> Study Project With Sci-Twi > by ObabScribbler > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- > 1. Mandella Effect and Shakespeare > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Oh! Um, hi there. You startled me. I was just … I mean I was expecting you but not so soon. I thought I had a little more time to prepare … What? Oh, nothing. Just a little light reading. Um, research. Um … well, yeah I was looking up some stuff before you arrived so I wouldn’t sound like I didn’t know what I was talking about for this English class project. Gosh, the librarian looks mad. I thought I was talking softly enough but I guess I’ll have to whisper to stop her from going nuclear. What? No, it’s definitely nuclear, not nucular. No really. A lot of people think it’s not but that’s just the Mandela Effect in action. Hmm? Oh, the Mandela Effect refers to a situation in which a large number of people believe that an event occurred or something is true when it’s really a falsehood. The term was coined by a lady called Fiona Broome in 2009 when she was at a conference talking with a bunch of other people about how she remembered the tragedy of former South African president Nelson Mandela's death in a South African prison in the 1980s. But the thing is, Nelson Mandela didn’t die in the 1980s in a prison—he passed away in 2013 at the age of 95 after suffering from a respiratory infection. But Broome was completely convinced he died in the 1980s and, when she began to talk to other people about her memories, she learned that she was not alone. Other people at that conference remembered seeing news coverage of his death as well as a speech by his widow. Like, they remembered what the widow was wearing, what she said and stuff like that. She was really shocked that such a large group of people could remember the same identical event in such detail when it never actually happened. She started researching it in more detail. She even made a website about it and all sorts of other incidents like it, and called it ‘The Mandela Effect’ in honour of that first big realisation. What? N-no, I’m not … I’m not ‘shitting you’. There are all sorts of examples of it: like, even at this school, a huge number of students think the Berenstain Bears, this old children’s book series, is actually called the Berenstein Bears. Sometimes they look up copies in the digital catalogue and the librarian gets really, really mad because she’s sick of explaining to them that they’re spelling it wrong and them disagreeing and getting really loud. Oh. You were one of them, huh? There are lots of theories about why the Mandela Effect happens. I tend to think it’s Confabulation. That means your brain is filling in gaps that are missing in your memories to make more sense of them – like a DVD still being able to play even with a scratch across it damaging some of the data. It’s not lying to yourself, but rather remembering details that never happened because they make the most sense in that missing data gap. Confabulation tends to increase with age, too, which is why Mandela Effect happens more among adults than children. One of the more outlandish theories about the Mandela Effect is the idea that rather than one timeline of events, it is possible that alternate realities or universes are taking place and mixing with our timeline. In theory, this would result in groups of people having the same memories because the timeline has been altered as we shift between these different realities and they retain those memories even as the world around them changes so what they remember is no longer true. Most people dismiss that theory as nonsense because they don’t believe in alternate realities but I’m more open to the idea of different realities and universes and even the multiverse because of … of … Oh my gosh, you must think I’m such a nerd. I’m sorry. I hang out in libraries a lot. I like learning about stuff. Science and engineering are mostly my wheelhouse but I like knowing new stuff about anything, really. And I store a lot of it up here, in my head, even though I don’t really need it and I’ll probably never need it and ohmigosh I’m babbling on and on again aren’t I? I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry – Hmm? You … you don’t mind? You think it’s … cool that I know so much about so much? Well that’s … nice of you to say so, even if you’re just being polite. Oh no, the librarian is looking this way! Quick, open one of these books on Shakespeare I already picked out for our project. That big pile right there on the table. Don’t roll your eyes, just pick one and prop it up in front of you! If we’re doing private study she can’t kick us out. Okay, I think she’s busy reshelving now. Phew. I love libraries but that is the least friendly librarian I’ve ever met. We’d better get on with the work. Miss Coryphée said we’re to pick some of Shakespeare’s sonnets and put our research and analysis into presentation slides on PowerPoint to present to the class. I wasn’t sure which sonnets you might like to pick so I, uh, read them all. Yes. All of them. Um, a hundred a fifty-four? Plus some textbooks. No, the whole textbooks. I, um, read pretty fast. And have an eidetic memory so … uh … Thank you for saying that. I have some thoughts on a few of the sonnets but, honestly, I don’t mind which we do, so you can choose. I know you didn’t exactly choose to be my project partner. No one … ever does willingly, since none of my friends are in my classes with me … Oh! That’s … very sweet of you. Mostly kids at this school seem either scared of how smart I am, think I’m just some creepy nerd or if a teacher puts us together they just want to use my brain to coast into an easy A. Thank you. I appreciate you saying that. Ahem. So, um, those Shakespeare sonnets? Any preferences? What do you mean? Weren’t you in class when we started this unit? Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry, I had no idea! Are you okay now? Well that’s good. Um, it does put you at a disadvantage though, if you were only there for the class where we got put into partners and given our project texts. How much do you know about Shakespeare? At Crystal Prep we studied one of his plays every year and they were usually our winter and summer drama shows for parents. It was, uh, a pretty pretentious school, to be honest, though I never realised until I came here to Canterlot High. I like it better here but, uh, some of the coping mechanisms I learned at Crystal Prep are harder to shake off than others. So let’s start with the basics: what do you know about Shakespeare? Hmmm. That’s not a lot. He’s more than just ‘some guy who wrote plays and junk’, as you put it. He was a playwright and a poet, sure, but he was also a husband and a father. He was … a person. Just a regular guy who happened to live four hundred years ago. I guess it’s good we got the sonnets as our project since they tell us a lot about who Shakespeare was outside of his job as a writer and actor. We get a really good look into his thoughts and emotions through these. Well, uh … how can I put this? Sonnets are love poems. And he wrote his to, uh … more than one person. And one of them was a guy. Shhhh! Don’t be so loud! No, I’m not saying William Shakespeare was gay! Well … maybe I am. Or maybe he was bi. It’s not clear! Modern terms of sexuality can’t really be applied historically since the cultural contexts are so different. Plus, there are lots of different types of love. It’s possible to love someone without being in love with them. I love my friends more than anything but I’m not in love with any of them. Romance is just one form of love. There’s also platonic and familial, and even those terms can be divided into more niche varieties. Look, I’m just saying that Shakespeare was a complicated guy, okay? There’s a lot about him we don’t know because we don’t have any records for parts of his life, or the records we do have are conflicting and don’t match each other. We do know he lived in a place called Stratford Upon Avon, that when he was 18 he had to get married super quick to a lady way older than him because he got her pregnant, that they had three kids together and that his only son tragically died when he was only eleven years old, which broke William Shakespeare’s heart so bad that he never ever visited his hometown ever again. No, not even to live with his wife and two daughters who were still alive. I mean, way to tell your kids who was your favourite, right? He was already living in London for work and he just stayed there permanently instead of going home to visit during the off-season like he did when his son was alive. Um … to be honest I’m not sure how old he was when he moved to London. When his kids were all babies and toddlers he vanishes from the historical records completely and then reappears in them seven years later, already an established playwright and actor in London, which is the version of Shakespeare we tend to think of when we hear his name today. And when he was in London he was really, really popular but his sonnets aren’t all happy from that time, so something else was going on too in his personal life – but we don’t fully know what because all we can do is infer stuff from his personal poetry. It’s funny, isn’t it? How people in history just get … boiled down to these simple versions of themselves that we know today? I wonder what people will think of us when we’re long gone. Will they look back on our time and boil us down to simplified versions of us too? I mean, we have a lot more records now than Shakespeare or people in his time did. Digital devices alone have made it so much easier for us to record history as it happens and store it for future generations to see. But what will they actually think of us as people? Will they only remember the good things we did? Our victories and the things we celebrate about ourselves and our world? Or will they prioritise the bad things? The problems we left behind, or the messy dramas we created, or just … wow my brain just can’t keep to a topic, can it? Sorry. Well, that’s sweet of you to say so but I know I’m a bit scatter-brained. You don’t need to be nice about it. I hope we do get remembered for the good stuff we do but … more than that, I hope we get remembered as people. Shakespeare and Nelson Mandela were both just … just regular guys. Outside of all their accomplishments and the theories they inspired and everything else, they were people underneath it all, just as flawed and messy and complicated as the rest of us. They had their weird coping mechanisms and habits just like we do. But all that was lost after they were gone and now, we remember them as these … historical figures who did, not who were. Am I going to be remembered for just what I’ve done, not who I am? I’m … I’m sorry. I … I think I might need a break. I feel awful but … sometimes when I get like this, I just need to be alone for a while. Replenish my spoons, so to speak. How about you have a look at some of the sonnets, pick a couple you like the look of and we reconvene here … shall we say Thursday at lunch? Or is that too soon? It’s not. Great. I’ll see you then. And … again, thank you for being so understanding. I’ll see you then. Bye.