WorldWideWeird Episode 1 Transcript

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSp3IC-00QE

Is reality really as concrete as we assume it is? Have you ever experienced something that made you question this? It could have been something so small that you tried to write it off. You were tired, your mind was playing tricks on you, anything to move past that impossibility and get on with your life. But what if what you saw, or thought, or remembered was real? Maybe it’s not you making a mistake, maybe it’s the world around you? Perhaps our universe is not as material as we think.

Hello, and welcome to World Wide Weird, a podcast focusing on explaining the strange phenomena of our world, I’m your host. This episode’s topics are Glitches in the Matrix and The Mandela Effect.

A Glitch in the Matrix is a mistake in reality. Usually experienced as an impossible occurrence in someone's life where reality seems to be flawed momentarily.

And The Mandela Effect is an effect where a large group of people remember events or items differently than how they actually are, or a collective false memory.

The term Glitch in the Matrix is derived from a sort of telephone game. The 1999 film The Matrix popularized the theory of the world we live in being some sort of simulation, and the term Glitch in the Matrix arose from people experiencing occurrences that fell in line with that theory. Many people directly cite the film for inventing the idea of a simulated reality but the idea of reality being simulated can be seen as far back as Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. Additionally, the movie does not actually have anything in it that resembles what is commonly thought to be a glitch in the matrix, outside of a character seeing the same cat walk by him twice and the other characters calling it deja vu.

The Mandela Effect got its name from the first popular instance of the effect, the death of Nelson Mandela. In this universe at least, South African president Nelson Mandela died in 2013. However, many people seem to remember him dying in prison in the 1980s, before he even became president. Self-identified paranormal consultant Fiona Broome was the one to coin the term Mandela Effect in 2009. This was after she realized so many people, herself included, remembered this event that never happened.

Things that are classified as instances of the Mandela Effect usually involve a large group of people remembering something differently than how it actually occurred, and is usually explained using parallel universes. Many conspiracy theorists believe that the reason some people have different memories of the past is because they’re from a parallel universe that may have collided with our current universe. Glitches in the Matrix are similar to the Mandela Effect, however, they’re usually more small-scale and less concerned with parallel universes. The way many people explain and understand the concept of glitches in the matrix is right in the name of the occurrence, the matrix. The reason these things happen is because the reality we live in is a simulation that can make mistakes. However, other believers in the validity of glitches in the matrix explain the occurrences through the lens of parallel universes. When you experience a glitch, it could be two universes overlapping, or someone briefly falling through to another universe. Glitch in the Matrix is also broader compared to the Mandela Effect, containing both things that would be considered a small scale Mandela Effect, as well as hearing or seeing strange things, unusual intuition, time slipping, or wild synchronicities.

One of the most popular examples of the Mandela Effect, possibly even more than the one it’s named after, is the Berenstain versus Berenstein Bears. Many people claim to remember the name of this children's book being spelled with an A, BerenstAin and not with an E, BerenstEin, which is how it’s written now. It’s not just kids who claim to remember a different spelling too, teachers and librarians have come forward as well to try and prove that the spelling actually has actually changed somehow. Some claim that this spelling discrepancy is evidence that we have crossed into another universe.

Another example is the Monopoly Man, from the board game that tends to rip relationships apart. How do you remember him looking? Does he wear a monocle? Many claim that yes, he does, but checking back to the man shows no monocle, and no evidence he ever had one.

Some people, often those living outside of the United States, remember learning that the USA consisted of 52 states, rather than 50, with Puerto Rico often being one of the two additional states. Many have claimed that they were taught the United States had 52 states was to remember a deck of playing cards, and how it had 52 cards.

Aside from Nelson Mandela, many more celebrities seem to have died more than once according to some people. Billy Graham was thought by some to have died back in 2009, rather than in 2018. Other celebrities with contested deaths include Muhammad Ali, Terry Pratchett, and Betty White.

While the Mandela Effect has specific examples, Glitches in the Matrix usually fall into different categories, here are some of the most popular ones. First up is synchronicity. Synchronicity is a concept created by psychologist Carl Jung, defined as a “meaningful coincidence of two or more events where something other than the probability of chance is involved.” For example, an old friend messaging you out of the blue as soon as you start to think about them, or passerbys conversations that seem to match up with your own conversation. While this concept did not originate from the idea of glitches in the matrix, and is not confined to them, many people who experience synchronicities and who are also knowledgeable of glitches in the matrix do group them together. Simply put, synchronicities can be seen as types of glitches.

False memories are another form of glitches. This is where The Mandela Effect and Glitches in the Matrix overlap the most. People have reported remembering an event, or even a person, wildly different compared to those around them. It could be something like having memories of a trip you took that nobody else can remember, or even remembering someone that seems to never have existed. These are often the most disputed instances of a glitch in the matrix since it can be chalked up to someone misremembering. However, some of these false memories that people have are foundational and incredibly memorable, which makes them more difficult to dispute.

Another type of glitch people have reported have been time slips. These seem to be very broad with some people reporting experiencing driving through a town full of people that looked to be from 100 years ago, or turning down a street and suddenly seeing what looks like a glimpse of the future. Others experience a much smaller scale version of timeslips too, such as calling someone only for the phone to be picked up by a much younger or older version of that person.

Near and after death experiences are sometimes included as glitches, and are quite common within Glitch in the Matrix circles. People report seeing or feeling themselves die only for time to reset just before the incident, allowing them to avoid it. These stories often bring up the idea of quantum immortality as it applies to the many worlds interpretation of our universe. These theories are complex and deal heavily with Quantum Physics so I will try to explain this as simply as I can. Some believe that when you die, you slip into another universe much like your own, and the only people who actually experience your death are those in the universe you left. So therefore, when someone experiences a glitch where they die and seemingly reset to avoid it, they are just moving from one universe to another.

As with anything that seems too strange or out of this world, there's many arguments against the validity of Glitches in the Matrix and the Mandela Effect. Carbon monoxide poisoning is a common argument to explain glitches in the matrix since a main symptom is confusion. While there have not been many cases of glitches being caused by carbon monoxide, it’s usually one of the first things to be suggested due to the health risks.

In the same vein as carbon monoxide poisoning, undiagnosed medical conditions are often brought up to explain glitches in the matrix. Everything from schizophrenia, narcolepsy, seizures, dissociative identity disorder, and many others are used to discredit people's stories. Some claim that they did go to the doctor after experiencing a glitch, and did not find anything wrong with themselves. But others are more willing to accept the glitch explanation over the idea of them having a condition that is causing strange occurrences.

Another argument against these phenomena is people just misremembering. Most people do not like admitting they’re wrong about things, and some might cling to the impossible to avoid it, sometimes even unintentionally. Memories get especially hazy when recounting them from childhood too. Maybe when you were younger you watched part of a movie or dreamed something that got stuck in your head, then later you could have remembered it not as a film or dream, but as an actual memory, something that wouldn’t line up with anyone else's memories of the time.

Similar to misremembering, confabulation is specifically what many scientists use to explain the Mandela Effect. Confabulation is just your brain's way of filling in gaps. People will misremember something and then go on to spread that false information in a leading way. When I asked the question earlier, does the Monopoly Man have a monocle, it was a leading question. I was making you specifically think of the Monopoly Man having the monocle, even if you had no memory of whether he did or not, I put the idea in your head that he had one already. You had to create an image of him both with and without the monocle in your mind to answer the question. A better question would be to ask someone to describe or draw what they think he looks like. And if they still do add a monocle, it could easily be from the general idea of what a cartoon capitalist looks like, and not because of universes colliding.

Now that I’ve done my work to try and debunk some of the Glitch in the Matrix and Mandela Effect accounts, I’ll share my favorite example of one of these phenomena. I’m going to say a quote and I want you to think about if you recognize it, and if you do, where it’s from. Ready? “What does it do?” “That’s the beauty of it, it doesn’t do anything.” Do you know it? Where’s it from? Some say they remember it from movies like Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, or The Big Lebowski, or The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Some suggest shows like The Simpsons or Office Space. But it’s not from any of those. That direct quote isn’t from anything. The closest examples of it are from Burke’s Law, a TV series that ran in 1963, and Apocalyptic Butterflies, a 1987 play. Both are not exact matches, with Burke’s Law it replaces anything with nothing, and uses additional filler words. (Pause) Apocalyptic Butterflies is a closer match but still not quite exact. And that still doesn’t answer the question of why so many people claim to remember this quote. These two examples were not wildly popular enough to leave a mark on pop culture like this, and many people cite specific, other media as the origin of this quote. Perhaps in another universe this quote gets used in a popular movie and our memories are just a carry over from that, or we’re just misremembering.