There is a baffling and mysterious phenomenon people call the Mandela Effect. In general terms, it refers to large numbers of people sharing memories that are concrete and detailed enough that they are hard to dismiss as mere misrecognitions, yet those memories differ from reality.
Alternatively, even when at that point only a single individual claims it, if the account is concrete and detailed and there appears to be no motive for fabricating a falsehood, then from the impression of marked factuality and credibility, it may be treated as a Mandela Effect and become a subject of examination and investigation.
A common explanation is that world revisions caused by a reconfiguration of spacetime by higher-dimensional beings such as deities or buddhas, or world revisions caused by ultra-cutting-edge science and technology or by time travelers using future technology, are being remembered by those with "Reading Steiner" abilities (explained later), who retain memories from before the revisions, or before they are erased.
Or, to begin with, from the perspective of theories like Quantum Monad Theory (note 1), which hold that reality is constituted by the integration of infinitely many, or at least numerous, time axes, it is sometimes said that for a variety of motives ranging from the cosmic scale to international-conflict-on-Earth scale, or even to the level of individual profit-seeking, other-dimensional entities such as aliens, time travelers, and deities or buddhas are engaged in a rewrite war over everything from historical facts implicated in political struggles and interstate conflicts to the most trivial personal stories; as evidence that our real world is a Matrix world managed and controlled by higher-dimensional humans, this is a concept that draws the attention and support of people who study the occult and of people who, by actually experiencing the Mandela Effect, have been left with no choice but to believe in baffling phenomena.
The original etymology of the term is a large-scale Mandela Effect arising from politics and racial issues in the Republic of South Africa. Perhaps for that reason, on the internet the Mandela Effect tends to be made a target of criticism and insult by people with a fascistic mindset, and even within the universal conflict in the occult world between the Cozy mindset and the fascistic mindset, it has given rise to the most fiercely contentious and difficult discursive space.
Alternatively, for example among people in the military cluster on Twitter (now X), there are often those who do not even know the word or concept of the Mandela Effect, and indeed harbor insulting, negative images toward the occult in general, yet who will say things like that thing they saw long ago—when, where, and how they saw it, or what they read it in—are unclear, cannot be found, and so on; similar things occur conventionally and transversally in various other fields as well, and because of the insulting, negative image toward the occult overall, the aggregation and integration of information has become difficult.
Because I am someone who has experienced the Mandela Effect, I have the perspective of an experiencer, and furthermore, due to the family environment in which I was born and raised, a fascistic mindset and a Cozy mindset also coexist within me, and because I struggle with this every day, I am a person capable of multifaceted, synthetic analysis and inquiry into the Mandela Effect. Also, due to my family environment and so forth, I am knowledgeable about the military and defense. Therefore, I resolved to write a book here that describes a comprehensive exploration of the Mandela Effect and to contribute to the internet discourse space on the Mandela Effect for the people of Japan and for foreigners who speak Japanese.
FOOTNOTES
(note 1) ... "Quantum Monad Theory" is a theory that the workings of the mind we observe create the root of the universe, and that the universe unfolds within the world of the mind. It is a type of "quantum brain theory" that seeks to understand consciousness and the brain from a quantum perspective. (note 2) ... " Cozy" is an English adjective meaning " comfortable" or " warm." In the main text it refers to a personal and flexible way of thinking that resists scientific authoritarianism. In the field of occult-mystery fiction, there is the term "cozy mystery," which means a warm-spirited mystery that avoids violence and sexual depictions. Similarly, the " Cozy mindset" here expresses a more human and warm way of knowing in opposition to authoritarian and rigid thinking.
Was it around 2017? Although it is difficult to pinpoint the exact period, and while we await—indeed, might expect—compilations by internet-occult historiographers (supposing such a thing were to exist), on personal-fiction posting sites where anyone can debut as an amateur novelist, works about being reincarnated in another world established themselves as a genre and became a kind of boom, and in the occult world, accounts of temporarily staying in another world and the like started to trend; also, since long ago there has been a genre in fantasy and SF whose subject matter is spatiotemporal shifts via time travel to the past or movement to the future and reality revision, but such things began to feel more familiar and became more warmly received by us ordinary people.
The work that became the vanguard of the world of the Mandela Effect is Steins;Gate. The TV anime aired from April to September 2011, a feature film was released on April 20, 2013, and the sequel "Steins;Gate 0" aired from April to September 2018. This work is said to be the origin of basic terminology used when discussing the Mandela Effect, namely "world line" and " Reading Steiner." For these reasons, in discursive spaces hostile to the Mandela Effect, it is sometimes criticized as nothing more than a meme that arose from such anime or amateur fiction, or as mere delusion.
At first the author was researching accounts of otherworldly experiences, and in the course of that, realized that he himself had several mysterious memories, and I think he gradually became convinced of the existence of the Mandela Effect and got absorbed in it.
Steins;Gate, nicknamed "Shutage," is the work that became the origin of the terms " world line" and " Reading Steiner," basic vocabulary for discussing the Mandela Effect in Japan. Also, around 2015 there seems to have been a period when works about reincarnation in another world and stories about people who stayed briefly in another world but managed to come back were in vogue. But the origin of the term "Mandela Effect" is in America, a word that appeared on the English-language internet around 2010. In Japan, around the same time, an anonymous-board thread titled "I remember Susumu Miyao died much earlier" (Susumu Miyao: a Japanese TV personality) continued unbroken, and it merged with the American-origin concept of the " Mandela Effect."
The term and concept of the Mandela Effect were proposed by American paranormal author Fiona Broome, and it is said to have originated from accounts she heard from event staff when she participated as a speaker at a subculture event in 2009—accounts from people who remembered Nelson Mandela dying in prison. All those memories contradicted the facts, yet they included concrete details such as the scene of the memorial service, his wife's speech, and the riots that occurred across South Africa thereafter, and they matched, down to the details, memories that Broome herself had once dismissed as a simple misunderstanding. For that reason, Broome interpreted this phenomenon as a kind of paranormal event that current popular science cannot explain. In 2010, Broome launched the site "The Mandela Effect," presenting both the possibility that similar phenomena could occur with things other than Mandela's death in prison and the hypothesis that those memories were due to alternative realities (Alternative Reality) of parallel worlds.
Explore the world of the Mandela Effect in a database with over 360 documented cases.
Founding President of Republic of South Africa "Nelson Mandela" (Public Domain)