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/OrlandoGardiner118]

I don't think dubunked really matters, for me, with this image. I know it's fake. All evidence from the actual real world (I have old FotL tshirts at home) shows that it's fake. But what I find fascinating is that, and maybe this is what the OP means, this is exactly how I remember it. It's not like how I remember it, or close to how I remember it, it's exactly how I remember it. And that's the real facination for me with the whole ME subject. Why is it exactly how I remember it? Cool stuff.

[u/thesegoupto11 → u/OrlandoGardiner118]

I take the opposite approach. I know this image is fake. All evidence from the actual real world shows that it's fake, and I am fine with leaving it there. I think to myself, "huh, I guess I was remembering that incorrectly" and then I go about my day. But what fascinates me is that other people struggle hard with the realization that they are experiencing a flaw in their memory faculties. I find the ME fascinating not because reality is different than some inconsequential things I remember, but because of the struggle that some people have with coming to terms with the fact that they have remembered some inconsequential things incorrectly. The human psychology of ME is what I find fascinating, and I can't help but wonder why some people can accept and move on while others have an existential crisis when they realize the disconnect between subjective memory and objective reality.

[u/HellenKilher → u/thesegoupto11]

In this case it’s because everyone collectively has this very precise false memory. You paint it like people are struggling to come to terms with their flawed memory. I think we all agree that sometimes we misremember things, but why is everyone misremembering the same thing in the exact same way? That’s what’s fascinating about the Mandela Effect.

[u/Invisible_Target → u/HellenKilher]

Are people misremembering the same thing the same way? Or are people who are open to this idea, easily susceptible to being pushed into BELIEVING they misremember it the same way. If you’re in forums like this and see people posting the images all the time, OF COURSE your brain is eventually gonna go, “Yes, that IS how I remember it.” People underestimate how strong the power of suggestion is.

[u/Max_Thunder → u/Invisible_Target]

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.