Tag Archives: memory

Science

Collective False Memory

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In the early Nineties, roughly around 1994, a now 52-year-old man named Don ordered two copies of a brand new video for the rental store his uncle owned and he helped to run.

“I had to handle the two copies we owned dozens of times over the years,” says Don (who wishes to give his first name only). “And I had to watch it multiple times to look for reported damages to the tape, rewind it and check it in, rent it out, and put the boxes out on display for rental.”

In these ways, the film Don is speaking of is exactly like the hundreds of others in his uncle’s shop. In one crucial way, however, it is not. The movie that Don is referring to doesn’t actually exist.

Source: The movie that doesn’t exist and the Redditors who think it does

This is a really interesting dive through a collective false memory of a bunch of folks on Reddit about a thing that does not and never did exist. It’s fascinating to see the depths people will go to, and the level of completely over the top theories people believe (like a glitch in the matrix), to protect the idea that their memory is not in error. Memories feel like reality, but they are anything but.

Neat Things

A memory desk

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Memory Desk

This Memory Desk is a tool to record all the small items you write down once, but intend to forget tomorrow.

I’ve come to realize that I’m somewhat obsessed with how we remember the past. This is the latest installment in that series and a more serious attempt at furniture making. There are a hundreds of little things that we don’t try to remember every year or even every week. Does the sum of all these tiny parts produce a new narrative on our lives?

1,100 yards of paper will record the lists, the phones numbers you call once, the pixel size of that box on that website, the street name of that business, and the long division you try to remember.

via ANALOG MEMORY DESK – Kirsten Camara.

Extremely cool idea. If I had a place to put one of these, I’d definitely do it. Blueprints available under a creative commons license, so you can build your own.