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Many videos begin: “For those of you who don’t know, this is Nelson Mandela. Typically, in these videos, a narrator speaks over a TikTok sound called Blade Runner 2049 by a creator named Synthwave Goose (whether this piece of music was made as an aspirational score is a mystery, it doesn’t matter, it sounds like watching Stranger Things while Lizzo practices flute in an adjacent room). There’s at least another 102 million tagged with variations of the name. There are, at the time of writing, 444.3 million views on videos with the hashtag #mandelaeffect on TikTok. But the newest ones, discovered recently, feel like a true “side” of TikTok: an active remembering of a generational misremembering. Mandela Effects from the last decade include the revelation that the surname of the beloved children’s bear family the Berenstain Bears is not spelled Berenstein, or that Rich Uncle Pennybags, aka the Monopoly Man, does not wear a monocle. The Mandela Effect is not a new concept, it was coined by a blogger named Fiona Broome more than a decade ago when she learned that many other people shared her erroneous belief that Nelson Mandela died in prison in the 1980s (he died in 2013). One of the most alarmist and entertaining sides of TikTok is Mandela Effect TikTok. The brain straws up serotonin when a TikTok, as they say on TikTok, “unlocks a memory.” It’s the best thing in the world to remember things together.Īnd just as potent is forgetting things together. Like Sky Dancers toys, anti-Barney playground dogma, stinginess with Hubba Bubba Bubble Tape gum and the intricacies of Hide and Seek (the Imogen Heap song, not the game). One of my favorite parts of being on TikTok is sharing videos that capture shared memories with my siblings. Without posturing or naming, without even self-reflecting, you are greeted with interests and instincts you would not otherwise organize for your own pleasure. The involuntary aspect of landing on a side makes identification with that side euphoric. A “side” is a repetition, a path, a belonging, like a shared memory. The sides illuminate that you find carpet cleaning soothing, that you have a parent who does not believe in therapy, that you like tiny frogs, your preschool was maybe a cult, or that you miss the clicky clicks of old cell phone keys. The sides of TikTok you land on reveal if you’re gay, or anti-racist, or from Massachusetts, if you have avoidant attachment style, or would shave your head. Within a few hours of scrolling, maybe once you’ve scrolled the height of the last office building you entered, TikTok will suggest you to you, and as you confirm your own biases, your scroll molds into a set of sides. She’s been singing some great stuff on her Instagram during the current shelter-in-place situation, including a new song she wrote right before recording it, and I’m looking forward to whatever her next release will be.TikTok has sides, and like all of us, it has good sides and bad sides: replicated specificities that we and others experience as moral or immoral. If you’re looking for a soulful, powerful, unique voice from modern music, you should absolutely check out Cera Gibson. Thank goodness I watched that random piece of AKG headphone marketing. It’s a wonderful example of album sequencing, an art that I wish more current releases emphasized. Her 2019 EP Crushed Velvet is also worth a full listen, as it ends strong with “Ride,” followed by a lilting reprise of the song’s guitars and vocals that brilliantly leaves the mood of the EP hanging in your brain. It would be the perfect song for the end credits of the middle chapter of a film or video game trilogy. Its restrained, relaxed pacing is a nice relief in a world obsessed with finding the next upbeat pop hit. My personal favorite track of Gibson’s is probably the 2019 single “In the Dark.” It features a slow, eerie melody backed up with effective instrumentation.
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