Star Wars and ... the "Mandela effect"

Sorry bud, I have to really disagree with you there. The Mandela Effect, like Flat Earth Theory is absolute nonsense. Seriously.

Take a look at these mag features here and here. They do a pretty good job of explaining and debunking it. For those who don't know this whole ridiculous theory first started when a blogger posted that she thought she remembered Nelson Mandela passing away in prison rather than as a free man. This one throw away comment started a whole meme - which is basically what it is - where people blame distortions in the time-space continuum for their own faulty recall.

It has been proven so many times that what it boils down to is just misremembered memories, accentuated further when someone else becomes convinced. If there were 'time-slips' or alternate timelines - which I'm not saying there isn't as far as our understanding of quantum physics and mechanics goes - then you'd think there would be more distinct examples rather than word changes in a movie? I've heard people misquoting films straight after viewing, such is the lack of attention to detail by today's technology-reliant generation.

Another Star Wars 'example' these folk always bring up is Threepio's silver leg, which is explained further in the first link above, but in a nut shell it's this. Some 'bright' spark posted on a forum somewhere claimed that they remembered C-3PO's was all gold and was aghast when they discovered that wasn't the case. And so another falsehood spread like wildfire throughout the internet without proper research being conducted. Original set notes from 1977 from the costume and prop department clearly state that they deliberately made the lower half of his leg silver, so as to give Threepio, more travel worn, and a less than perfect persona.

I'd encourage you to read the links above if you want to know more before you get sucked in to the Kessel maelstrom. And after all, should we really be tarnishing the legacy of Nelson Mandela in such a way?

 

Sorry, I meant to re-edit that before posting to make it clear I was disagreeing with the theory rather than yourself. there's a whole lot of them, most of them media or branding references which points to it being absolute tosh. If there historically relevant references I'd pay more attention, but when people argue over whether they remember Sex And The City or Sex In The City that's when I feel like creating a hole in the nearest brick wall with my face

 

This one in particular amuses me, because I remember spending hours looking at my Star Wars Storybook back in the day and wondering how and why Threepio had a silver shin. I've known he was not completely gold from as far back as I can remember.

And as for "I am your father," I probably am guilty of saying "Luke, I am your father" when describing the scene at some point in the past - and that's because people tend to say what will best convey the essence of the scene to the person you are passing that information on to... rather than simply quoting the script verbatim.
"Luke, I am your father" is just a convenient contraction of the whole scene.

I mean, I concede there is a "phenomenon" there to be observed - but it is nothing to do with parallel realities and conspiracy theories. It is just people getting stuff wrong, or adapting things for effect.
It is only really intriguing in the sense that some of these errors spread and often become the consensus, or the same error is replicated independently all over the world. And, as TK-421 points out, the internet has clearly contributed greatly to this becoming "a thing".

The bottom line is, my reaction is never - "oh my god, the whole world has changed"... it is simply - "oh, well, I guess I've / we've been wrong about that all this time"...

But, yeah, in answer to the original question - I probably said that line incorrectly more often than not, but I knew what the real dialogue in the movie was at the same time.

 

To me there seems to be something extraordinary going on. In this specific example we've got something that is explained either by:

1. Faulty memory being perpetuated by common misquote.
2. Divergent reality for a percentage of the population.

Clearly the first option is far more sufficient since we all experience problems remembering things. Before this "Mandela Effect" people who had different memories of something would simply state to the other person, "You're misremembering it" because, obviously someone (if not both) are misremembering. But now suddenly, this fantastic option 2 is touted by some as the more suffient, even when there's no evidence of, any part of it. To suppose that the one with no evidence whatsoever is more sufficient than the one with very common self-experienced evidence - it seems to me a blunder of basic reasoning so magnificent that I'm moved to hypoethesize that the cause is something more than just, inability to reason because, this seems like "one plus one" territory.

As an analogy, if tomorrow I found that a certain percentage of the population could no longer successfully add one and one, I'd think there was something, strange, going on. This seems to me the same. I believe people can be pretty ignorant, but THAT ignorant? To accept "divergent realities" over "faulty memory" as the more justifiably sufficient belief? It's something I wouldn't call ordinary because, ordinarily, people would say "You're misremembering." But now they say "Reality has diverged so that now Jiffy is Jif."

It's all so, hilariously lame, as well. Instead of diverging into the alternate reality in which I fly around on a giant eagle with my troop of elf maidens on unicorns, we crash into the alternate reality in which I'm buying Jif peanut butter instead of Jiffy. Typical.

 

Pretty sure it's just faulty memory created by society quoting it that way for decades. After all, what does popular media display it as more? "Luke, I am your father!" or "No, I am your father!"? Since the former is more popular, people who don't remember the scene that well fill in the blanks with what everyone else is saying.

 

So I came here because I thought we were going to talk about one of my most fave sci-fi characters of all time, William Mandella of Haldeman’s The Forever War........no? Anyone?

 

That version of the quote probably came into existence because saying "Luke" makes it clear you're referencing Star Wars. I always crack up over the Mandela effect, it's arguing that the fabric of the universe has been altered in order for these people to avoid admitting they were wrong about something. Usually some trivial pop culture reference it would seem. It's a comedic display of stubbornness. What's more likely, that as a kid you were pronouncing Berenstain Bears incorrectly or that reality as we know it has been altered? For some very stubborn people it's apparently the latter. This so-called "effect" takes its name because a bunch of people who weren't up on their current events thought that Nelson Mandela was already dead at the time he actually died. Instead of watching more news or subscribing to a newspaper they retreated further into ignorance by inventing a fantasy to excuse their mistake. In the case of the Star Wars quote they should have just watched more Star Wars and less Tommy Boy.