c4countdown

I'd not heard of this bizarre "thing" - The Mandela Effect - until a couple of months ago, but apparently it's been doing the rounds for a few years.

Basically it seems to come down to (a) believers in such an "effect" and (b) people misremembering things.

The thing that gets me is the basic tenet of the whole thing, the thing that started it all off (and which gives the "effect" its name) is so ridiculously absurd that it actually gained any traction: that is, that Nelson Mandela died in prison in the 1980s. I just can't believe it possible that people would ever have believed that. I mean, how disconnected from the news would you have to have been to miss his prison release (which was a massive news event in itself) and then somehow miss his becoming President of South Africa (and meeting the Spice Girls, surely the highlight of his presidency)? And his retirement from politics and going round being a heavyweight humanitarian-type guy for about another ten years after that?

I mean, I've literally never met anyone who thought that Nelson Mandela died in prison in the 1980s, but apparently loads of people do and this is proof that reality has been "changed" somehow.

There are some quite funny "examples" of the effect though; my favourite one is that the girl that Jaws falls in love with at the end of Moonraker wore braces on her teeth, and part of the joke was that when Jaws smiled at her, she smiled back, showing her gleaming metal braces. I've seen the film about three or four times and always thought that she wore braces; the scene wouldn't work if she didn't. But every single copy of the film I can track down has her with perfect teeth, no braces. However, I assume this is my brain going wrong rather than some mysterious woo style conspiracy to change reality.

http://www.doquizzes.com/QRVR3A

This is pretty cool. I got 16/22.

Yeah that came up on my Facebook timeline.
I think it's a load of bollocks but every time Facebook says Bob How kind or someone just died , in error I always think it is news.

Mark James wrote:http://www.doquizzes.com/QRVR3A

This is pretty cool. I got 16/22.

19/22 for me. The only ones I got "wrong" were things that I'd heard of, but have no interest in (Interview with a/the Vampire, Sex and/in the City and another one I can't remember).

I am MR. RATIONAL.

I would have got 18 but mixed up the amount of missions with the amount of people who walked on the moon. I also had no idea on the blood type question. Most of the stuff was stuff I knew people tend to get wrong. Only the Berenstain Bears thing freaks me out because it's the clearest memory I have (despite it being the wrong).

Mark James wrote:I would have got 18 but mixed up the amount of missions with the amount of people who walked on the moon. I also had no idea on the blood type question. Most of the stuff was stuff I knew people tend to get wrong. Only the Berenstain Bears thing freaks me out because it's the clearest memory I have (despite it being the wrong).

The Berenstain Bears weren't really a thing I was aware of growing up to be honest, they must've been more of an American thing. But I think that one's got a pretty simple explanation, in that "-stein" is quite a common surname suffix whereas "-stain" isn't. Combine that with "stain" generally being a word with negative connotations, I think it's entirely plausible that a lot of people would "remember"
-stein rather than -stain.

JimBentley wrote:But every single copy of the film I can track down has her with perfect teeth, no braces. However, I assume this is my brain going wrong rather than some mysterious woo style conspiracy to change reality.

My brain must have gone even more wrong than yours then, because not only do I remember the braces, I remember arguing with a friend about whether they made her look ugly or not.

Or maybe our brains are just fine and the braces have simply been edited out. Why would they have been edited out? I have no idea, but it seems a damn sight more likely than some of the alternative explanations.

Fred Mumford wrote:

JimBentley wrote:But every single copy of the film I can track down has her with perfect teeth, no braces. However, I assume this is my brain going wrong rather than some mysterious woo style conspiracy to change reality.

My brain must have gone even more wrong than yours then, because not only do I remember the braces, I remember arguing with a friend about whether they made her look ugly or not.

Or maybe our brains are just fine and the braces have simply been edited out. Why would they have been edited out? I have no idea, but it seems a damn sight more likely than some of the alternative explanations.

I actually think this might be right (digitally edited out for some bizarre but probably perfectly explicable reason). I always thought the whole point of that scene was that when she smiled back at Jaws, she revealed that her teeth were all covered in metal too, and that was like the final piece of the puzzle that made them GET IT ON (implied in the movie of course).

Why a film company would fuck about with their film like that is beyond me, but it's a far more plausible explanation than anything else I can think of.

18/22. Again, I'd not heard of those bear things and didn't particular care about sex or vampires. And I guessed the doomsday cult one.

Ben Wilson wrote:And I guessed the doomsday cult one.

This is actually one of the ones that I knew instantly, despite (I think) it being one of the ones that the majority of people taking the test get wrong. Maybe it just stuck in my head for being so ridiculous a thing (Branch Davidians) - seemingly unrelated to any other religion that I'd ever heard of at the time - that it became (for me) literally impossible to forget.

I got 14/22 simply because I mis-remembered or didn't know a lot of it. Obviously enough.

13/22 - my memory does seem to be going, but I'd never heard of those bears.

Peter Mabey wrote:13/22 - my memory does seem to be going, but I'd never heard of those bears.

As I mentioned before, I think they must be more of an American thing. I think there's a bit of a cultural bias problem in the test as a whole.

I'd only heard of the bears (a couple of years ago now) as an example of the Mandela effect.

Pretty rubbish quiz really. I got a low score simply because I didn't know the answers and then it accuses me of being Mandelaed. Fuck off.

Gavin Chipper wrote:Pretty rubbish quiz really. I got a low score simply because I didn't know the answers and then it accuses me of being Mandelaed. Fuck off.

I agree that the "quiz" is a load of shit due to cultural and generational bias, but it is (more or less) aimed at people of our generation (as I mentioned before, there wasn't anything in it that I hadn't heard of, just a couple of things I didn't specifically know about).

What score did you get, incidentally? If it was less than 12, I will laugh at you.

JimBentley wrote:

Ben Wilson wrote:And I guessed the doomsday cult one.

This is actually one of the ones that I knew instantly, despite (I think) it being one of the ones that the majority of people taking the test get wrong. Maybe it just stuck in my head for being so ridiculous a thing (Branch Davidians) - seemingly unrelated to any other religion that I'd ever heard of at the time - that it became (for me) literally impossible to forget.

Didn't they say that was one the control questions? Anyway I'd heard of them mainly through Bill Hicks.

Mark James wrote:Didn't they say that was one the control questions?

They did, and still not everyone gets it right. That one I think averages about 95% but the other control question only got about about 75%, which kind of suggests that they were rubbish control questions to begin with.

Maybe we should do a British one.
When did Honour Blackman die
Name the members of Bucks Fizz
What year did Cliff Richard win Eurovision
How many no 1 singles did The Who have.
Name the last English Manager to win the Premier League.
When was the last Episode of Captain Scarlett made
Who is seventh in line to the throne
Name the last Prime Minister to not have a wife.
What were names of the people in Rainbow
Who was Taggerts famous brother.
Who captained England at Cricket and Scotland at football

I'm sure there are other questions you guys can think of

Btw I meant the Kids programme and not Richie Blackmore's group

JimBentley wrote:

Gavin Chipper wrote:Pretty rubbish quiz really. I got a low score simply because I didn't know the answers and then it accuses me of being Mandelaed. Fuck off.

I agree that the "quiz" is a load of shit due to cultural and generational bias, but it is (more or less) aimed at people of our generation (as I mentioned before, there wasn't anything in it that I hadn't heard of, just a couple of things I didn't specifically know about).

What score did you get, incidentally? If it was less than 12, I will laugh at you.

I can't remember. It probably was, so you can laugh at me, but I did it on my phone at an airport, so it makes it harder, honest.

I got too bored having to answer the 2nd and 3rd parts of each question in order to continue (I assume) and gave up.
I loved the Berenstein (stain apparently) bears as a kid and still have some of the books to show Indra.

Matt Morrison wrote:I loved the Berenstein (stain apparently) bears as a kid and still have some of the books to show Indra.

I assumed it must be an American thing because I hadn't heard of them, which is quite interesting in itself (in that it shows my appalling cultural bias for a start). Were they a big thing in this country? Were they are thing that were meant to help children learn to read, or were they something intended to be read as e.g. a bedtime story? Or something for kids to read independently?

JimBentley wrote:

Matt Morrison wrote:I loved the Berenstein (stain apparently) bears as a kid and still have some of the books to show Indra.

I assumed it must be an American thing because I hadn't heard of them, which is quite interesting in itself (in that it shows my appalling cultural bias for a start). Were they a big thing in this country? Were they are thing that were meant to help children learn to read, or were they something intended to be read as e.g. a bedtime story? Or something for kids to read independently?

As Mitch Hedberg said, every book is a kids book if the kid can read. From what I can remember they're sort of moral teaching books. This is the one I had as a child. https://www.amazon.com/Berenstain-Bears ... 0394829085 It says the age range is for 3-7 year olds. I'm just glad it hasn't become a victim the Mandela effect and been erased from history although I'm still pretty sure the copy I had spelled it Berenstein.

Mark James wrote:

JimBentley wrote:

Matt Morrison wrote:I loved the Berenstein (stain apparently) bears as a kid and still have some of the books to show Indra.

I assumed it must be an American thing because I hadn't heard of them, which is quite interesting in itself (in that it shows my appalling cultural bias for a start). Were they a big thing in this country? Were they are thing that were meant to help children learn to read, or were they something intended to be read as e.g. a bedtime story? Or something for kids to read independently?

As Mitch Hedberg said, every book is a kids book if the kid can read. From what I can remember they're sort of moral teaching books. This is the one I had as a child. https://www.amazon.com/Berenstain-Bears ... 0394829085 It says the age range is for 3-7 year olds. I'm just glad it hasn't become a victim the Mandela effect and been erased from history although I'm still pretty sure the copy I had spelled it Berenstein.

I think I now know why I'd not heard of them. Cheers Mark!

I'd have to ask my mum Jim to be honest. Artistically, and to some extent linguistically, they are somewhat similar to Dr. Seuss stuff, which I also had a lot of exposure to as a child. I feel like all the Jan Pienkowski stuff (Meg and Mog et al) starts to fit into the same bracket as well.

Just checked - we've got four here, I'm sure my mum has more - and they're all fucking Berenstain (obvs).

All makes sense so far, I think. It's all just mis-remembered stuff and the memory filling in gaps when needed.

NOTHING TO SEE HERE FOLKS.

Except...oh, I don't know. There's something to it, I just can't quite "get" it yet.

JimBentley wrote:All makes sense so far, I think. It's all just mis-remembered stuff and the memory filling in gaps when needed.

NOTHING TO SEE HERE FOLKS.

Except...oh, I don't know. There's something to it, I just can't quite "get" it yet.

I think some of these are quite interesting (e.g. the Berenstein bears one, which also got me), though some are not prevalent enough (like the actual Mandela one), and some are just self-propagating misquotes. The average person will have heard others quoting or parodying Star Wars using the 'Luke, I am your father' line many more times than they've actually watched film, so it's unsurprising it's misremembered -- how the line mutated is a more interesting development. Similar thing with 'If you build it, they will come'.

I suspect this is something similar to why almost every team at my quizzes thinks that Rage Against The Machine's first hit is called Killing In The Name Of.

Conor wrote:

JimBentley wrote:All makes sense so far, I think. It's all just mis-remembered stuff and the memory filling in gaps when needed.

NOTHING TO SEE HERE FOLKS.

Except...oh, I don't know. There's something to it, I just can't quite "get" it yet.

I think some of these are quite interesting (e.g. the Berenstein bears one, which also got me), though some are not prevalent enough (like the actual Mandela one), and some are just self-propagating misquotes. The average person will have heard others quoting or parodying Star Wars using the 'Luke, I am your father' line many more times than they've actually watched film, so it's unsurprising it's misremembered -- how the line mutated is a more interesting development. Similar thing with 'If you build it, they will come'.

This. The Mandela effect is not really a thing. It's just a case of an actual thing not being prevalent enough to protect itself from mutation. It's not that some people are susceptible to this effect and some aren't. It's just about what you've heard.

GANDISEEG is an example of the Mandela effect.

Gavin Chipper wrote:GANDISEEG is an example of the Mandela effect.

No, GANDISEEG is an example of the opposite, because it actually happened and nobody believes that it didn't happen and we all saw it. Some of it even were involved in it! Loads of us have got it recorded from when it was first broadcast!

Now, it would be an example of the Mandela effect if people started claiming that it didn't happen.

It didn't happen.

Mark Deeks wrote:It didn't happen.

I wrote "people". You're just one person. And anyway, you're only putting that for comic effect, because after all, somebody had to.

Well I've never seen it. And unless I click the relevant Youtube link, I never will. Thus it didn't happen.

JimBentley wrote:

Gavin Chipper wrote:GANDISEEG is an example of the Mandela effect.

No, GANDISEEG is an example of the opposite, because it actually happened and nobody believes that it didn't happen and we all saw it. Some of it even were involved in it! Loads of us have got it recorded from when it was first broadcast!

Now, it would be an example of the Mandela effect if people started claiming that it didn't happen.

The thing is he said "GANDISEE" - the final G was a later fabrication to make it fit the letters, with suggestions that it was a silent G!

It's really GGANDISEE. Duh.

I didnt dream it.
Sorry if the Jim Bentley posts are triggering

Why would someone be triggered?
The man committed a minor crime and has repaid his debt to society now.
The man was also a good friend to many of ye. I assume that hasn't changed?
(I never liked him much myself, and that hasn't changed either... but that's beside the point.)

"Minor crime." Aight. And this is why it's genuinely terrifying that you're a safeguarder. Good luck with the lawsuit.

As we've discussed elsewhere I have compassion for the horrible situation that those who find themselves attracted to children are in - imagining the self-loathing and inability to be honest about who you are even with your nearest and dearest (and possibly yourself), the fear of people discovering.

I can even recognise the likely cognitive dissonance between viewing the images and the abuse of children, and how easy it would be to persuade yourself that the abuse has already happened whether or not you look at the images.

However, Jim had over 50,000 such images. Let that sink in. This wasn't a man who occasionally crossed the line. These included category A images - I don't know and don't want to know what a category A image is, but I'd imagine it's pretty obvious to the consumer of the image that the child is being abused. If demand fuels supply, Jim had a petrol can.

Eoin, what makes you consider the crime to be "minor"?

Personally I'd be happy to see new threads created for popular topics just so we don't have to keep having these discussions.

Regardless of anything else, I think it's OK to revisit threads/posts made by Jim. Though you don't have to.

Gavin Chipper wrote: ↑Sun Feb 19, 2023 8:09 pm Regardless of anything else, I think it's OK to revisit threads/posts made by Jim. Though you don't have to.

There is little point in cancelling him and his posts plus it's probably a mission and a half to carry it out though presumably you can block him
I only put the trigger comment as a kindness but it kinda backfired.

Mark Deeks wrote: ↑Sun Feb 19, 2023 5:30 pm And this is why it's genuinely terrifying that you're a safeguarder.

I think I need to stop giving Deeks the benefit of the doubt.
He's able to write and to anagram, but in spite of that, is not the brightest penny in the fountain.

Mark Deeks wrote: ↑Sun Feb 19, 2023 5:30 pm Good luck with the lawsuit.

That's in process. Keep an eye on your incomings.

Having common sense opinions on hot-button issues like e.g. paedophilia or transgernderism isn't easy, especially when those opinions are at odds with a groupthink that is emboldened by the phenomenon of the internet echo-chamber effect; but I'm well able to defend my position on this... In the case of paedophilia, simply refer to the leniency of sentences handed down to offenders such as Jim. They support my position and not yours, or any other similarly shrill, fearful online voice.

Fiona T wrote: ↑Sun Feb 19, 2023 6:45 pm As we've discussed elsewhere I have compassion for the horrible situation that those who find themselves attracted to children are in - imagining the self-loathing and inability to be honest about who you are even with your nearest and dearest (and possibly yourself), the fear of people discovering.

I can even recognise the likely cognitive dissonance between viewing the images and the abuse of children, and how easy it would be to persuade yourself that the abuse has already happened whether or not you look at the images.

However, Jim had over 50,000 such images. Let that sink in. This wasn't a man who occasionally crossed the line. These included category A images - I don't know and don't want to know what a category A image is, but I'd imagine it's pretty obvious to the consumer of the image that the child is being abused. If demand fuels supply, Jim had a petrol can.

Eoin, what makes you consider the crime to be "minor"?

Yeah... Pretty grim what Jim was up to in his spare time.
As far as supply/demand/petrol cans are concerned, I would be interested to know how many of the images were paid for, or downloaded from a site that requires a paid membership. If all 50,000 were illegally downloaded, I would consider his petrol can to be filled with water.

The legal system has a framework for classifying crimes, so I do not need to reinvent the wheel or speculate. The sentence deemed appropriate for this crime, is the only evidence you need to know (not consider) that it is minor. It's not really up for debate.

It is refreshing to see someone who has the intelligence and strength of character to engage honestly with a debate like this, so ty Fiona for that. What I am MOST interested in... is the general societal reaction to this crime, and what the repercussions will and/or should be. The CD community has (understandably) gone into a bit of a meltdown over this, but what's next?

With that in mind, some questions for anyone who ever considered Jim a friend (or particularly warm acquaintance):
1. Would you consider him a friend / good acquaintance now?
2. Can you see yourself ever considering his pornographic crime to be "an error" or "in the past". Basically can you see yourself forgiving him or having a friendship in the future?
3. Would you attend a co-event that he's signed up for?
4. Would you allow him attend your event in the distant future? (e.g. if Ben were doing a big 30th anniversary COLIN, and Jim expressed an interest, would it be a hard "no"?)

Those bullet points at the end of your post Eoin are moot as he is dead but when it comes to playing Countdown or scrabble with a known paedophile attending, then providing there were no children in the building I wouldn't have any issues, I wouldn't boycott the event but I wouldn't speak to him / her beyond being polite.

I donk generally have a knee jerk reaction to dealing with paedophiles/ sex offenders.
Im a cinefile so I haven't stopped watching Polanski movies or Woody Allen films.
Hell I even watched an old top of the pops on YouTube and didn't switch off when Gary Glitter came on.

Back to Jim, although I never met him
(For that matter there's probably only about a half dozen on here I have met) I found him witty and intelligent at times and wasn't offended by him, but I appreciate we are all made from different gravy and respect those that want him and his posts expurgated.

Dickie Davis has just died and I was convinced that he died years ago but I'm mixing him up with Brian Moore.

I managed to steer the discussion on here back on topic.
Though I realise I was guilty of steering it elsewhere

Well google is a bit vague on what is a 'minor crime' - I'm not sure there is a legal definition.

These sentencing guidelines would suggest that the courts consider it pretty serious - note that "A suspended sentence is a custodial sentence".

https://www.sentencingcouncil.org.uk/of ... -of-child/

Fiona T wrote: ↑Mon Feb 20, 2023 8:39 am Well google is a bit vague on what is a 'minor crime' - I'm not sure there is a legal definition.

These sentencing guidelines would suggest that the courts consider it pretty serious - note that "A suspended sentence is a custodial sentence".

https://www.sentencingcouncil.org.uk/of ... -of-child/

Offences against minors must be considered a serious crime surely and downloading images may be considered lesser than paedophilia but who is to say whether one leads to another.
I dont have any evidence of this however.