The Mandela effect and the Old world

[Syaoran Li]

I don't know about the Mandela effect, some of that is clearly just people remembering thing wrong.

But on the other hand I have always had a feeling that something fundamentally changed about the world after 2007, even though I can't place my finger on what exactly.

Agreed.

Most of the stuff about the Mandela Effect is largely the result of people remembering things wrong, especially with the more commonly cited hallmarks like the Berenstain Bears, Sinbad playing a genie in a movie, or Nelson Mandela dying in 1994 instead of 2013.

But there was some sort of fundamental cultural change in the late 2000's and early 2010's, and I can't fully quite determine what it was beyond the obvious hallmarks like the Great Recession or the rise of smartphones.

Something changed and that change could be felt on a certain core level in a way that can't really be quantified. Maybe it's just me getting older, since those years overlapped with my teen years and entering adulthood, but I've noticed a lot of Gen X'ers and Boomers in my family who have felt a similar feeling about the world changing after 2007.

I'm wondering if they also felt this way after 1991 or 2001, or if it's a unique thing with the late 2000's. The meme of 2007 being the year that everything jumped the shark exists for a reason, so I know it's not just me. You don't really get that feeling with other hallmark years when you look back at the historical or cultural record, with the noted exceptions of 1914 and maybe 1968.

1914 and 1968 are probably the closest equivalents because of the social and political events in those years. World War I more or less set the stage for the character of the Western world in the 20th Century while 1968 is often seen as a jump the shark moment for America thanks to the Chicago DNC riots, the assassinations of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, and the Tet Offensive.

But with 2007, there's no real Great War or mass social unrest.

You had the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but those started years earlier and weren't anywhere near on the scale of destruction as World War I or World War II, and aside from George W. Bush being disliked by pretty much everyone who wasn't an avowed neocon and the Religious Right experiencing its final dying breaths, you didn't have the mass social and political turbulence of the 1960's or 1970's.

Instead, 2007 was mostly a shift in technology and in pop culture, and it really wouldn't be fully realized until 2011-2012 at the absolute earliest. It's a very weird feeling and it happened in the weirdest of circumstances.

Like, if older people felt this palpable aura of a fundamentally changed world after the Soviet Union collapsed or after 9/11, then it's probably just the results of the Great Recession and the new technological changes that coincided with it, and it just feels stronger for me because I was finally old enough to fully grasp it as it was happening.

Or maybe I've had a bit too much to drink this evening and I'm just being an autist about this, who even knows?

 

[Dom Cruise]

Something changed and that change could be felt on a certain core level in a way that can't really be quantified.

That's exactly what I'm talking about, you could feel just feel it in the air that year that things were changing.

It's easy to just say it was because of smartphones or whatever, except no one I knew had a smart phone until a few years later, so while sure the change was partly technology it wasn't just that, it simply felt like the end of some epoch for American culture.

 

[Syaoran Li]

That's exactly what I'm talking about, you could feel just feel it in the air that year that things were changing.

It's easy to just say it was because of smartphones or whatever, except no one I knew had a smart phone until a few years later, so while sure the change was partly technology it wasn't just that, it simply felt like the end of some epoch for American culture.

Exactly, and even with the global recession of the late 2000's, that was in the latter half of 2008 and even in 2007, a lot of people were predicting an economic downturn would happen very soon and for the exact same reasons as the ones that kicked off the Great Recession. It wasn't a black swan event like the Cold War ending peacefully, 9/11, or the current COVID-19 pandemic.

Some of the predictions were off on just how severe it would be, but anyone who knew anything about the economy knew that the Great Recession was going to happen.

Even then, a major economic downturn wouldn't normally be enough to cause this feeling of massive change. Even one as severe as the 2008 Recession was.

I also felt a similar aura of change in 2012, but to a smaller extent than in 2007 and it seems a lot of people I know felt that aura in '07 too.

 

[Dysnomia]

Agreed.

Most of the stuff about the Mandela Effect is largely the result of people remembering things wrong, especially with the more commonly cited hallmarks like the Berenstain Bears, Sinbad playing a genie in a movie, or Nelson Mandela dying in 1994 instead of 2013.

But there was some sort of fundamental cultural change in the late 2000's and early 2010's, and I can't fully quite determine what it was beyond the obvious hallmarks like the Great Recession or the rise of smartphones.

Something changed and that change could be felt on a certain core level in a way that can't really be quantified. Maybe it's just me getting older, since those years overlapped with my teen years and entering adulthood, but I've noticed a lot of Gen X'ers and Boomers in my family who have felt a similar feeling about the world changing after 2007.

I'm wondering if they also felt this way after 1991 or 2001, or if it's a unique thing with the late 2000's. The meme of 2007 being the year that everything jumped the shark exists for a reason, so I know it's not just me. You don't really get that feeling with other hallmark years when you look back at the historical or cultural record, with the noted exceptions of 1914 and maybe 1968.

1914 and 1968 are probably the closest equivalents because of the social and political events in those years. World War I more or less set the stage for the character of the Western world in the 20th Century while 1968 is often seen as a jump the shark moment for America thanks to the Chicago DNC riots, the assassinations of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, and the Tet Offensive.

But with 2007, there's no real Great War or mass social unrest.

You had the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but those started years earlier and weren't anywhere near on the scale of destruction as World War I or World War II, and aside from George W. Bush being disliked by pretty much everyone who wasn't an avowed neocon and the Religious Right experiencing its final dying breaths, you didn't have the mass social and political turbulence of the 1960's or 1970's.

Instead, 2007 was mostly a shift in technology and in pop culture, and it really wouldn't be fully realized until 2011-2012 at the absolute earliest. It's a very weird feeling and it happened in the weirdest of circumstances.

Like, if older people felt this palpable aura of a fundamentally changed world after the Soviet Union collapsed or after 9/11, then it's probably just the results of the Great Recession and the new technological changes that coincided with it, and it just feels stronger for me because I was finally old enough to fully grasp it as it was happening.

Or maybe I've had a bit too much to drink this evening and I'm just being an autist about this, who even knows?

You might be on to something. The older you get the more you wonder where the good old days went. You fail to consider that right now these are someone else's good old days. And some day they will feel the same as you do now. Some day we will all be yelling at clouds.

Any large shift in culture or tragic world events are going to have a lasting effect on people.

A lot of these Mandela Effects are so stupid. Yet because you forgot how to spell Reddi Wip the entire timeline has shifted? Give me a break.

 

[WonderWino]

Then again, I think the notion of alternate timelines is stupid to begin with. Why would an entire new universe with over a trillion trillion stars be created every time something happens, with the only initial difference being that one thing?

Indeed, the entire concept of alternate realities, let alone alternative realities that suddenly come into existence for everything someone does is utterly nonsensical and a fundamental violation of the laws of physics. I'd like to know where all the matter and energy to create these alternate universes is coming from when this happens

 

[Guts Gets Some]

Whenever I hear "proof" of the Mandala effect, I only think one thing:

"Bullshit. The real cause is people don't pay attention enough or just go along with what everyone else is saying without fact verifying"

Makes absolute total sense to me.

 

[In Memoriam]

I know, the Mandela effect is dumb, etc. but y’all. I worked in a video store as a teenager and I distinctly recall that fucking Sinbad movie. I remember when it came out, I remember putting it on the shelf, and no it wasn’t fucking Kazaam with Shaq. Now, I do believe the theory that Phil Hartman was embarrassed by the movie and it got disappeared when he died is more logical, but there would be a dusty VHS in someone’s attic. I took quantum mechanics in college, my professor was brilliant, and he taught us about the Manhattan Project and how the mathematical proofs work out for all this crazy stuff... and I do think there is some credence to the many worlds theory. I think there is a scientific explanation for everything, we are just not advanced enough to understand it. Did we slide into another timeline? It’s possible, but theoretical physics is so complex and frankly, scary that is easier for people to just say oh that’s dumb. Keeps their world view intact.

 

[Quantum Diabetes]

Yes, I'm from an Earth where "The Dukes of Hazzard" ran until 2002 and that shitshow that was "Smallville" didn't have John Schneider in the cast, it was cancelled in the 2nd season.

Also Skoal never quit making vanilla and it contributed to world peace.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

something fundamentally changed about the world after 2007

2007 was "the year the internet went to shit" -- the year the iPhone was released, Twitter went mainstream, and Tumblr went online. It's also the year YouTube made it so people can become "internet famous" with that partner program, launching the quest of many a lolcow to a lifetime of attention whoring for e-fame.

(also lol I remember this thread)

 

[Dom Cruise]

2007 was "the year the internet went to shit" -- the year the iPhone was released, Twitter went mainstream, and Tumblr went online. It's also the year YouTube made it so people can become "internet famous" with that partner program, launching the quest of many a lolcow to a lifetime of attention whoring for e-fame.

(also lol I remember this thread)

And frankly, 2007 was the last year before America elected its first black President, that certainly makes it the end of an epoch.

 

[Syaoran Li]

And frankly, 2007 was the last year before America elected its first black President, that certainly makes it the end of an epoch.

True, and it's a shame our first black president was an awful warmonger and neoliberal corporate establishment shill who continued most of Bush's worst policies, and in some cases, expanded them (see the drone program, the renewed Patriot Act, and the NSA surveillance network)

 

[Tour of Italy]

2007 was "the year the internet went to shit" -- the year the iPhone was released, Twitter went mainstream, and Tumblr went online. It's also the year YouTube made it so people can become "internet famous" with that partner program, launching the quest of many a lolcow to a lifetime of attention whoring for e-fame.

(also lol I remember this thread)

The first film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe was filmed in 2007 and released in 2008.

So yeah, I’d say there were the beginnings of a seismic shift in pop culture then.

 

[Oglooger]

Where's the Earth where Deagle Nation is real and creates a militia to overtake America and save us from the Skeleton Race War?