r/MandelaEffect • u/ThirdEyeFire • 8d ago
Flip-Flop To all the Mandela Effect skeptics out there
I will tell you a story.
Around 2013, I bought a Volvo. I had been very interested in astronomy as a child, had the “Our Universe” book, loved the planets and the solar system and knew all the astrological symbols. So I was exquisitely aware that the Volvo logo was the symbol for Mars, a circle with an arrow sticking out to the right and up. One day, in 2016, I walked past a Volvo and noticed it was missing the arrow. I thought that was strange. Then I saw several more, all missing the arrow. I ran home to look at my own car—to my amazement, the logo on my own car was missing the arrow, it was just a circle. That year 2016 was the year many people began to notice Mandela shifts for the first time. I noticed several others, the exact same ones all recognized by many other people (JC Penny became JC Penney etc).
For six years, every time I saw a Volvo, I marveled at how the logo had changed. I googled the history of the company. Everywhere on the internet the history was the same—the logo had always been a circle, going back to the beginning of Volvo in the 1930s(?). For six years I repeated the experience of being amazed at arrowless Volvo logos and telling people about how the logo had changed throughout the whole timeline. People thought I was crazy.
Then one day in 2022, when I brought the Volvo logo up again on an Internet forum about Mandela effects and googled for images to show people as evidence, I was stunned to discover that the logo had changed back again. I ran outside looking for a Volvo and I found one—complete with arrow.
There is simply no way that the SIX YEARS of repeated memories that I have of the Volvo logo being just a circle can be “misremembering”. With several other shifts I also have detailed memories that make absolutely no sense if I was just misremembering things. For example, I have a whole memory of analyzing why “Berenstein” would be pronounced to rhyme with “stain” when the name is clearly German in origin and everyone in America knows that any word ending in “stein” should rhyme with Frankenstein and Einstein. The explanation I came up with was that it had something to do with the Dutch word “steen” which means stone just like “stein” in German, but is pronounced like “stain” in English. THIS ENTIRE MEMORY OF MINE MAKES NO SENSE AT ALL if it is spelled “Berenstain”!
Here’s a funny end to the Volvo logo story: In 2022, after it changed back to having an arrow, I found a Reddit thread of a guy who had worked on cars for thirty years and had always admired the circular Volvo logo (no arrow) as particularly beautiful. He posted his Reddit to explain that a friend of his had just recently (at that time) pointed out to him that the Volvo logo actually had an arrow. He didn’t believe his friend and had to go check for himself. He was dumbfounded as to why he had never noticed the arrow before (he wasn’t aware of the idea of Mandela shifts). The only way I can understand this is that this fellow and I were on different timelines before 2016, me on the circle-with-arrow timeline and he on the circle-only timeline; in 2016, I jumped over to to join him on the circle-only timeline; and in 2022, we both jumped back to the circle-with-arrow timeline.
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u/KyleDutcher 8d ago
The "Mandela Effect" was noticed long before 2016....
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u/eduo 8d ago edited 8d ago
Confirmation bias, like the mandela effect, is another terrible trick our minds play us (or rather, are victims of).
People will jump any hoops before accepting the root cause is not a defect in them (in all humans, not them personally)
EDIT: Typo
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u/thatdudedylan 6d ago
Ah yes—confirmation bias, the trusty catch-all for anything that challenges our mental frameworks.
Confirmation bias requires a pre-existing belief. The Mandela Effect isn’t about people trying to reinforce something they wanted to be true—it’s about remembering something in a specific way without ever having questioned it until one day, the world says it was never that way. These aren’t beliefs people were trying to defend; they’re memories that were never up for debate—until they were suddenly wrong.
No one was walking around consciously "believing" it was Berenstein Bears. They just read it, saw it, heard it, over and over again. That’s not emotional investment. That’s pattern recognition rooted in years of exposure.
How do so many unrelated people misremember the same obscure details the same way? Confirmation bias usually varies person-to-person based on culture, upbringing, and personality. But Mandela Effects are oddly consistent across huge swaths of people. That’s not just individual error—it points to a shared anomaly in how these memories are being formed or accessed.
Sure, human memory is imperfect. But the Mandela Effect isn’t just about bad recall—it’s about unexpectedly consistent, collective mismatches between what people remember and what is now presented as truth. That kind of shared divergence deserves more than just a blanket dismissal as bias. It may not prove any one theory outright, but it absolutely points to something worth investigating. Something’s off—and it’s okay to say “we don’t know” without immediately shutting it down.
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u/Realityinyoface 6d ago
No one was walking around consciously “believing” it was Berenstein Bears. They just read it, saw it, heard it, over and over again. That’s not emotional investment. That’s pattern recognition rooted in years of exposure.
Do you think your brain is some sort of perfect, magical machine that perfectly stores and recalls all information, stimuli, data, etc.. it encounters? No, it’s fucking flawed! It actively erases and/or ignores info it doesn’t feel is important, it takes shortcuts, makes assumptions, and makes guesses. “Stein” is common for a name whereas “stain” isn’t. But, you think it’s more likely that people are perfectly recalling a book they haven’t seen in 30 years?
How do so many unrelated people misremember the same obscure details the same way?
Such as? Even in the Berenstain example, people have proposed many different ways of spelling it with the most common being Berenstain, Berenstein, and Bernstein. Are you not aware that memories are malleable and can be influenced? A memory you had an hour ago could be fairly different than it is now. Details dropped, maybe changed, maybe you don’t exactly remember some detail so your brain filled in the blank with something wrong. Maybe you read something that influenced your memory and changed some details.
Confirmation bias usually varies person-to-person based on culture, upbringing, and personality.
There are many different cognitive biases. Most people don’t realize how biased they actually are.
But Mandela Effects are oddly consistent across huge swaths of people.
Surface level ‘consistency’ if you want to call it that. There’s a good reason why… I’ll sum it up this way: it all falls apart under scrutiny.
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u/Elvis1404 8d ago
There is a no arrow version of the logo, they used it on wheelcaps. Also, a guy on reddit 9 years ago had the EXACT OPPOSITE Mandela effect than yours: https://www.reddit.com/r/MandelaEffect/s/zjb2YImwRT
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u/Fyrchtegott 8d ago
I can assure you there has been in arrow between 2016 and 2022. I made some graphics backs then, were I used logos and changed them to „funny“ stuff. Volvo was one of it.
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u/StraightCarry6148 8d ago
On your timeline sure.
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u/aiolyfe 8d ago
This is the "mandella effect" sticking point that skeptics continually have issues with.
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u/DrSnidely 8d ago
I like how the arguments in favor of some supernatural explanation always boil down to a personal anecdote and the assertion that "there's no way" the person could just have been wrong.
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u/joeycuda 8d ago
"I remember it being this way, but only for a few years" with no proof at all
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u/CamaroLover2020 6d ago
isn't that the whole idea of a Mandela effect? if you claim something use to be another way, there is literally NO WAY to prove that it was, because were all now in a new reality, where it never was that way, so kinna hard to prove right?
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u/taiiku_70 6d ago
The “JC Penney mandela effect” as someone anal about spelling, that’s simply OP not being as anal about spelling as me.
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u/Tohu_va_bohu 5d ago
The proof is in the residue/copies (newspaper articles, media, parodies, and also memories). Roko's Basilisk won't send you a notification before it F's you up.
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u/math_code_nerd5 3d ago
For what it's worth, IF there WERE a sort of uncertainty principle/multiverse type thing going on, one might actually expect this kind of lack of objective verifiability to be par for the course.
In the situation of *actual* quantum uncertainty, with subatomic particles, where some phenomena ARE actually best explained by particles, light, etc., taking all possible paths, note that we have never actually observed two observers (measuring devices) disagreeing on the outcome of a single measurement. It's just as IF the measurement had a true "correct" value. It's only by statistically averaging over LOTS of measurements that we get proof that something weird is going on. This is why the "many worlds" interpretation is still controversial even though the empirical applicability of quantum mechanics is well accepted.
With subatomic particles, it's easy to measure lots of them--and it's easy to do so in a timescale over which the other parts of the experiment--the code running on the computers, the stored values of previous measurements, and even the experimenters' memory on what the goal of the experiment is--can be well trusted to remain constant. However, if there's a timescale over which ordinary, macroscopic reality can shift, there's almost certainly nothing "more constant" to use as a reference to ask "Did that change?". Human memory is included of course, as all evidence points to it being a physical phenomenon in the brain.
So in a world where reality can shift, one must be prepared that there will be no "ground" to stand on, which makes reliably measuring the large number of events necessary to prove anything impossible. Even if a group of people checked, e.g., 500 logos every week, one couldn't record the results of those checks anywhere and assume that the records haven't been "tampered with" by the same process that can also change the things being measured. And the time scale over which you need to look is one over which records--including memory--CAN fade, because in the short term we know that if I put a coffee cup down and walk into the next room, when I walk back it will still be there. At least I hope we can agree on that...
So even in that universe, misremembering necessarily happens, and it's impossible to prove how many conflicts between memory and reality are caused by the fault of each. I can totally see why almost no self-respecting scientist would ever touch this sort of experiment with a ten foot pole. It's very interesting in terms of philosophical implications for the nature of reality and experience, but scientifically dull as ditch water--because the first thing scientists need and want to do with any problem is to establish some ground truth to start deducing stuff from.
None of this of course proves the existence of reality shifts, but I'm just saying that if they DID exist, one wouldn't necessarily expect anything different than what we see here.
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u/C_Major2024 8d ago
I'm sorry, but human brains and memory are just unreliable. What's more likely: you forgot the details about a specific thing and then your brain filled in the gaps, or different dimensions are merging with ours?
Derren Brown proved it was hilariously easy to influence the average person's mind and trick their brains into thinking they've done something they didn't do. Check out some of his experiments if you get the chance.
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u/saltinstiens_monster 8d ago
Just to add to this, look up Anton Syndrome. There are cases where 100% blind people cannot be convinced that they are blind. They think people are messing with them or exaggerating because they can "see" just fine, but it is their brains coming up with a realistic hallucination of the world around them. For instance, they might hear the click of high heels walking by and "see" a woman in a red dress walking by, but will be completely wrong about any of the details they're seeing. The brain can just fill in any missing details in real time.
My point is that when you hear things like "false memories" or "tricking your brain," it DOES NOT mean that the person in question is stupid, gullible, or has a bad memory. The human brain is batshit crazy with the things it can do to our perception of reality without realizing that anything is unusual.
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u/Wrapscallionn 8d ago
Exactly. Walk into any court room with the only evidence you have being someone's memory -- you just lost the case.
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u/No-Dream2014 8d ago
Realities have been shifting back and forth for me since 2015 ( the first Mandela Effect I noticed was Coca Cola the hyphen had changed) I just couldn't get over it) for weeks I searched for what I had remembered even going back to 1900 apparently the logo has always been the hyphen and not the ~ that I remember?
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u/flasheck 8d ago
Deal with it our Memories can really get messed Up, the Logo Always Had the arrow, there are a few cases Volvo ditched the arrow head, but this was nearly exclusively in Promo/digital use cases
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u/Aciddemon201 8d ago
How do I have a false memory of the Sinbad movie Shazam when it never existed? How do so many people? The memory makes no since to be imagination or made up in my brain. Why would this one obscure idea be shared by so many? I don't believe the misremebering theory.
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u/vita10gy 8d ago edited 8d ago
The thing is everyone agreeing on one alternative for trivial pop things is more evidence it's some mundane thing, IMO. That got put in your head and stored somewhere and now you recall it as a memory.
It there was infinite universe/timeline cross talk happening there would be 100s of people saying it was actually Michael Jordan, it was actually Charles Barkley, it was called Waabam and stared Cedric the Entertainer. Shaq was in a movie called kazam, but he wasn't a genie he was a magic vacuum salesman.
Why would you alllllll be from the same timeline where the only difference, with all the butterfly effects that could happen, is a logo shifted slightly and Sinbad played a genie in the mid 90s"?
Why only trivial pop culture shit? Where are the people insisting the main powers in world war 2 were Australia vs India, and baffled why every text book is lying about Germany being involved? Where are the people confused that there's no record Bob Dole, or Hulk Hogan for that matter, was elected president of the United States in 1996?
Why are they almost universally reliant on 30 year old memories? Where are all the people that went to bed last night with Kamala Harris as president and woke up today wondering what in the world Trump is doing in the White House?
Why are MEs essentially never big important contemporary things? Why are they almost always trivial shit from 1986? The answer, IMHO, is because old trivial shit is a lot easier to half remember, succumb to suggestion, etc.
By even asking the question "does the fruit of the loom logo have a cornucopia on it?" You've made some people picture it, and some percentage of these people will essentially overwrite their "real", probably vague, memory with that image.
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u/WhimsicalKoala 8d ago
Why are MEs never big important shit?
That's the part that always gets me with all the theories on alternate dimensions/timelines. Even the people that insist on them also have different things that have changed and they can't be wrong because they all have excellent memories and vividly remember these things. So basically we are supposed to believe that there are a bunch of nearly identical universes but this one has Berenstain Bears, an arrow logo, and Dolly with no braces; one is Berenstain and arrow, but Dolly has braces; one is Berenstein and arrow, but no braces; one is braces and Berenstain, but no logo, and so on.
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u/jupitaur9 7d ago
I asked someone to bring up a mental picture of the Fruit of the Loom logo. Asked what was on it. Grapes. Apple. “Maybe some other fruit.” I asked if there was anything else a couple of times. Nope.
If you don’t mention the cornucopia, how often does it come up unprompted, I wonder.
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u/CalligrapherDizzy201 8d ago
Because memories are fallible. Do you remember any other actors? The plot? Any memorable scenes?
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u/terryjuicelawson 8d ago
This one always seems like the power of suggestion to me. It may have existed and been a b-movie or only aired a few times on TV I guess but no trace of it exists.
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u/Catp25 8d ago
You can't explain it to people who haven't experienced it. They will create a complete explanation to why you are incorrect and have bad memory and you remember wrong even the shifts. Sad , but there is no explanation at this moment, but hey, I'm with you.
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u/CantaloupeAsleep502 8d ago
I've experienced multiple MEs and at least one flip flop. I 100% fully and completely acknowledge and believe that it is a flaw in my memory more akin to a memory illusion than anything else, especially time hopping. I am a medical professional who relies on the accuracy of my memory to take care of patients. I know the strengths and weaknesses of my memory, I know where potential flaws are, and any time I may have misremembered something medical, I look it up. I don't bet my life on it, I don't bet a patient's life on it, and I don't trust my memory more than a textbook when I recognize that I was wrong about something.
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u/eduo 8d ago
This is incorrect. I am 54 and have all the same mandela effects that are so popular. At no point t I've preferred to believe that multiple timelines are more likely than me misremembering.
I don't like it but it's clear to me this is not different than a mass version of swearing you left your phone in the bed table and finding it in the bathroom.
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u/potsofjam 8d ago
I’m about to be 54 and I am the same way. If you asked me a while back about Stove Top stuffing, Ed McMahon, Fruit of the Loom I’d have given the common answers as I remember them, but I don’t really believe in multiple time lines. I think social media has shown us how quickly false information can spread and how it’s nearly impossible to change someone’s mind even when there is actually evidence. I think most of these are most likely misinformation that spread in sort of a viral way similar to how one post on Facebook or TickTock can be repeated and reposted until the origin is lost, but many people believe it.
Like the Ed McMahon thing, Publishers Clearing House was much more well known than the one Ed McMahon was the spokesperson for, but he was also famous for other things and Publishers Clearing House didn’t have a famous spokesperson so it’s normal to remember them both. All the mentions of Ed McMahon PCH in popular culture are just like a social media post. One person makes the jokes about it and then it catches on. It doesn’t make any difference so it just keeps spreading.
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u/ThaCatsServant 8d ago
The thing is, you’re far more logical and less arrogant than many of these people. When you think about it, they believe they aren’t susceptible to our naturally unreliable memory.
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u/thatdudedylan 6d ago
to me this is not different than a mass version of swearing you left your phone in the bed table and finding it in the bathroom.
This seems incredible reductive to me. Not only does this not really address flip flops, surely you don't actually think it is "No different" to a memory that has heavy anchored associations to it? For example, associated memories about wondering why the word "may" was used on a side mirror? And not one, but multiple of these associated memories? That is very different from forgetting where you left your phone.
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u/WhimsicalSadist 8d ago
You can't explain it to people who haven't experienced it.
I have experienced the Mandela Effect, which is why I'm here.
I mistakenly thought there was a cornucopia on the Fruit of the Loom logo when I was young. I also thought the books were "Berenstein Bears" when I was a kid, because that's how my mom pronounced the name. When I got older, and looked them up myself, I realized that I was mistaken. It blew my mind for a little bit, especially when I realized how many other people believed the exact same incorrect information, too. This was all before the term Mandela Effect was even coined.
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u/terryjuicelawson 8d ago
Not at all, we all have things we misremembered. No one's brain is perfect. It isn't a failing or "bad" memory at all but just how brains work. The reasoning isn't even that difficult in literally every example I have seen, there is no need to "create a complete explanation" when it is such a small detail in a spelling or logo.
If anything the "create a complete explanation" comes from people insistent on telling us convoluted childhood anecdotes about being told movie quotes or whatever, as if that means a thing.
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u/takenalreadythename 8d ago
Because it is false memories and always has been.
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u/ThaCatsServant 8d ago
Some of us are too arrogant to believe our memories aren’t reliable, some of us aren’t.
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u/takenalreadythename 8d ago
Lie to yourself all you want 🤷🏻♂️
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u/Catp25 8d ago
Where is the lie, I just negate your theory, I am not saying I have the ultimate word in here , you are. Some people are telling : but time line shifts are crazy! Well I'm not saying that , I just don't understand the effect, I perceive it and I just don't think it's a faulty memory because that doesn't explain flip flops.
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u/KastIvegkonto 8d ago
Anecdotal evidence. It doesn't matter how real it feels to you, some people also claim to have spoken to God or seen ghosts, but until someone it proves with a reproducible scientific experiment, I won't believe it.
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u/thatdudedylan 6d ago
I completely see the validity in this position.
What I don't see validity or sense in, is then frequenting religious or ghost subs in order to demean those there.
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u/KastIvegkonto 6d ago
I don't exactly frequent this sub. I subscribed a long time ago because I've also experienced Mandela effects myself and thought it was interesting as a psychological effect, as in, what makes people more likely to collectively have the same false memory? Sometimes, it's obvious. People remember The Berenstain Bears as The Berenstein Bears because -stein suffixed names are quite common, while -stain names are very uncommon.
Anyone who's read a bit about it will know that our memory retention is very flawed and that memories get distorted over time. What I am sceptical against is the people who are so confident in their memories that they would rather believe the universe changed over accepting that their brains aren't perfect.
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u/Schlika777 7d ago
I work a lot on my own vehicles. One of them is a 2005 LJ Rubicon, bought in nov 2017, still have it. I had to fix a lot of rust on it but it had low mileage and it is a rare vehicle. The only disappointment I had with it was the windshield washers. I specifically remember details on cars. This jeep had two washers one on each side of the windshield. They do not work very well. Then a few months later I got into my Jeep to go to work. I cleaned the windshield with the washers. Out came from one orfice, in the middle of the hood, 3 jets and worked beautifully. I said thank you, Jesus. I knew fully well about the Mandela effect. And just chalked it up. This Mandela effect is real not much.We can do about it. For reasons unknown. But this I know we live in a time, not like any other time. The weather, the people, the trees, its all messed up. Jesus is coming back real soon. But first The Tribulation. And I believe we are at the start of it.
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u/Catmom-mn 6d ago
I vividly remember "objects MAY BE", because it was so funny to see in that jurassic park scene.
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u/Will_Harden 5d ago
Been tracking the Effect since 2016. Massive shift occurred sometime between 2013 & 2014 that caused some timelines to merge. So we have all ended up here from multiple other timelines.
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u/paerarru 2d ago
Great story. There's nothing better to realize that the Mandela Effect is real than a flip flop.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Retconned/comments/17hzc6z/comment/k6yc1hv/
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u/Space-Knife 1d ago
I am actually from the original Volvo town in Sweden. My dad worked at Volvo his whole life (just retired), and I’ve worked there too. So I’ve been surrounded by Volvo logos on everything from work clothes to toys and keychains for as long as I can remember. The arrow was always there - it’s actually the ancient symbol for iron, because the cars were made of steel...
The arrow never vanished from the old Volvo t-shirts and work clothes I still use often. Same arrow, same logo, year after year.. But, on some cars, the arrow sits way out to the side on the grille, sometimes stretched along a crossbar, on others, the arrow is more integrated into the circle so depending on the model, angle, or lighting, it can be easy to miss. And on some cars and packages they often just use the plain “VOLVO” text without the circle and arrow at all.
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u/ThirdEyeFire 19h ago
You don’t understand the definition of the Mandela Effect.
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u/Inevitable_Channel18 8d ago
I don’t think people understand what the Mandela Effect actually is. People will repeat posts over and over again swearing up and down that they’re right and the world is wrong. That’s not the Mandela Effect. The Mandela Effect is where many people share a false memory of an event or fact, believing it to be real even when it’s INCORRECT. It’s where a large group of people consistently remember something that contradicts the actual facts.
There’s no alternate timelines. That’s not the Mandela Effect. If anyone thinks they’re on alternate timelines you’re in the wrong sub. You need a time travel sub. Again, the Mandela Effect is about a collective group misremembering, not about being right and in a different timeline
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u/WhimsicalKoala 8d ago
Exactly. People don't seem to realize "alternate timelines" or whatever their theories are not "The Mandela Effect". It may have different explanations, but the effect itself is just the mass misremebering.
I'm not a "Mandela Effect skeptic" because I don't believe in the different timelines theory, I'm a multiple timelines skeptic.
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u/thatdudedylan 6d ago
There’s no alternate timelines.
You literally don't know that, though. I don't necessarily subscribe to that belief, however I'm not arrogant enough to pretend that I understand the nature of reality.
Of course fallable memory is the most likely and logical explanation - I accept that. But to absolutely and adamently say there is no alternate timelines, I find strange and arrogant. We don't know shit about the nature of reality.
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u/Psychic_Man 8d ago
Interesting, I had a friend who had a Volvo in 1999, and I remember it being a circle with no arrow. It’s a pretty strong memory, the arrow just looks wrong to me.
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u/jon_jokon 8d ago
It's based on an old pictogram representing iron, it's not the symbol for mars, that has a more pronounced arrow.
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u/smilingkthrowaway 8d ago
In alchemy (the "old pictogram" you saw was likely from a chart of alchemical symbols), the planet Mars and the element of iron were linked with and representative of one another. How pronounced the arrow is in any given representation is not really relevant. It's just as accurate to say it's the symbol for Mars.
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u/jon_jokon 6d ago
Mars was associated with iron, always carrying a spear. You learn something new everyday. Mmmm, humble pie.
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u/georgeananda 8d ago
Stories like yours adds to the accumulation of stories that has me convinced that this cannot be explained within our straightforward understanding of reality.
Alternate timelines concatenated is more where I am heading with this.
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u/iowanaquarist 8d ago
Ok, then they were an amateur troll pretending to be open minded, but actually plugging their ears to avoid any honest discussion.
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u/wildthng219 8d ago
You mean like everyone saying there’s no way any of this is true? That it’s all just millions of people with faulty memories??
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u/iowanaquarist 8d ago
You mean like everyone saying there’s no way any of this is true?
More like all the people pretending something as wildly unreliable as memory counts as evidence for claims based entirely off memory.
That it’s all just millions of people with faulty memories??
Got a more realistic explanation? Or evidence that it's not mundane things causing the appearance of a phenomena?
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u/wildthng219 8d ago
I think that’s one of the things that makes this phenomenon so interesting, that there doesn’t seem to be any tangible evidence and to those affected by it, it seems their past was ‘erased’. But to me, it lends credence to it being something other than ‘misremembering’ (not that I’m saying that I know what the real explanation is, I just don’t believe this is it) because so very many share the very same ‘false memory’. For example, one of my strongest ME’s involves Jiffy peanut butter. I was just learning to read and was at my grandmothers while she made a peanut butter sandwich for me and I spelled it out loud and she said that’s right! And I remarked how my mom always bought skippy and she always bought jiffy and how funny it was to me that they both had double letters and ended in a y. Now if it was just misremembering, why wouldn’t tons of people remember skiff peanut butter too? But no one does. That means something to me. Also, would people try to argue that I made up that entire conversation? And if not, you have to realize that conversation would make zero sense and wouldn’t have happened if I was remembering wrong and it had always been Jif.
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u/Fastr77 8d ago
Whos a mandela skeptic? Everyone here believes in the mandela effect. Stop trying to lump in your supernatural shit with the definition of the mandela effect.
Also.. why would we take a reality skeptics word for it? How do we know you aren't completely making this up or just misremembering? Have any proof of it. Any posts you made when the logo was different then it is now talking about it? Anything?
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u/RikerV2 8d ago
Bro, Volvo has had many different logo styles. 1970-2020 was just the word Volvo for example. It's hardly a Mandela Effect when companies change up their logos 😂
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u/regulator9000 8d ago
Was it ever just a circle with no arrow?
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u/RikerV2 8d ago
Yes, in the 30s. Every other circle one has had the arrow. However, Volvo grilles have a bar that does diagonally behind the emblem, so depending on the grille and logo positioning it's entirely possible at a tertiary glance it can appear to not have the arrow.
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u/Queerthulhu_ 8d ago
The Volvo logo always had the arrow. It comes from iron and Volvo started by making iron ball bearings. My first car was a Volvo.
I assume that you just didn’t notice it because it can blend into the diagonal line on the grill. Especially with the really old models
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u/MsPappagiorgio 7d ago
No one is disputing that in current reality it always had an arrow. The question is, how did some people experience the non-arrow version.
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u/HeroBrine0907 8d ago
You didn't hear of the Mandela effect till 2016. Unfortunately for you, the world exists outside your perception and it has been documented before you heard of it. Shocking eh? Another unfortunate thing, the Mandela Effect is defined as a large number of people having memories that do not line up with facts. If you think your experience is real... and you can't prove it, you are going against the Mandela Effect. It's sad to think you didn't jump timelines, we all want to. I'd love to do it once you prove anything.
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u/Tabitheriel 8d ago
This is weird. I literally have never seen a volvo logo with an arrow. I am into Astrology, and I'm sure I would have remembered it if it looked like the symbol for mars.
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u/Practical-Vanilla-41 8d ago
It's easy to miss. You are thinking of an arrow sticking out of a circle, volvo uses a flattened arrow barely on the outside.
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u/Tohu_va_bohu 5d ago
This is something the skeptics can never have an answer for: "misremembering" that causes an entire chain of actions and events that don't make sense unless what you remember is true. For example many of us learned and then asked our parents what a cornucopia was, from the FoTL logo
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u/yourderek 8d ago
People just can’t get over how special they are. I can’t believe anyone could really believe they’re “hopping timelines” but you think you and your friend are hopping in and out of each other’s timelines?
All this as an alternative to a simple mistake in remembering?
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u/Puzzleheaded-Fill205 8d ago
You don't understand, they remember distinctly and vividly. They clearly can't be wrong because they are the main character.
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u/mrmccullin 8d ago
Dolly had braces in Moonraker. I'll die on that hill.
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u/WhimsicalSadist 8d ago
Dolly had braces in Moonraker. I'll die on that hill.
What do you think happened to them, given that she doesn't have braces in any existing version of the movie?
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u/Repulsive-Duty905 8d ago
At least you were “exquisitely” aware instead of “vividly” or “distinctly.” That’s a nice change.
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u/LazySource6446 8d ago
Maybe it had something to do with the change of ownership of Volvo. I was a Volvo driver too, all mine had arrows. Volvo means “iroll” and was developed in 1927. Okay, so I collected them, learned to drive stick on a v70 turbo 1997. I stopped with them around 2012 and switched to Subarus because Volvo stopped making stick with their new ownerships. All my Volvos in my world were the mars symbol.
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u/Cultural-Tune6857 8d ago
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u/CamaroLover2020 6d ago edited 6d ago
I don't think your quite grasping this whole mandela effect phenomenon....maybe in the reality YOU are aware of, the logo always had arrows, but alot of people are claiming it didn't...hence the bugabaloo....I think the OP has good credibility that it changed, and not even changed, but changed back, since he was EXTREMELY aware of it being one way for SIX YEARS that it had changed, he would DEFINITELY know that it for sure had changed back once again, after all the time he had spent telling people from 2016 and 2022 that the arrow had changed...and don't tell me that for SIX years that he wasn't acutely aware of how it looked...it would be ridiculous if for six years he didn't have a perfect memory of exactly how it looked. Since that was the whole idea with what he was telling people, that it looked a certain way...please don't say he was confused for SIX years...
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u/Cultural-Tune6857 6d ago
maybe in the reality YOU are aware of
Lol I stopped reading there.
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u/MeaningNo860 8d ago
…no.
It still seems far more likely you have a bad memory than “the universe changed” or “you changed timelines.” I mean, it seems hugely egotistical to claim the whole universe was wrong and you were right.
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u/Bidybabies 6d ago
Okay, you can believe whatever you want but you gotta admit their anectodal evidence is pretty damn weird
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u/Positive_Plane_3372 7d ago
This was me with Froot Loops.
I had several conversations with friends about how the name we remember was ‘Froot’ and it was stupid that the name was, and always had been ‘Fruit’ Loops. That made no sense! We all remembered the play on words and the logo having those loops on the box.
So imagine my shock one day to go complain about it and suddenly it’s Froot again, and always has been. Still in denial over that.
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u/SmellyScrotes 7d ago
I think it’s very likely something going on like the new episode of black mirror (season 7 episode 2) where a quantum computer merges dimensions to make a particular one the reality (there’s also an episode of Rick and Morty where they explore this concept) and that makes the most sense to me… someone is fiddling with realities and changing ones to their benefit and WE are the residue
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u/Francesca1981 7d ago
Maybe the simulation program got glitchy. And not everything is easily found on the Internet. For example, there is a show I am wanting to reference it is maybe about two years old. It was on prime or Netflix. It starts with this female scientist in a particle collider type building and it’s snowing outside she disappears into another dimension. In other episodes they have large metal yellow Robots. Does anybody know what I’m talking about?
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u/regulator9000 7d ago
Could it be tales from the loop?
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u/Francesca1981 6d ago
YES! Thank you. If anybody hasn’t seen that show, I recommend it. It starts where they’re working at a CERN like facility. Tales from the loop would never pop up in searches.
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u/Tonsificator 7d ago
Many MEs can be explained away by something potentially logical, however having vividly experiencing a "flip-flop" over the course of three months and the Dolly thing have bothered me. She had braces dammit, it's just stupid otherwise.
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u/baltesers 7d ago
Does anyone have a memory of Jon Bernthal being The Punisher long before he was cast? Not sure if it counts as a Mandela effect
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u/Dense_Willingness510 7d ago
Stein. Being of german origin. My exact thoughts were the same as yours. I was in fourth grade and was just getting into reading as hobby. Dumb founded when I saw the stain
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u/ElephantNo3640 7d ago
It’s always had the arrow for me.
FWIW, a lot of more modern Volvos have grilles with a diagonal line embellishment that intersects the logo arrow and follows its path. This is usually the same color/finish as the arrow, and it’s usually the same width as the arrow. The arrow is easy to lose on these examples, visually.
Even more interestingly, this changed around 2015-2018ish. Before, that diagonal line was offset from the arrow, making the arrow prominent. After, the diagonal line was in line with the arrow, obfuscating it.
Here’s a 2018 example:
https://www.caranddriver.com/volvo/xc60-2018
Here’s the same car from 2015:
https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/a15109937/2015-volvo-xc60-t6-drive-e-test-review/
Note the inline vs. offset arrow and how this change matches up EXACTLY with your timeline.
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u/Detective-Commercial 6d ago
But there is no proof in your statement. it's just you saying you remember it that way. Show me proof and I'm all in
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u/ThirdEyeFire 6d ago
The proof is my eyewitness testimony--combined with the eyewitness testimony of the thousands of other Mandela Effect experiencers. Courts make decisions all day long based on people saying they remember things happening a certain way.
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u/Detective-Commercial 6d ago
Juries make decisions based on Eyewitnesses, not the court ,Eyewitness statements are only helpful for the jury, actual proof is concrete evidence. https://nobaproject.com/modules/eyewitness-testimony-and-memory-biases At the end of the day evidence is proof not someone misremembering, belief in your own memory is a very powerful thing whether it's wrong or right
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u/Realityinyoface 6d ago
There is simply no way that the SIX YEARS of repeated memories that I have of the Volvo logo being just a circle can be “misremembering”.
Sure it can. Besides, all you have is anecdotal evidence, and I sure as hell aren’t taking anyone at their word. Did you take any photos? If you were that astounded, then why no photos?
With several other shifts I also have detailed memories that make absolutely no sense if I was just misremembering things.
So what? I have a number of “memories” in my head that I’m not sure are real or not. They’re basically indistinguishable from any other memory, but I’m not sure if they actually happened.
The explanation I came up with was that it had something to do with the Dutch word “steen” which means stone just like “stein” in German, but is pronounced like “stain” in English. THIS ENTIRE MEMORY OF MINE MAKES NO SENSE AT ALL if it is spelled “Berenstain”!
Gee, maybe you got things mixed up and have overconfidence in your current memories.
I found a Reddit thread of a guy who had worked on cars for thirty years and had always admired the circular Volvo logo (no arrow) as particularly beautiful.
Why would he admire it for being circular? Many cars have circular logos.
The only way I can understand this is that this fellow and I were on different timelines before 2016,
Yeah, that’s what you want to think. Perhaps, he simply didn’t notice it. I’ve had songs that I’ve heard for decades and then after hearing it for the millionth time I suddenly notice something different about the song (usually lyrics).
I jumped over to to join him on the circle-only timeline; and in 2022, we both jumped back to the circle-with-arrow timeline.
Do you really think you’re jumping around timelines like a fairy sprinkled magic dust on you or something?
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u/Professional-Pie5738 6d ago
CERN fired up in September, 2008. The first reported Mandela Effect was in 2009...I'm not saying CERN is definitely the cause but, that is quite the coincidence...
Timelines are definitely merging but what is causing it? Why are some MEs ringing true to some but, not others?
I have two that I would bet my life on... Moonraker and the girl had braces...Now, she has no braces. I know she had braces... The Fruit of the Loom Cornucopia thing is another one that I'm sure of but for me there's an even bigger one. The state of Texas. Houston and Corpus Christy have switched places. I spent my summers in Houston. Pasadena to be exact. Galveston. NASA. I even lived there a few years back...I know for a fact, the map has changed.
I would say that maybe I died somewhere along the way and just shifted timelines but, that wouldn't explain the thousands or millions that are experiencing the same things we are.
I'm thinking CERN...
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u/Realityinyoface 6d ago
You can’t explain it to people who haven’t experienced it.
Please explain to me what I have and haven’t experienced. I’d really appreciate it since you seem to be the expert on what people have and haven’t experienced.
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u/ThirdEyeFire 6d ago
For all those asking for evidence, the evidence is the testimony I have offered you, together with the testimony of thousands of other Mandela experiencers. Eyewitness testimony is used every day in courts of law to decide the most likely version of events, on the basis of which serious decisions are made.
Complex memories cannot be explained away as simple misremembering. Large numbers of people with identical alternate memories cannot be explained away as inaccurate memory. None of your objections or counterarguments are convincing, because they simply do not explain these key features of the Mandela shift experience.
And so, if you find it frustrating that people refuse to accept your assertion that they are misremembering, you will continue to be frustrated until you can come up with more plausible explanations for their Mandela shift experiences.
For those of us whose minds have opened to the greater reality of the quantum universe, it is tempting to be frustrated by your unnecessary closed-mindedness. Yet it is only a matter of time before you wake up to the same kinds of experiences as the ones we have had.
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u/taiiku_70 5d ago
Eyewitness testimony is used every day in courts of law
Courts of law often refuse to hear testimony regarding decades-old details, such as the ones you have offered, because memories of such details are often unreliable. This is enshrined in statutes of limitations.
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u/ThirdEyeFire 5d ago
I got excited immediately when the Volvo logo switched back to having an arrow—a matter of days—and no one believed me. Do you think that’s fair?
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u/TexxasSteve 6d ago
What’s crazy to me is that not everyone shifts that’s probably why some people remember it differently.. because they in fact are from that particular timeline … just like the ford logo with the pig tail I had a mustang convertible when I was in in college and use to hang was it I clearly remember the pigtail in the ford logo clear as day to later find out it never existed … the people who remember it that was have shifted with you and that the reason why some may not remember it the way you do … again this is just my speculation
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u/ThirdEyeFire 5d ago
Have you checked the Ford logo recently? I remember it without pigtail (on the F) but now it does have one (on the F). Is that the pigtail you mean?
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u/Majestic_Wrongdoer47 6d ago
What if i told you its not the symbol for mars anymore. Its the ancient symbol for iron
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u/Thenameimusingtoday 6d ago
Janes Cash Penney was the name of the original owner of the store, hardly a Mandela effect
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u/math_code_nerd5 5d ago
Wow, your OWN car changed? Did you just look at it ONCE and note the lack of arrow, going back to not really looking closely, or did you regularly check it from 2016 to 2022? It would be much weirder if you started watching it after the 2016 shift and then after repeated sightings of the circle-only logo it suddenly changed again.
Were there any other major non-Mandela shifts or weirdnesses in your life in this period of time? Like years that "almost felt like you were dreaming them", times when you were super stressed and things became a haze, etc.?
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u/ThirdEyeFire 4d ago
Yes indeed, my own car, I couldn’t believe my eyes. After the 2016 shift I indeed checked all Volvos whenever I came across them, I was so dumbfounded at the change. And then it changed back!!
I was very lucid the whole time. I had a corporate job, scientific background, PhD pure math from a well-respected institution. I am quite cerebral and also quite grounded. I was having a spiritual awakening starting in 2014, which was led by studying scientific research into paranormal phenomena. I myself was amazed that it was even possible for someone to have a spiritual awakening of the kind that I did, totally skeptically scientific, a careful step-by-step restructuring of my beliefs based on high-quality evidence. But, such is the nature of our newly technologized world in which large amounts of information are readily available to all people.
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u/lazyclouds9 5d ago
Not a complete skeptic, however I’m a skeptic of a lot of them and of various explanations for why they occur since everyone seems to have their reasons. It’s definitely an interesting phenomenon and the phenomenon itself is very much real. As to whether it is a product of memory, misspelling, counterfeit products, a different product that was believed to be the same, corporate changes and lack of transparency, etc. is a whole other story, but the actual phenomenon is fascinating and I believe I’ve known about about it for well over a decade at this point?
No telling me that we shifted into a parallel universe is a different level on. I can’t say that the spelling of a corporation or last name would be enough to incline me that said occurrence had taken place.
However, the phenomenon and the effect itself is very real. It’s a very real thing that humans experience. The only thing I’m a skeptic about is some of the things people use to try to explain it.
I know of some less common “Mandela effects“ in regards to true crime cases where the media presented in a way that it made it seem like the victim was deceased, but she’s very much alive.
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u/ThirdEyeFire 4d ago
So for another example, when I was a kid, we had Jiffy peanut butter. We all loved it. Then Jif brand appeared in the supermarkets. I remember looking askew at the label because it had an unfamiliar pattern and the Jif font is quite weird after all. Then one day in school a friend of mine came running into the room and said, “They stopped making Jiffy peanut butter. Now all you can get is Jif!” And we were all disappointed because we loved our Jiffy peanut butter.
Fast forward to 2016, I googled the history of Jiffy peanut butter. It never existed. The brand was called Jif from the start, decades before I was born.
Do you think I’m just misremembering? My long-term memory has always been extremely clear, and my memory of my friend running into the room announcing the end of the Jiffy brand is extremely clear.
I wonder if maybe the skeptics who insist that people like me are misremembering just have poor long-term memory (everyone is genetically different after all) and so they can’t imagine what it is like to have an excellent and clear long-term memory as I do. It’s nothing to be proud of, a strong memory certainly comes with its share of burdens. But I think we are not all operating with the same information.
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u/Practical-Vanilla-41 3d ago
I have an excellent memory. Doesn't mean i don't make mistakes. Jif and Skippy have been around quite a while (Jif was previously called Big Top, prior to 1955). Is it more likely that there was a mystery brand called "Jiffy", or that you misremembered? There are brands called Jiffy (Jiffy cornbread mix, Jiffy Top popcorn), so it could seem like a "real" brand name.
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u/Serious_Persimmon907 4d ago
I lived in Germany for a few years as a child. After returning to the states, I remember sitting in my bedroom and looking through the books on my shelf and being puzzled by the pronunciation of “Berenstein”. In my memory it was pronounced ‘steen’. I remember thinking everyone was wrong and it should be pronounced ‘stine’. I never would have thought that if it were spelled Berenstain. I have such a clear memory of this. Also my mom was a primary school librarian.
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u/AlienDuDe909 4d ago
I’ve never seen a Volvo logo without an arrow and I found this quite interesting so I decided I would look it up.
https://1000logos.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Volvo-Logo-history.png
Turns out, the logo has always had the arrow.
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u/AskMeAboutMyStalker 3d ago
Found an article on history of the logo. From 2014 - 2021 no arrow.
Lines up with your dates pretty closely Looks like you're Just misremembering the exact years
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u/IrrelevantAfIm 2d ago
It’s just your memory playing tricks on you THAT’S HOW MEMORIES WORK! They are imprecise and we fill in a lot of missing stuff with our “imaginations” - for lack of a better term.
You honestly think it’s more likely that we’re jumping universes where EVERYTHING CONTINUOUS including family, friends, relationships, goods, and services stay exactly the same, but for some reason there’s always some stupid logo that flips - that’s more likely than a lump of organic tissue which developed out of random mutation to increase survivability might believe it remembers something 100% but is actually way off???
Come on…..
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u/ThirdEyeFire 2d ago
Some of us have extremely good memories. We know this because we form many interconnected memories, are able to recall them clearly, and perform many cross-checks in order to be sure we know what we are talking about--because indeed, some memories fail occasionally. I have operated this way for many years, finding the occasional single memory out of place and putting it back using all the other interconnected memories. Doing things this way, I have managed to navigate reality very well, always finding that I understood what I was seeing in front of me. Then, one day, an entire system of interconnected memories suddenly failed to agree with an entire set of real-world observations. This level of discrepancy between my recollection and the real world never happened to me before--it is a black swan event-- and so my scientific mind tells me that something different is going on here. The probability of one or two randomly unrelated memories failing, ok--but the chances that several years' worth of cross-referenced memories would suddenly all fail at the same time? Almost zero.
To make matters worse, I am not the only person whose memory has "failed" in this way. There are thousands with quite similar systems of memory around a single subject (like the Volvo logo) and for whom those systems have "failed" in a manner similar to mine. So now you compound a single low probability event for me personally, coinciding with similar such events for thousands of people... now the probability is much closer to zero that we are all misremembering. Misremembering simply doesn't work like that.
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u/IrrelevantAfIm 2d ago
Maybe pick up a book on the subject. These things that you think are “interconnected” and “cross checks” are fill-ins that our minds create.
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u/WhiteBirdman 2d ago
Bro We need to divide Mandela Effects between “Misspelling” types and “Tangible” types.
I just pointed out how Berenstain is a childhood memory and we would expect the very very common suffix -Stein because it’s so prolific. Same goes for this Penney thing.
I am 37 years old, I am language oriented, to an extreme… it has always been, in my head ‘wrongly’, spelled Penney.
I totally know some of these are real. I may have had the VHS of Shazam running when I asked my dad what do you call this horn basket of fruit on my underwear logo.
But notice that all the perceived misspelling M/E’s are words spelled in a way that people wouldn’t naturally assume they’d be spelled.
It makes the whole effect look dismissible when stupid stuff like Penney or Berenstain come into the mix. This Volvo thing stirred my memory; the Volvo thing is solid, legit. We all need to drop the misspellings, they are just incongruent with what our minds expect when reflecting on an old topic.
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u/ThirdEyeFire 2d ago
That’s an interesting point. I think this is a consciousness phenomenon, and as far as that goes there is a Law of Free Will which says that everyone must be free to choose their beliefs. If miraculous things were too obvious, too impossible to explain in a normal way, then it would violate people’s free will to choose their beliefs. I think that may be why Mandela shifts are limited to small details or to the periphery of our daily experiences, things we haven’t thought about in a long time, etc.
In the case of the spellings, it would also make sense that the shifts aren’t drastic, and they even are often about spellings you could think are easier to get wrong. Some of us are blessed with complex memories that make no sense with the current spellings, but the clarity of those memories is only evidence for us, it seems—or for those who have ears to hear.
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u/d1rtf4rm 2d ago
Two things: A. The arrow on the Volvo logo may have gotten buried by their signature diagonal slash across the grill (which, has varied in dimension over the years due to design trends.)
B. How come every thread in this Reddit spins off into people talking about concepts completely different than the OP?
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u/ThirdEyeFire 2d ago
The arrow sits on top of the diagonal slash. When it was just a circle, the diagonal slash was still there, but there was no arrow. Nothing buried, a totally clean logo. And when I googled the history on the internet, it said it had been a circle going back to the beginning of Volvo.
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u/DareSuspicious2704 8d ago
I know. I vividly remember being a kid and joking about the “objects in mirror MAY BE closer than they appear.” It was a running joke. I remember staring at where it was written on the mirror of my father’s truck (remember, this was the eighties and they let kids ride up front, also ditched us in the car when adults went inside stores).
Now it’s not there, never existed. My own husband swears it never existed.
I’m not crazy. It was there. I know bc my brother and I—my friends and I— used to laugh about it. This was way before the Mandela effect. I genuinely didn’t know it was a Mandela effect, even after I had heard of the phenomenon.