In a college class a professor taught us that, long after John F. Kennedy's death, the number of people who claimed to remember having voted for him far exceeded the number of votes by which he won (need cite).

Lots of people claim they remember Julia Child dropping a chicken (or turkey) on the floor during a live broadcast of her show, and seeing her picking it back up while saying "Remember, you're alone in the kitchen!"

Just read your link Miko. That's quirky. It's like our brain goes back and edits things as it learns new things. (As we already know) that has pretty bad repercussions for first-person stories and so on.

One reason I find this particular story compelling is that I'd be excited to find out he said it then started denying it etc. rather than him having never said it--so everytime I read someone say, "I heard it!" there's a kindle of hope that there's a clip somewhere. So I guess there's an attraction to conspiratorial thinking on top of the other stuff that helps fuel this sorta thing.

Another example of that kind of phenomenon: The guy who died on the Dick Cavett Show.

That link doesn't mention it, probably because the writer assumes the audience already knows, but Aaliyah had a song called 'Rock the Boat.'

Unfortunately, it wasn't a cover of this song.

Yeah. The first quoted verse is in reference to how one of the people he was dissing was connected to Dame Dash, who had been dating Aaliyah (hence "visit your man's girl.")

I found out about this rumour from joke a thread on some hip hop board about 'here's where you come to make an excuse for how you lost that CD with that line on it.' I kinda left Mefi some time ago and have been filling my procrastination time at that site instead and I sometimes can't believe what they come up with. I mean obviously it's mostly immature, juvenile and stupid coz it's young male hip hop fans but you see a thread like "Come in and tweet like [x rapper]" and it would be a whole set of people making references to obscure events, adlibs, skits from the past couple decades in the process of making a joke and it's fun to read.

It reminds me of when I start meeting Techy people in person in meetups and things, I was like, wow, here's a guy sitting across from me who actually wants to talk about the intricacies of this javascript library!

Communities of interest = awesome.

(As we already know) that has pretty bad repercussions for first-person stories and so on.

In a college psychology class I recall learning about how unreliable memory is, even from eyewitnesses. There was some experiment where (if I remember right) people were unknowingly set up to witness a robbery scene that took place on a public bus or subway. The "robber" was a white guy and I think the "victim" was black (both were actors) but a certain number of people reported the incident as the other way around.