The Medium is the Mandela Effect

Many people know the quote, "medium is the message," coined by Marshall McLuhan. It refers to the nature of media and how it influences you, not by the message itself, but by the way in which the message is told.

Well, today I picked up his famous book "the Medium is the Message" at a bookstore, only to be surprised that what is written above is not the title. The title of his book is "the Medium is the Massage."

My mind was blown. The friend I was with had his mind blown as well. We both could have sworn the book was Message. All the books on the shelf were that way, and I wondered if it was a misprint. I then typed the book into Amazon to see if their books had the same 'misprinted' title and they did. The real title was Medium is the Back Rub.

I had known about the Mandela Effect for a while because everyone had been talking about it online recently. But I did not anticipate to encounter the effect with this book.

The Mandela Effect "is a psychological phenomenon where a person recalls something that did not happen or that something happened differently from the way it actually happened," according to Wikipedia.  Another example of this is the 'Berenstein Bears' is actually Berenstain Bears, despite everyone growing up with it known as Berenstein. A movie example is from Field of Dreams. The famous line, "If you build it they will come," is actually, "If you build it he will come."

The title Medium is the Massage is attributed to an original misprint in the 1960's when it was published, but the author decided to keep it that way. It certainly gets your attention once you notice it. The decision to keep the printing error has proved a smart move by McLuhan, for it keeps the intrigue of his work alive and proves his point.