The Mandela Effect

Reality Isn't Real

Like many of you, I occasionally read the news, and as an intellectual exercise, I’d like to discuss three pairs of articles I saw recently which I believe share a common theme.

The first pair of news articles is here:

Kyle Rittenhouse Goes Free

Ahmaud Arbery Pursued for Four Minutes

This pair of news articles discusses our criminal justice system. I think that most people would also agree that it’s sad when people get shot. One interesting fact that I noticed here is that if you disregard the race of the person being attacked, this is basically exactly the same case. In both situations, a group of armed men attacked somebody who supposedly “had no business being there,” their victim fled, and they pursued him with murderous intent. Both cases have ample video evidence which indicated that the victim (Kyle in the first scenario, Ahmaud in the second scenario) attempted to avoid conflict, but were hunted down by their pursuers. The only difference in each case was the race of the victim (Kyle is white, whereas Ahmaud Arbery was black) and the fact that Kyle was carrying a weapon whereas Ahmaud was not. It is almost as if these cases were perfectly designed to mirror each other in every way except for one critical detail - as if some Illuminati were trolling the public to demonstrate that most people who read the news are so incredibly dumb and tribal that they will take sides in an open-and-shut self-defense case based purely on whether the victim is black or white. Isn’t that interesting? Anyway, let’s move on.

The second pair of news articles is here:

Madonna Reacts As Dog ‘Sells’ Her Miami Mansion For $31 million

Rupert Murdoch’s Granddaughter Talks About The PTSD Of Being Rich

The first article in this pairing discusses the shrewd business dealings of a German Shepherd named Gunther VI, who bought Madonna’s Tuscan-style mansion in Miami for $7.5 million and resold it for $31.75 million, making a huge profit of $24.25 million dollars. Reading a bit closer into the article uncovers the fact that rather than using his canine senses to sniff out a bargain, Gunther VI simply had the good fortune to be born into wealth and privilege. His wealthy ancestor set up a trust for him and his fortune is managed by a group of very competent handlers who oversee his estate (taking a cut for themselves as the management fee, of course). Because we live in an oligarchy where immense wealth creates a feedback loop which allows it to compound itself, even dumb animals like Gunther can lead a pampered and privileged existence without contributing anything useful to the world, as long as they were fortunate enough to inherit money. That’s right, this inbred dog with a below-average IQ makes more money in a single month than you will ever make in your entire life.

The second article in this pairing basically is the exact same theme, except that it talks about a person who is in that situation rather than a dog.

The third pair of news articles is here:

Military Executes Andrew Cuomo

Bill Gates Hanged at GITMO Ahead of Schedule

From these two articles, we infer that at last, the Day of the Rope has arrived. Finally all those cowardly Deep State puppeteers are getting what they deserve as the military executions prophesied by Q begin taking place. The time has come to stop waiting and act, my brethren! Grab your weapons and march against the government, for the anointed day of reckoning is finally here! Together, we shall cleanse this country with holy fire, for on Judgment Day we ride in the name of… wait, what’s this? I just noticed some other news articles which seem to suggest that Bill Gates and Andrew Cuomo are actually very much alive. Put down your weapons and hang on for a minute. Let’s hold off on that civil war until I’ve had a chance to do some more research and get to the bottom of this.

As I take a closer look at those two articles, I can’t help but notice that both of them come from the exact same website - Real Raw News. And Real Raw News seems to have a lot of other articles that seem perhaps a bit… sensationalized, for lack of a better word. For example, I’m pretty sure that the world did not come to the brink of nuclear war this year. Could it be that Real Raw News is lying to us?

This is the result of a little trick that I call the Mandela Effect, a term I coined a long time ago while “cleaning up” Wikipedia articles. The Mandela Effect is based on a principle which states that most people have no good way of fact-checking reality. We rely upon reporters to deliver useful information that helps us interpret the world, but most of us have no good way to filter out truthful news from fictional news. Instead, we trust and like people who tell us things that we already believe (regardless of whether those things are false) and we mistrust and dislike people who tell us things that we disbelieve (regardless of whether those things are true). In other words, human beings don’t like to admit when they’re wrong and will do all sorts of mental gymnastics to only listen to news when it confirms their biases. This is called confirmation bias, but when you add in algorithms that feed you similar types of news to what you are already reading, it creates a powerful illusion known as the Mandela Effect, where you develop a completely distorted impression of reality.

For example, the two articles from Real Raw News are a Mandela Effect designed to target extremist Trump supporters. If you enjoy a narrative of Deep State puppetmasters who manipulate society while a group of truth-seeking heroes plans a military takeover to fight these wealthy pedophiles, then your personal news algorithm will take those personal preferences into account and helpfully recommend similar news articles which confirm your belief that the day of reckoning for the Deep State is just around the corner. This isn’t necessarily malicious: your algorithm isn’t deliberately trying to start a civil war. It’s just doing its job, which is to offer you news articles which you are more likely to click on. The fact that this results in a never-ending loop designed to send you to Crazytown is simply a downstream effect.

Of course, you’re smarter than a Q-anon supporter, right? You would never fall for fake news because you only read news from reputable news sources. What sort of idiot reads articles from news sources called Real Raw News?

Bad news, my friend - you are exactly that stupid. Remember those news articles about Gunther, the millionaire dog oligarch? Well, despite the fact that it was reported by allegedly “credible” news sources like NPR or ABC, this news story is entirely fake. Gunther VI allegedly inherited his billions from a German Countess named Karlotta Liebenstein who passed away in 1992. However, a Google search reveals that Karlotta Liebenstein has a surprising absence of records about her life. It turns out that Gunther VI is just a prank by a corporation of Italian real estate developers known as the Gunther Group. He’s not a millionaire dog, he’s just their mascot. But hey, if you feel embarrassed at how easily you were fooled, consider that even Wikipedia was fooled alongside you: Gunther is currently heading the list of the world’s wealthiest animals. Don’t worry Gunther, you’ll become a landchad someday. Fake it till you make it, champ!

At this point, you may be wondering whether the article about Rupert Murdoch’s granddaughter and her affluenza is also fake: unfortunately, it is very real. Our society has a lot of useless rich people who exist in this terminally coddled state.

The fact is that we live in a time when it is incredibly easy to create fake news. Not only does the public have access to software that can create video of events that never happened, but on top of that our social media algorithms actively encourage us to watch fake news as long as it matches our pre-existing biases. Watch one fake news article manufactured with Deepfake propaganda, and soon enough your algorithm will be recommending dozens of other fake news articles to you to reinforce your ignorance. This is the real cause of the Mandela Effect: an illusion generated by algorithms which gives you the perception that you are living in a completely different timeline than the rest of the world.

One of the most well-known examples of the Mandela effect

Are you starting to be afraid yet? Are you starting to get the alarming realization that your reality might not be as real as you thought it was? Take a moment to reread the very first pair of articles I showed you, and I’ll leave you with one last unsettling thought. Now that you know that millionaire dog Gunther VI isn’t real - and yet dozens of “reputable” news sources and even Wikipedia were fooled - how do you even know that Kyle Rittenhouse or Ahmaud Arbery are real, and that you’re not being massively trolled by some cunning prankster? There are plenty of news articles about these people, just like there were with Gunther VI… but isn’t it a little bit curious that when you say the name “Ahmaud Arbery” really fast, it kind of sounds like “Armed Robbery”…?

Edit: After writing this blog post, a lot of the news organizations in question immediately went back and edited their original articles. Instead of posting a public retraction, many of them simply memory-holed their mistake, acting as though they had known about this prank the entire time. If some of the links do not reveal the story as originally reported, that would be the reason why.