See title. For those who don’t know, the Mandela Effect is a phenomenon where a large group of people remember something differently than how it occurred. It’s named after Nelson Mandela because a significant number of people remembered him dying in prison in the 1980s, even though he actually passed away in 2013.

I’m curious to hear about your personal experiences with this phenomenon. Have you ever remembered an event, fact, or detail that turned out to be different from reality? What was it and how did you react when you found out your memory didn’t align with the facts? Does it happen often?

  • Varyk@sh.itjust.works
    3·
    11 months ago

    I just found out that you can’t take someone’s lead in order to behave like they are behaving, you can only follow their lead.

    I thought that taking someone’s lead, “I’m taking their lead”, is an actual expression, while apparently it is not.

    • Mechanismatic@lemmy.mlEnglish
      3·
      11 months ago

      Taking someone’s lead sounds like a British saying indicating the opposite of following someone’s lead. It sounds like you’re taking someone’s leash in your hands and directing them where to go.

        • indun@feddit.ukEnglish
          3·
          11 months ago

          “Take the lead” is certainly an expression used in the UK to denote guiding people, as in “I’ll take the lead”. I assume both come from ballroom dancing.

          I’m sure it’s used elsewhere but it may also simply be a conflation of the two.

          • Varyk@sh.itjust.works
            11·
            11 months ago

            Yeah, taking the lead I think is a pretty common expression, meaning that you’ll take the initiative, but I’ve used " taking their lead" to mean that another person has taken the lead and someone else is following them.

            Which is apparently not real at all, but I only became aware of this because another Lemmy put up a TIL post that explained how they thought that was an expression and discovered after using it their entire life that it was not in any dictionary.

            Just like me

    • twice_twotimes@sh.itjust.works
      2·
      11 months ago

      It may not be the original idiom, but it’s definitely something people say. If the core expressions are “(I) take the lead” and “(you) follow my lead,” that lends itself easily to a merge: you take my lead. It’s not as common as the originals but it’s definitely out there. It will stick around because it’s really easy to unambiguously infer what it means in context.

      • Varyk@sh.itjust.works
        1·
        11 months ago

        I agree that it’s used, I’m sure that if we looked in movie scripts or novels, we would find examples of that phrase, but I can’t find a single dictionary that agrees that the phrase is a legitimate phrase, and that’s what really boggled my mind.

        Boggled and boondoggled over here.