Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-2007196-20190614193145

Please help me make this story less garbage, if possible.

thanks

Oneiric Gaslighting

There’s a hoax that’s been passing around the internet for decades now. It’s known as This Man. Since January 2006, there have supposedly been accounts of people seeing a very generic looking man in their dreams. The problem is, it’s a hoax – a fake created by sociologist turned marketer, working for a company that specializes in “subversive marketing”. It’s a very clever and convincing fake, apparently, in that some real people actually believed that they seen the image in their dreams.

This kind of thing relies on a sort of glitch in the system of human consciousness called the Mandela Effect. Basically, if you have a gap in your knowledge or memory, and someone tells you something that seems reasonable, your brain will create a false memory to fill the void. Like, for example, the Berenstain bears fiasco. No one really crossed universes or anything crazy like that, it’s just that, for many, Berenstein makes more sense than Berenstain.

Perhaps what’s more disturbing is when someone does it intentionally to you, like with This Man. You can’t remember most of your dreams, most likely, so your brain fills in the gap with something that seems to make sense; you must have seen a generic looking man in your dream. It’s enough to make you question your memory, certainly, when the whole thing is revealed to be a hoax. Like some kind of oneiric gaslighting, it makes you question if you really ever remembered seeing this person anywhere or if you just believe you do because someone told you.

In fact, if you think you’ve seen him before, and then were to see a man who looks exactly like him in broad daylight, you might question that, too. After all, you were wrong before, couldn’t you be imagining things again? Imagine how useful that would be, of course, to a career criminal or serial killer. No one can truly say they him because a nationwide gaslighting campaign has been laid out before his feet. Because after all, there was no man with that face. It was a hoax, right?

Considering the amount of people that go missing here in the States every year, never to be heard from again, with no description of the kidnapper… it really makes you wonder.

Have you seen this man? 