One explanation could be: many humans (including me) mistakenly think a seahorse emoji exists. My mind can even construct a picture of how it should look like, despite me also knowing it's very unlikely I've seen one myself.
I mean, its not like emojis were always standardized. It is completely possible that there was a "emoji" or "emoticon" of a seahorse in a messaging application. I wouldn't be so quick to accept that your memory is incorrect.
Slack has a :seahorse: reacji, and is what I was picturing; I frequently try to use emoji that turn out to be reacji-exclusive (or reacji in the wrong workspace that I learn that way aren't Slack defaults) - I wonder if those insisting it exists are thinking of that.
Oh or Snapchat/TikTok/Instagram video/etc.? I think I've seen clips of whichever of those with overlaid stuff like seahorses.
Yeah, this seems more plausible to me. False memories and mass delusions are absolutely real, but if this is one, I'd like to know how it started and why it is so specific.
E.g. no one seems to be misremembering a sea cucumber emoji or anglerfish emoji - but there are other alleged emojis such as swordfish or bandit/bank robber, where people have the same reaction:
It would be interesting to see if LLM behavior is also similar. E.g. if you asked about an anglerfish emoji, would they straight-up tell you it doesn't exist, but for swordfish would start to spiral?
Would be interesting to read that proposal, as "usage level"[1] and "compatibility with existing systems"[2] are both factors that the emoji working group officially considers for new proposals.
So if the proposal includes one or both of those sections, that could shed some light on possible former usage in "proprietary" software.
Unfortunately, I don't see the actual proposal accessible anywhere.
This subreddit makes me so uneasy, so many people thinking that they remembered something and won't take "no this never happened" for an answer. Humans hallucinate like LLMs in fact! ;)
It makes me rather excited! Maybe there are some easy "memory illusion" tricks waiting out there somewhere to be discovered. (I am strongly pessimistic regarding the future of humanity overall, and I think we are all doomed (me, and everyone else). So I think someone playing a memory illusion in a radio would be rather neat, a new fact about us humans, and not something that I'm scared of.)
I meant more the denying reality aspect of the subreddit. There are some users there that go straight up into "someone must have altered the timeline" territory because they insist they are right.
And those text got into the training set: https://www.reddit.com/r/MandelaEffect/comments/qbvbrm/anyon...