A couple of weeks ago, the interwebs exploded in a frenzy of insanity and emotional trauma. Yes, more so than on your typical Monday. This time it wasn't the latest rapey episode of "Game of Thrones" or Donald Trump saying how he'll personally deport Mexican babies; It was the beloved children's book and TV show characters "The Berenstein Bears." We all know and love these cartoon talking bears; their theme song is an actually catchy country song, and their lessons were always impactful. Now they're back, and they're teaching us more life lessons. Like how everything we know about our reality is a lie.
What proves this is that they aren't The Berenstein Bears, they're The Berenstain Bears, named after their authors Stan and Jan Berenstain (cute names for a couple). But if you remember them as Berenstein, you aren't alone. Many people on Twitter, Reddit, and in my daily life remember them as Berenstein, not Berenstain. How can so many people be wrong about the name? Is the government trying to hide a mass-brainwashing operation? Did Stan and Jan, collectively known as Stan, purposefully change their names to ruin everyone's lives? The real answer may be even more insane.
Back in 2012, a blogger named Reece came up with a clever yet preposterous idea: that some people have crossed over from a parallel dimension at some point in time. He says, "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." Meaning that those of us who remember the bears as Berenstain are native to this universe while those who remember them as Berenstein come from a parallel reality. The other me who remembers them as Berenstain is confused by how they are now called Berenstein.
This notion that largely misremembered facts are proof of parallel realities is sometimes called the Mandela Effect, coined by Fiona Broome. It gets its name from the occasion when a large number of people thought Nelson Mandela had died in a prison in the 1980s. There are also people convinced that New Zealand has always been north of Australia. Of course, none of this necessarily proves that parallel worlds exist. But it definitely could be proof of the imperfections in human memory. It seems to me that people remember it as "stein" because "stein" is a common ending to many names -- Bernstein, Einstein, Blumenstein, Frankenstein. It's easy to misremember a small detail; it's just trippy when a ton of people remember the same erroneous detail that you do.
In the end, I am a believer that our eyes have been opened to the reality of multiple realities. I like to believe that the other me living in the Stein-verse has now been cast to be the new Batman and somehow won a lifetime supply of Chipotle bowls.
