by Itzel Rivera
Imagine yourself sitting a a movie theater with your friends. You’re halfway through your favorite movie, “Star Wars,” and then the famous words come out of Darth Vader’s mouth: “Luke, I am your father.”
But here’s the thing: Darth Vader never said that.
His actual words were, “No, I am your father.”
But you’re sure he said “Luke,” aren’t you? How did this happen? What’s behind this bizarre mis-remembrance?
One common theory is that you’re experiencing the Mandela Effect.
The Mandela Effect is a phenomenon where a large population mis-remembers a significant event. Another way of explaining the Mandela Effect, according to multiple internet sources, is to say that we are in a parallel universe where our “original world” has gone into a black hole and has ended, and now we live in a world where everything has been just slightly switched around.
The Mandela Effect is a conspiracy theory wherein people believe that time travel has happened and that someone has changed the spelling of words or sentences. So, in our example above, maybe it’s possible that someone went back in time and took out “Luke” and changed it to an “No” as an elaborate, existential prank.
There are plenty of people who are confused and believe that they are being “punked.” But a different explanation might be that over time, sayings (or spellings) have been changed and the new one was stuck in the collective consciousness.
Since the Mandela Effect theory has spread, many others have appeared and it makes people doubt what they once thought was true.
