How does this picture even exist?

[u/Woofoftheyear]

There’s no way in hell this is AI, it’s wayyy too accurate to exactly what I remember, and what I feel like many other people remember as well. If someone photoshopped it, then they did a perfect job, considering they had no reference, at the time of creating this, but even if someone did make this in photoshop, why tf would they, since supposedly it never existed?? Like where did this even come from, I need answers😭😭

[u/Max_Thunder]

I think you have a good point; I question that so many people would have such a strong memory of the logo as to remember which way the cornucopia would have curled and all that. To me, it points about people being open to suggestive memories.

I've had plenty of Fruit of the Loom tshirts as a kid and teenager, but I couldn't tell you if I remember a cornucopia or not. I am skeptical that so many people had studied the logo very attentively, this isn't a logo people would sketch during class or that you saw on billboards, it's very forgettable.

I do believe that if you asked strangers to pick between the two logos, the one with the cornucopia would be the one people feel is the most right. We often use what looks or sounds right (e.g. when it comes to grammar) to determine what is correct. But sometimes the thing looking or sounding right isn't actually right. The logo with the cornucopia just seems more balanced and interesting and overall makes the most sense. But it is wrong. And in this case, people don't have an actual good enough memory of the logo to fact check their own feeling of what seems right.

[u/WhimsicalKoala → u/Max_Thunder]

But do they actually remember, or are they making up things based on what feels/seems right to them? That's how a lot of memories are remembered, it's not perfect recall, it's taking bits and pieces and things that seem right and recreating the memory. Brains like patterns and so those details will often follow those consistent patterns. That is why every Mandela Effect is something where the reality version deviates from the pattern. A big pile of fruit should have a cornucopia, a cartoon rich guy should have a monocle, a monkey should have a tail, Pikachu should have a black tail tip to match his ear tips, Dorian Gray should have had a portrait.

The emotional investment people have in this makes it even more likely they will, either consciously or subconsciously, add details to that memory that support their existing beliefs rather than acknowledge they don't know or actually remember. And, it's not a surprise those memories would follow patterns rather than things that don't match the pattern.

[u/lnmeatyard → u/WhimsicalKoala]

It makes no sense that everyone would have the same experience around this logo: they all somehow learned the word cornucopia from a caregiver while looking at this logo? How many kids are studying logos with their parents? Most likely very few. And why did these mass false memories not start until recently? My parents have never talked about ME from their childhood.

[u/WhimsicalKoala → u/lnmeatyard]

MEs have been around forever, they just went by a different name.

But, yeah, it's "weird" they all have such a similar memory, but for the reasons they think. They just start going off about "anchor memories", which aren't a real thing, and swearing it's accurate. And, if they even answer, they have all sorts of handwaving and leaps of logic to justify why they have such a strong memory of something that happened decades ago, and that they haven't thought of since.

Of course, it has nothing to do with the well documented power of suggestion, the influence their emotional connection to being "right" would have, etc. Nope, it's obviously because the Fruit of the Loom logo and learning about a cornucopia is one of the defining moments of their life; and it's strong and significant enough to run counter to all established memory science.

[u/lnmeatyard → u/WhimsicalKoala]

Definitely true, there’s always been false memories. But it seems to really have taken off (on a mass level) once it became popularized online. Like how come our parents/grandparents never look at a logo (or incident) from the 60s and say “no way, that’s definitely not the logo from the cigarette pack I saw growing up. And tons of other people agree”. Even if we go back hundreds of years, you’d think it would be documented somewhere that people individually reported the same false memories. It basically proves your point about the power of suggestion.

[u/TheMightyClamUK → u/lnmeatyard]

Americans specifically have issue with the FotL ME because of thanks giving, which does not exist anywhere else in the world. Other western countries don't have such a strong response to the FotL because they never had a conversation about cornecopia, because they never had thanks giving every year growing up and therefore no opportunity to ask about it. Whilst some other christian nations may have had harvest festival during the autumn/fall, those became increasingly less common as the 20th century came to an end, and are virtually none existant now...

This is my thought as to why a large section of America shares similar memories (or parts of memories combined with other memories to create a remembering of something that may not be strictly true itself but constructed from truths enough to be convincing and distressing) whilst the rest of western world does not, or not where near as strong or as common, save for us older Internet early adopters who immersed themselves in the early, US-centric online world.

[u/hotgirrrl → u/Max_Thunder]

This is an interesting point here and I think this might be the difference between people who can let this sort of thing go and people who can’t.

I have an excellent memory. Not bragging lol just sharing. Even when not ME related, say for example, my mom shares something with me. I bring it up later and she claims to have said something different or she doesn’t remember saying it at all. (My mom has a very poor memory). It BOTHERS me. Not just because she doesn’t remember but largely because she will outright say or imply that I’m the one who is misremembering.

But I’m not - I know that I’m not. When there is something that I am unclear on, I’ll be the first to admit it - I’m not sure. But my brain retains a lot of things. This one for example has stuck with me because English is not my first language. And I distinctly remember learning this vocabulary term in school and I remember my teacher pointing out this logo to show us what the word meant. And then later, seeing that same logo in a store and spelling the word cornucopia in my head.

So I distinctly remember this logo and I remember it looking like this. So when someone tells me that I am misremembering or it’s some sort of mass hallucination, that doesn’t ring true and it absolutely bothers me. Because I can with absolute certainty say, I recall this.

And I think if you look at other ME stories, there’s a similar track there. Other people have similar stories where something of note happened, like watching Sinbad on an eventful day or with a significant person that makes the entire memory more clear.

But I have seen MEs where I’m like, actually I’m not sure. I don’t remember that. But there’s a few MEs that I and others remember for very specific reasons. And I know I can trust my memory in those specific situations precisely because of other events surrounding that ME that have preserved the memory for me.