“You need to look up the Berenst#in Bears problem.”
It was this innocent comment left on a post about parallel universes that first pulled by Rob Schwarz of Stranger Dimensionsinto one of the internet’s strangest theories. It involves The Berenstein Bears,a loving family of anthropomorphized bears who taught children life lessons via hundreds of picture books and two TV shows. But the problem is they aren’t The Berenstein Bears, they’re The Berenstain Bears.
Though a startling number of people remember the name as BerenstEin, it’s in fact spelled BerenstAin, just like the authors Stan and Jan Berenstain. But is it possible that so many people are just wrong about the title? Back in 2012, blogger Reeceoffered up another explanation: Some of us have recently crossed over from a parallel universe.
He argues:
… at some time in the last 10 years or so, reality has been tampered with and history has been retroactively changed. The bears really were called the “BerenstEin Bears” when we were growing up, but now reality has been altered such that the name of the bears has been changed post hoc.
Somehow, we have all undergone a π/2 phase change in all 4 dimensions so that we moved to the stAin hexadectant, while our counterparts moved to our hexadectant (stEin). They are standing around expressing their confusion about the “Berenstein Bears” and how they all remember “Berenstain Bears” on the covers growing up.
Those who remember the name as “Berenstain” are native to this “A” Universe, while those who are sure it’s “Berenstein” traveled over from the “E” Universe.
More at avclub.com
This is… fucked up
I’m from the e universe
me to - this is literally the first time I’ve seen it spelt ‘
Berenstain Bears’ and my whole brain is rejecting the idea of it being spelt with an ‘a’ instead of an ‘e’
There are actually a lot of things similar to this. It’s called the Mandela effect, and it’s when large groups of people have the same oddly specific unexplainable false memory. It’s named for the false memory shared by many people of Nelson Madela dying in prison in the 1980’s, which obviously did not happen because he died only just a few years ago. However, a ton of people swear this happened, and have very specific memories of hearing news reports about it and seeing his funeral televised, etc. For another example, “Jif” peanut butter that we all love, many people have very specific and distinct memories of it being called “Jiffy” at one point, but it never was anyhting but “Jif”. There are many more examples of it, google it. It’s really odd how humongous amounts of people can have the exact same false memory, but also so interesting.