Ditto various gatherings and events that used the name. TV shows and movies used the Mandela Effect name freely it wasn’t trademarked. People had the idea I was making money from this site. The first was the cost of hosting the site as traffic overloaded existing servers.(That was an odd coincidence with the weasel/CERN glitch, though – of course – correlation does not imply causation.)Īs interest in this topic surged, two problems emerged. Then, the topic became more serious, as more odd memories were reported.īy mid-2016, this site seemed to hit critical mass. Not now.Įarly discussions were flippant and whimsical, leaning in to sci-fi speculation. I’m not sure which of us – Dragon Con’s security manager, Shadowe, or my husband, or even me – coined the “Mandela Effect” phrase.Īlmost immediately, I started this website to see how many shared similar memories.Īlso, I was looking for a reasonable explanation for the apparent confusion related to Nelson Mandela. I was part of that Dragon Con green room conversation. Though they knew Mandela was still alive in 2009, they couldn’t explain what they’d seen on TV, years earlier. That’s when multiple people said they recalled a 20th-century funeral they’d thought was Nelson Mandela’s. The phrase “Mandela Effect” emerged at Dragon Con’s “green room” in 2009. So far, there’s no one-size-fits-all answer to why some memories are widespread… but seem false.Īt this website, I offer my own explanations. Just a very clear memory a person has, but it doesn’t match historical records. The Mandela Effect is when people clearly recall an event in history – something very specific – but historical records show that something else happened.

What is the mandela effect