Ask MetaFilter has generated a nice example of how a community builds a false memory. The linked thread starts
Okay, so… it was a TV show in the US, in the ’80s or early ’90s. I’m fairly certain it was a sitcom. During the intro/ opening credits, there’s a bit where one character is painting a wall or a door, and another character opens the door, and the first character rolls the paint roller over the other person’s face. I can see this in my mind, but I cannot for the life of me figure out the show it came from.
which kicked off a search for the US sitcom with an intro featuring that exact joke. Some commenters said they had similar memories, or even the same one, but every candidate they investigated turned out to be wrong somehow. Home Improvement? Nope, too recent and that joke wasn’t used in its credits. Facts of Life? Nope, the character there did it on purpose, not by accident. And a bunch of people immediately thought of Perfect Strangers, but nobody could find that joke in any of its intros.
Months later, no one’s found the answer, even with 20+ different programmes having been checked. At the same time, people have found multiple clips with the same basic joke but differing in some key detail (like a paintbrush being used, not a roller). It really looks as if the original poster misremembered one of those similar-but-different jokes, then cued other people to misremember them in the same way, and their memories all feel rock solid because they’re warped recollections of something actually seen. I wonder how often this kind of thing happens on Internet forums.
(Then there’s the time Ask MetaFilter tried to track down a one-liner about Molly Ringwald that was totally on American Dad, or maybe Parks & Recreation, or maybe How I Met Your Mother...)
Other Media Thread
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/07/03/upshot/a-quick-puzzle-to-test-your-problem-solving.html
Ask MetaFilter has generated a nice example of how a community builds a false memory. The linked thread starts
which kicked off a search for the US sitcom with an intro featuring that exact joke. Some commenters said they had similar memories, or even the same one, but every candidate they investigated turned out to be wrong somehow. Home Improvement? Nope, too recent and that joke wasn’t used in its credits. Facts of Life? Nope, the character there did it on purpose, not by accident. And a bunch of people immediately thought of Perfect Strangers, but nobody could find that joke in any of its intros.
Months later, no one’s found the answer, even with 20+ different programmes having been checked. At the same time, people have found multiple clips with the same basic joke but differing in some key detail (like a paintbrush being used, not a roller). It really looks as if the original poster misremembered one of those similar-but-different jokes, then cued other people to misremember them in the same way, and their memories all feel rock solid because they’re warped recollections of something actually seen. I wonder how often this kind of thing happens on Internet forums.
(Then there’s the time Ask MetaFilter tried to track down a one-liner about Molly Ringwald that was totally on American Dad, or maybe Parks & Recreation, or maybe How I Met Your Mother...)