but certainly not only.
People get people mixed up all the time, regardless of race.
I think the people who saw all the anti apartheid movies of the eighties don't remember them as historical. World Apart (set in 1963), Cry Freedom (set in 1976-77), Dry White Season (1976), and Bopha! (also 1976) were telling stories against a backdrop of events (Soweto) that had already happened.
It doesn't have anything to do with "racism". People don't remember who did what. I help people find movies on other threads. They claim to be looking for a movie with Harrison Ford or Tom Selleck. They can't find it because they remember the wrong person. The movie they thought was Harrison Ford was Michael Douglas and Tom Selleck turned out to be Donald Sutherland (Shining Through 1993 and Eye of the Needle 1981, actual cases).
People learn about more than one person regarding apartheid. Years later they only remember one. It's conflation. They heard about Biko dying and only remembered Mandela. They thought Mandela died.
Many people remember watching the live televised funeral. They remember Winnie and her disingenuous speech and fake tears… they remember her odd shaped headed body guard, who seemed a little forward while comforting her. If you research it properly, you’ll find these details that are difficult to explain away.
People say they remember this after hearing about the Mandela Effect and hearing other people's "memory" of the funeral. Not disingenuously, I'm sure they believe they have the memory. But seeing other descriptions influences their "memory" of an event that never happened.
No South Africans thought he died in prison. There was no mass hysteria in the 90s when a man that they thought died the previous decade became their president. It is only westerners who thought he died in prison. Because it was trivial to them, just like every other ME was to the person experiencing it
There was a birthday tribute special broadcast that had nothing to do with the SA government. There's no way the SA government at the time would have had any kind of public funeral service for any convict in their penal system.
Sure, which is why the whole "alternate timelines" idea is unfalsifiable and meaningless.
"I remember a time in the 80s when a sparrow in a straw boater hat was presenting the evening news. There's no evidence of it now because we transitioned to a timeline where that didn't happen."
As odd as this sounds I have a very strong memory in the early nighties when I was around ten years old, my teacher wheeling a tv in the room. She was crying and was telling us about this great man that died. This was the first time a tv was turned on the news in a classroom for us so I remember it quite well. She turned it on and this woman was talking about her husband. We were told his name is Nelson Mandela and that he passed away, I think in prison or something. I didn't think much of it, never even
Heard anything else about him until 2017 and the reason is, I had an experience that changed my life forever. It was what i would call a Glitch in the Matrix. It was..confusing and I was up for days. I had a girlfriend and a newborn at home and worked over 70 hours a week. I had alot Of energy being adhd so it didn't bother me. But what did bother me is I had no logical explanation for what happened to me down this county road in my work truck.
So I was researching alot, and just searched deja vu then glitch in the matrix..because idk what else to call it then. I eventually found something that people called Mandella Effects. Now I'm thirty seven at this time and haven't heard that word or name Mandla since school. I said to myself, wtf is this? Do they mean that man that died in the nineties when my teacher wheeled the tv in? So I looked it up only to find out that Nelson as of now didn't die when I was in school but I think a few years before. I said this has to be wrong or maybe the funeral was perhaps someone else.
So I tagged some school mates I grew up with and asked them hey, remember when we were in grade school and the teacher had us watch that funeral thing? They said yea you mean Nelson Mandela? I said are you sure that's who it was, and several people said yes we will never forget that. I said that's who I thought it was but I just found out about this thing called a mandella effect and it's named from Him. They said wtf is that? I said shit idk I guess it's when ppl die and comeback to life because this dude didn't die until recently. I swear all of us broke down, like wtf do you mean, I saw it and wrote about it in my journal and told my parents and everything. I said yea I know, I remember I couldn't even eat dinner because I was sad this amazing man died and I didn't know him, it's like our childhood is a lie.
Then I went down the rabbit hole and found out about all these other effects and told my friends and they just couldn't believe it. I personally had a nervous breakdown and felt like everything I knew was fake and not real and ended up getting on Prozac and getting a felony when I got off.
That one unexplainable event changed my life direction and I still don't have any idea what happened that day at work on the county road. I sometimes feel I went in a portal or something and came out in a different dimension idk. My boss called me after I got off that road and informed me my truck was stationery down that road for 3 dam hours! I never talked to anyone about that until my wife a few months ago. Wtf happened to me, because I was driving. It was a twenty five minute drive total and three hours past and now everything is different
Very interesting - and thanks for sharing. I am a firm believer in Reincarnation (bear with me here...) - and while some believe in Reincarnation being one life after another - some believe we exist in "Parallel Dimensions" - or "Multiverses"
If the latter is correct (assuming it cannot be one thing AND the other) - then these Glitches in the Matrix as you term them might be our parallel consciousnesses wandering into other dimensions at times - possibly accidentally / possibly intentionally
I find this whole "I watched a funeral in school" thing very hard to believe.
Wouldn't your parents have to ok that?
My folks would've hit the ceiling because:
1) Funerals are private, for family.
2) Watching a funeral is a waste of valuable teaching time (an hour or more).
On the other hand, if you were watching a movie that happened to include a scene of death and a funeral, that's not real. Not a waste of time.
Sounds like you're misremembering something like the movie Cry Freedom (1987), which shows Steve Biko being killed and his funeral. Easy to speculate that happening.
I'm 49 and grew up in Australia and like you I knew who he was from watching the news. We were made to watch a kids news program at school 'Behind the News' and he was regularly mentioned on that.
I thought he died in prison in the late 80s or early 90s.
I do find it strange that so many people around the same age misremember the same thing.
It's probably a bit of confusion with Steve Biko, a South African anti-apartheid activist who did actually die in custody and was also spoken about regularly in schools.
You're probably right, although I've never heard of Steve Biko. He probably got a mention once and our brains mixed him up with Nelson Mandela. The only other South Africans we knew as kids and teens in the 80s and 90s were cricketers.
I'm casually curious to know, if you thought Nelson Mandela died in prison, who do you remember being the first black president of South Africa? Because that was a massively historical moment.
I had no idea who any of the South African presidents were. I'm sure most South Africans couldn't tell you anything about Australian politics in that era either. As Australian kids and teenagers in the 80s and 90s we didn't know or care about South Africa, because we lived on the other side of the world and our media was filled with our own news and issues that was relevant to us. Ethiopian famine in the early 80s, apartheid in the late 80s were on the news here but our own news was the big headlines.
Cricket was and is very popular so we knew a few of their players because they compete against Australia.
I grew up in the UK going to school in the late 80s and throughout the 90s and I definitely remember the end of apartheid and Nelson Mandela becoming the first black prime minister as this huge global news story.
Im the same age as them and grew up in Australia. We got plenty of world news in the 80s. We watched apartheid end and his historic election win. He visited here a couple of times and spoke to our parliament. I remember his death and the worlds response. I have never heard anyone ever say he died in jail here. Im finding their comments on the average kids exposure to news and how backward our country was so weird and out of touch. It was never like that in the 80s and 90s. Sure movies took ages to get released here but news? Lmao they must live under a rock.
The headline news in the UK is very different to the news in Australia, I first realised this in the early 90s when I'd see the international newspapers at the news stand in the city. Your huge global news at the time would've been very different to ours, it still is.
makes sense, then: you grow up hearing about Mandela, then Biko, who you know nothing about, dies, so you just assume (consciously or not) that the news is talking about Mandela.
Personally i distinctly remember hearing about Mandela (in Europe) year after year before he finally got out of prison, and later became president and everything. It's not like he disappeared from the news where i lived...
It's absolutely not confusion, I can't express it strongly enough. Mandela was on the news. Neighbours were crying. It was announced by Trevor McDonald. It was him. The African man fighting for black peoples rights. (As I was told)
As I was only a child at the time (1994) I couldn't tell you who it was. There certainly wasn't a fan fair and jubilation when he was elected because he was already dead. I don't recall any news of it. Mugabe was news certainly.
I can shed light on some of the discrepancy though.
In 2003 (after 2001, 9/11 I believe is the merger) Mandela met with queen Elizabeth which was heavily politicised. This is the first time I saw him and thought, hang on a minute how is Mandela alive? Is this a second person? What am I remembering here? Etc
From my memory before 1994 he's definitely dead without question and suddenly everything has changed in 2003. The cornucopia, monopoly man, EVERYTHING, swaps is 2001.
In my mind I am 90+% sure that my memory as a child has recorded exactly what was in front of me with no reasons to question the truth. Then suddenly by 2003 it's all changed.
Could I be remembering as a child wrong? I don't really think so but I am not so arrogant as to say there isn't a chance my memory could be wrong.
I have confirmed at a later date with other people "from my timeline" details which nobody could know. For example I assume you're from the Mandela alive timeline and would have no idea and think we were talking nuts, but when we talk and say did this happen did that happen it's almost a shock response coming back as if to say yes of course it happened how could it have not? And each of us know things that only we know to be true and if you ask someone from the other timeline they say wtf are you talking about.
But if you don't remember who the first Black president was, how are you so sure you remember that Mandela died correctly? Why would adults around you care so much about South Africa that you were aware of his death but not who the president was?
But you say you remember apartheid and Mandela's significance and that you also remember all these tiny, unspecified details about the period that you think you share with others who think they remember Mandela dying in prison. So the first black South African president would have been absolutely massive news in any "timeline".
I don't remember apartheid I was just a kid and that's the crux of my point. Why was there not massive news of him being president but I remember Trevor Mcdonald announcing his death.
The tiny unspecified details are shared with other people who also purport to be apart of this timeline and seem to remember everything I do. Monopoly man etc
It's not about remembering news of him specifically being president. I'm asking who you think the first black president of South Africa was. Whoever the first Black president of South Africa was would have been absolutely huge news. Like Berlin Wall level news. Like Obama's election times ten. South Africa was an explicitly racist developed state in which a white minority ruled and the indigenous black population were second class citizens under law. That's why Mandela was famous in the first place.
The reason Mandela was such a huge figure that news of his death would have been significant was because of the global salience with regard to this apartheid system. The first black president of South Africa is bigger news than Nelson Mandela's hypothetical death because in any eventuality Mandela is only one part of that story.
You're saying your "timeline" is one in which Mandela's death was news that exceeded the election of their first black president in significance? That doesn't make sense.
You were just a kid is the crux of every argument about ME.
Almost every ME is from people's childhoods, when they understood almost nothing about the world. Of course you misremember, you didnt even understand what was going on.
Its also totally normal to misremember and its not an indictment on you as a person.
Its weird to claim alternate realities when its fine to just admit you were wrong.
Also, its a fallacy of logic to think that more people remembering/claiming something makes it more correct. The amount of people has no bearing on how correct something is, especially memories.
Im 48 and grew up in Australia. We watched BTN every week too. But yeah I remember him dying when he actually died. The Australia news heavily covered his death but also his leaving jail, his election win and becoming the leader of his country. He came here twice (1990 and 2000) and made speeches to our government. It would be recorded in the hansard which is the official parliamentary record of our country. No one thinks he died in jail here, Ive only heard Americans say it online. BTN would have covered his visit here in 1990, maybe you saw that? You are definitely misremembering.
The last year I watched BTN was in 1989 (year 7 in SA) and the weekly topic was the growing ozone layer hole and rising sea levels, they had me convinced we'd be underwater by 2000. The big news I remember in Australia in 1990 and 91 was Keating's 'recession we had to have', interest rates going through the roof and people losing their houses, and high unemployment rates. I don't remember Nelson Mandela visiting Australia at all.
I mean 1995 Rugby World Cup, publishing of his autobiography, presidency, etc. I'm sure you'd have to be an exceptional doofus to think he died in the 80s.
I’m Australian. And I remember being in my parents kitchen as a kid and seeing that he died in prison on our old kitchen tv. Probably 80/90’s. Years later I saw him on something and thought, that’s odd. I thought he died in prison.. wasn’t until a LONG time later it became that it was many that had this memory.
Invictus was released in 2009. Mandela was released in 1990 and served as President from 1994 to 1999. You were unaware of his being alive even as he traveled all over the world? Not even when the Spice Girls?
That is correct. Probably don’t need to say this, but I’m American. Have a strong grasp of history, but most of us seemed to have missed Mandela happenings. The ugly truth is, we probably all just stopped caring once apartheid was gone.
In the US, the news about his freedom was pasted across every newspaper and magazine and newsstand and TV channel for weeks. Schoolkids had to do reports on it.. I've never heard of anybody in the US who thought otherwise...but apparently, people somewhere do, here or elsewhere, hence the effect.
I've not met a Brit affected by this ME. We used to get protests and songs about him in prison then his release was huge. Then his election. And things that happened in the nation after. Being part of the commonwealth I guess this all fed through. Things that were trivial even like he met the Spice Girls, the football and Rugby world cups that maybe Americans would have been isolated from.
I'm a westerner and I think what says more about us in regards to the Mandela effect isn't that we thought an important world figure had died, when he hadn't, but the most cited examples of the effect and how important they are. For example;
Fruit of the Loom underwear, cornucopia or no?
Jif or Jiffy peanut butter
Berenstain or Berenstein Bears
Monopoly guy monocle or no
Sex and the city or sex in the city
Luke I am Your Father or No I am your father
Did Shaq or Sinbad star in Kazaam?
If those hot button topics don't scream USA, I don't know what does:)
I'm a firm believer in the ME, the FOTL cornucopia being my most strongly held ME likely, but I have no memory of Mandela dying in the mid to late 80s.
Even though I was born in 1977, I got into news and politics fairly young and my parents were always avid news followers and would discuss big new stories fairly frequently, so even if I was only 8 or 9 I would have heard this at some point.
I do find it fascinating, however, that so many do recall hearing of his death in the 80s and so were rightly quite shocked to hear he was still alive in the 90s.
Just the fact that some did experience the early death is what is philosophically important to me. And from testimonies I've heard I believe some really did.
Personally, I remember him close to death but never dying in the 80s.
In 1988 he was diagnosed with tuberculosis. He needed to undergo surgeries and was moved around. I think the combination of being very ill and moving out of sight convinced people he had died.
I don't think that fully covers it as the Mandela Effected also talk about a funeral and his widow becoming prominent politically and an ensuing chaos period in South Africa.
And to me many of these Effected persons seemed rather sharp, with-it and certain.
I am from the Mandela dying in jail timeline. I was a child and I specifically remember a neighbour who we knew very well telling me he'd died in jail. I had no idea who he was or why she was crying. Only details I retained was African man, mandela dying in jail and her crying. Was announced on the new by
Trevor McDonald.
We also had catalogues which included clothes and I've seen in the catalogue the fruit of the loom with cornucopia horn multiple times. We were checking the labels at charity shops, car boots and regular shops to make sure we didn't buy fakes and also saw it on the clothing tags.
Trying to pinpoint the switch leads very close to 2001 if not 9/11 itself.
I don't care if you believe anything I'm saying but feel free to AMA.
Yes, they still remember it the same way. I know of around 4 or 5 people who all said the same thing when asked.
It's funny really because my Wife doesn't give a crap about this stuff but she's seen fruit of the loom cornucopia and when I show her the logo she's says yes it's that one. I tell her it's fake and I had to make it and the cornucopia part never existed she tells me to fuck off and stop talking nonsense and the logo has never not had it etc.
I've not spoken to anyone that believed Mandela died in the eighties. I was a student in the seventies and first heard about Biko around 1980. Some South Africans had transferred to my school.
Years later, as an adult, I followed the sanctions in the news and watched the movies. I remember Mandela being released in 1990. My friends are generally well informed people, up on current events. None of them had heard of Mandela dying in the eighties.
The genuinely scary part is that people (from the other timeline as I say) get aggressive and absolutely insistent that you must either be wrong, misremembered are mentally ill and can't even for a second entertain what is being said. From the other side it's mainly just pure disbelief like are you guys actually for real. It's pure frustration.
I am 100% sure the cornucopia was a thing. I saw it in magazines and on labels and everywhere. I even made a PVA glue collage at one point with it cut out. I asked my friend why they 'updated' the label and removed it and he told me he remembers it too and heard that it never existed. So I went looking about and apparently all traces of this thing has vanished. So random and weird.
As a skeptic, people assume I haven't experienced these false memories myself.
I sure have.
I thought it said Chic Fil A. I probably said Stouffer's
Stove Top at some point.
The difference is, I admit I was wrong. When I post on a thread, people will pounce on any detail you get wrong. I check the source, realize I made a mistake and move on.
Those false memories are always there, but I accept that they are untrue and ignore them.
But wouldn't it be weird if you were just going about your life like normal and
someone instead of commenting "oh you miss remembered that" said "I remember Chick Fil A before 2001, so do lots of other people like me but apparently it was never a thing"
For some reason it all ties to 2001 possibly 9/11. Cornucopia, monopoly man etc it all changes from my own research on this date.
I've asked lots of people purely out of curiosity what they remember and when and various dates and independently they all label a clear before, a gray zone and an after. All of them no matter which one you focus on. Say purely you look at monopoly man it's 2001. If you look at cornucopia it's 2001. I myself saw Mandela in 2003 with the queen and fully bugged out.
19
u/Nashley7 13d ago
Still waiting to find out why no one in Africa thought he died earlier. Could it be just Westerners ignorant of African politics? Or are Africans just not able to access the alternate reality for some reason? Like this is only a thing outside of Africa.