*intro*
Captain Disillusion: Greetings children, it's me, Captain Disillusion and I-I-
Holly: -and I'm Holly, where this is, and always has been, my thing.
CD: I'm here to warn you to the universe itself, is an unreliable narrator.
H: Consider the mysterious phenomenon known as the "Mandela Effect",
H: when people inexplicably share identical memories of things that never happened.
CD: Remember the genie movie starring a black guy who isn't Shaquille O'Neal and the movie is not called "Kazaam"?
H: Yeah!
CD: Well, it doesn't exist!
H: What?!
CD: Mandela Effect!
H: Hey, you know how the "Kit-Kat" logo is spelled with a dash?
CD: Of course, that's one of the main things that I know!
H: Wrong! There was never a dash!
CD: Aah!
H: Mandela Effect.
H: The term comes from the fact that many, many, many white people clearly recall that the South African revolutionary, Nelson Mandela,
H: dying in prison in the 80's instead as a free man in 2013.
CD: Examples are too numerous and consistent to be dismissed as simple misremembering of basic facts
CD: and no one is immune.
H: Have you ever quoted Hannibal Lecter saying, "Hello, Clarice." in Silence of the Lambs?
H: I'm sorry, but he never actually said that. Check the film.
CD: Do you picture C-3PO as all gold?
CD: I'm afraid his right leg has always been silver,
CD: except when they forgot about it in the prequels and made up a backstory later.
H: It appears you have been affected.
CD: But don't panic, the unthinkable hasn't happened,
CD: you, are not wrong.
CD: It's just that the entire universe around you, is the wrong universe.
H: At some point, you slipped out of a timestream where things are the way you remember,
H: and into this one, where things are different in tiny ways that don't impact history, but make you
H: just a little bit special.
CD: Either that, or it's a corporate cover-up, like when they retroactively changed the Berenstein Bears to the Berenstain Bears to make them sound less Jew-ish.
CD: I mean, come on, who has the name Berenstain?
CD: The authors of the books? Whatever!
H: Or how my eyes have retroactively changed to green in all previous Captain D videos to make me look more Irish.
CD: The reality of the Mandela Effect cannot be denied. It has an official website.
H: Countless blog articles.
CD: And a support group of sorts on the most welcoming platform on the internet, Reddit.
CD: They don't do that just for anything.
H: You're not alone, we're with you.
CD: And one sufferer to another, I make a humble request.
H: That you please.
CD: Please.
H: Just.
CD: Just.
CD: Stop it! H: Stop it!
CD: Just stop already, this is dumb! H: Enough with this crap already! Seriously!
CD: The Mandela Effect is not a medically recognized physiological phenomenon,
CD: it's from a blog started by a self-described "paranormal consultant", Fiona Broome.
CD: A name that fits nicely among Disney Afternoon's janitor based villains like,
CD: Winifred from Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers and Ammonia Pines from Dark Wing Duck.
CD: Her main gig is writing tips on ghost hunting for beginners, but in 2010, she stumbled on a new marketing opportunity.
H: She proposed a catchy name and a sexy paranormal hypotheses for an effect that has a much simpler explanation.
CD: Which it's that, we're not special.
CD: And our brains all fail at memory in the same predictable ways.
CD: We reconstruct memories each time we recall them and we're prone to adopting the recollection of others as our own.
H: Think of the thousands of unrelated commenters misspelling "you're" as "your" under this video.
CD: Or millennials quoting classic movie lines they only heard in SNL parodies which they only saw cause it was trending in their feed.
CD: To them, "...Life is like a box of chocolates..." and "Luke, I am your father." and "Play it again, Sam" are all things characters said.
H: It doesn't take an alternate universe or global conspiracy to accept that all these people arrived at the same incorrect notions independently.
CD: But when you google the fascinating mysterious Mandela Effect, 14 out of the 20 examples in the Buzzfeed article that comes up as the top hit,
CD: are all about tiny spelling errors and movie misquotes.
H: Froot Loops is written with two O's? Time to argue about the nature of reality in this comment thread!
CD: The other examples are all about similar visual minutiae, whenever cartoons characters had monocles or tails or spots on their tails.
CD: I wanna throw a refrigerator through a window.
H: And of course there are the obligatory Sazaam starring Sinbad and Nelson Mandela's death date examples that are totally not racist.
H: And people also remember Rodney King dying in 1993.
CD: And this is where Ammonia Pine-, I mean Fiona Broome, and anyone else who promotes a metaphysical explanation of the effect,
CD: roll their eyes.
H: Ugh.
H: You don't understand at all.
H: We're not saying we are definitely right.
H: Or that people don't make mistakes.
H: Or that things didn't happened the way history has recorded them, sweetie.
H: We just want you to be open to the possibility that,
H: something odd may or may not be going on.
H: It's just interesting to think about.
CD: Reacting to recent criticisms in the media, Winifred-, I mean Fiona, wrote,
CD: "The Mandela Effect is quirky. It's weird. It's fun, if you step away from the topic and look at it intellectually."
CD: "This site has been based in, "Okay, what if altenate memories are mostly accurate? What if alternate realities exist, and we can interact with them? Then what...?" "
H: Well, let's see.
H: If Nelson Mandela died in prison during the 1980's, then I guess he never became the first black democratically elected president of South Africa.
H: It's just interesting to think about.
CD: If the Berenstain Bears were secretly renamed for marketing purposes, then their creators Stan & Jan Berenstain must have changed their name too.
CD: And maybe the Holocaust didn't happen in this timestream, I mean, who's to say?
CD: It's just interesting to think about.
H: If Shazaam starring Sinbad was the film everyone remembers, then the "How did this get made?" podcast never did an episode about Kazaam starring Shaq,
H: with TV writer Kay Cannon as a guest, causing her to fall down the stairs that day, having never completed the final draft of Pitch Perfect 3,
H: leaving out a pivotal scene that inspires Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Bob Goodlatte, to believe in himself enough to greenlight presidential impeachment!
H: IT'S JUST INTERESTING TO THINK ABOUT!
CD: See, there is only one reality, one kind of facts, without alternatives.
CD: Being fascinated with a quirk of the mind is great.
CD: But if your explanation for it blows right past Occam's Razor to inter-universe leakage,
CD: It's kinda a problem for the rest of us.
H: It encourages sloppy, uncritical thinking, which is never a good thing.
H: Knowing how to distinguish what you think is real from what is real, is the most important skill in the universe.
H: I'm saying that and I'm an actual goddess.
CD: By the way, in Holly's timestream, reddit has a different name.
CD: Instead of "red", it's blue and instead of "it", it's "me", because it's a forum for people who did that last nigh-
H: He's joking. He's actually very grateful, but a personality disorder prevents him from expressing genuine affection.
CD: You wish, you...terrible enemy...whom I hate!
H: And for the term Mandela Effect, just keep in mind.
CD: When you popularize it, the only thing you accomplish is helping this woman, use this website to sell this shirt.
CD: But now I'm afraid it's time for me to go kids. H: But now I'm afraid it's time for me to go kids.
CD: A substitute school teacher in Scranton refuses to cover a chapter in evolution. H: An attorney in Memphis wants a recovered memory admitted as evidence in court.
CD: Remember to love with your heart, use your head for ever- Aah! H: Remember to love with your heart, use your head for ever- Aah!
CD: Not so fast, Holly. H: Not so fast, D.
CD: Holly! H: Captain!