Mandela effect

plural Mandela effects

1. The phenomenon of a large number of persons independently sharing the same false memory.

   It's easier to understand the scope of the Mandela effect and to come up with explanations for individual effects by taking a bird's-eye view of the landscape.

   2021, Rizwan Virk, The Simulated Multiverse […] , Bayview Books, →ISBN

   2 more examples

   The subsistence and mass identification of phenomena like the Mandela Effect could only come to fruition in the Internet Age. Without the internet, there would be no universal platform to academically discuss a concept so daft, nor would there be any way to efficiently and convincingly disprove so many disparate memory errors. Yet the content of the Mandela Effect—the objects and ideas that people misremember—is almost entirely tied to the era just before the internet became common.

   2022, Chuck Klosterman, The Nineties, New York: Penguin Press, →ISBN

   When Broome discovered that she was not the only person to remember an alternative version of events, she started a website about what she dubbed “the Mandela Effect”.

   2024 May 25, Tim Harford, “The detours on memory lane”, in FT Weekend (Life & Arts section), London: The Financial Times Ltd., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 21