To ME or not to ME

During the previous decade there has arisen an assertion that millions of people have experienced a "memory phenomenon" wherein they remember facts, events, visual presentations which are not substantiated by an historical review of what the vast majority of people both remember and now today see.

Simple differences can be shown in whether or not there is an apostrophe in a brand name, an "s" at the end of a celebrity's name, a word or two different in a title or movie dialog. The most elaborate difference claimed by various persons is whether the Presidential motorcade limousine in which JFK was assassinated has/had two rows of seats or three. The emotional attachment a person has to his experience and his explanation for how it came to be makes much of their testimony suspect.

Even though there IS a physical mechanism for how the past might become altered and for there to be convergences of quantum realities, much of that has been put forth as evidence has little probability of being accurate.  Many claimants say proof of their experiences and recollections are accurate. One only has to cite examples of errors which are not Mandela Effect related to show most of the examples fall in the "not ME" category. One of the hallmarks of a compelling ME example is there is zero physical evidence to point to. If there are such artifacts those artifacts can be attributed to raising the confusion in the first place.

Pic of the album in my vinyl collection

Compelling ME examples are the VW logo, the Volvo logo and the Red hat/bandanna of Springsteen's Born in the USA album. In the latter example the hat is highly unusual since Bruce did not use such a hat in his personal image but did use a red bandanna.
Advertisers have used the phrase "feeling ones oats" to signify the vitality a person will get if they breakfast on their cereal. That phrase has been around a long time and has gained a meaning of its own apart from the original words "fielding ones (wild) oats."  Its meaning and usage is not appropriate for oat cereal products. To most people reading this blog post the "feeling" variant is the only one they ever herd and the reference to springtime reproductive rites is unknown. The change took place was and propagated so widely that the original phrase is mostly unknown. It is highly unlikely that "feeling" would ever be altered to be "fielding."

Here is another phrase to consider. It's a"tough road to hoe."  Why is it a road with a hoe? how many people hoe a road? Well even though common usage had made it a road the phrase is "row to hoe" as in farming or gardening in dense hard-packed soil. Similarly to the previous example in is highly unlikely a road reference would ever become a farming reference.

The English language is a highly volatile and flexible one where nuances can be made with the sweep of a pen, words sound similar and most people do not practice diction to a high degree. Graphic designers love to make unique and memorable messages by altering some small part of the images and text. Therefore, unusual spellings are not that unusual.

If the "real original" name and spelling was Berenstein Bears it would be highly improbable people would gloss over the spelling and come up with Berenstain by accident.  The converse is not equally probable.

A subset of people reporting ME experiences also impute that they are from an alternate timeline of the Earth. Their observation is of such things as continental positioning. In particular South America seems to now be about a thousand miles further east than they remember it being located. Neglecting cartographers' variations the continents do move. South America did diverge from Africa and move westward to where it is today. Tectonic pressures are are now pushing it eastward again. For an alternate timeline explanation to hold true, both variations must have been possible but differently manifest. Internal Earth pressures did likely place the South American continent in each of the reported positions. A spurious event would necessarily have at some date in the multi-million years ago past happened or not happened to result in the position of today. For those people the alternate timeline hypothesis holds at least some water.

The other big geological example is the alleged land mass west of Australia. While some people have a "recollection" of such a place, they have no name for it or and physical description of its character. There is no unemerged sub-sea formation which alternate time references would either create or suppress its rise to dry land in the region. For their supposition to hold any validity we need to elevate their hypothesis from mere alternate timeline to a completely different manifestation of Earth itself.

There is no consistency yet for what the ME actually is:

1. Illusion
2. Wishful-thinking
3. Manipulated memory
4. Erroneous memory
5. A timeline phenomenon
6. Converging realities
7. Alteration of the past
8. Some even more exotic cause

My opinion is #7 by a combination of natural and man-made causation.