Ron DeSantis Never Gave Lap Dances And Eight Other Newly Discovered Examples of the Mandela Effect

1.     Florida Governor Ron DeSantis first rose to fame as a founding member of the Chippendales erotic dance group. It’s 1979. A freshly spawned DeSantis electrifies crowds of salivating women with his seductive hip thrusts and undulations. It’s an iconic moment in the life of the politician. 

 

But it didn’t really happen. DeSantis never actually thrilled women in any capacity. Before he headed to Washington, his jobs included teacher and naval officer—not exotic dancer.

 

The above is a classic example of the Mandela Effect. That’s when thousands of people “remember” something that didn’t exist, like Curious George having a tail, or King Henry VIII holding a turkey leg. Are these mass misconceptions a coincidence, or are people tapping into an awareness of an alternate reality? Read on for more examples of this bizarre phenomenon. 

 

2.     Singer Taylor Swift broke Joey Chestnut’s record for competitive hotdog eating. Remember when the “Shake It Off” singer busted gender stereotypes as well as the walls of her colon when she downed 83 hotdogs in ten minutes at Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest? 

 

Many of us do, but like a DeSantis lap dance, the event is a figment of our collective imaginations. A competitive eating award is not among Swift’s many honors.

 

3.     Starbucks Coffee Company seceded from the union. If you’re like most Americans, you probably recall the time in late 2019 when all 6,400 licensed Starbucks franchises converged and formed their own sovereign state, leaving nothing left of Chicago except piles of rubble and a few world-class museums. 

 

You’ll be surprised, then, to learn that not only did the events described never occur, but that most Starbucks coffee locations are incapable of either locomotion or acts of treason.

 

4.     Monopoly typhoon Rich Uncle Pennybags died in a Venezuelan prison. Pennybags made no secret of his ties to the underworld. The onetime chairman of the board flaunted his “get out of jail free” cards as banks continually made errors in his favor. After a tax-evasion conviction caused him to flee to a South American country with no extradition treaty, another run-in-with the law—this one for fixing a beauty pageant—landed him in Sabaneta Prison, where his demise came at the hands of the notorious Top Hat Gang. 

 

In reality, Pennybags’s Venezuelan lifestyle is much less harrowing. He bought a villa in Caracas and is described as a perfect neighbor who “never plays his music too loud.”

 

5.     Actor Sir Daniel Day Lewis started a dance craze called the Lewie. The Academy-Award-Winning actor destroyed his Room With a View costar Dame Judy Dench in a dance-off at the Hollywood Club Crawl with this improvised gem that went on to become an international sensation. 

 

Combining the rippling motions of the Worm and the clave rhythms of the Macarena with a dash of Danish ballet thrown in, the wildest thing about this nostalgic mambo is that it never existed.

 

6.     Tennis great Serena Williams switched to Quidditch, becoming the first American Seeker to lead her team to the Quidditch World Cup. Remember the time Williams traded in her racket for a flying broom and snatched her way to an international Quidditch victory? 

 

If you’re among the millions who do, you may be confusing it with one of her 39 tennis Grand Slam titles.

 

7.     Philadelphia Phillies mascot the Phillie Phanatic became a missionary. Going from Phanatic to philanthropic, the green, bipedal bird rode his ATV to Sub-Saharan Africa where he brought his silly string antics to Sudanese orphanages and used a pneumatic gun to shoot hot dogs into crowds of hungry refugees. 

 

This one may have been less a Mandela than a rumor started by the Phanatic’s own agent in a bid to distance the furry mascot from the disastrous 2015 Phillies season.

 

8.     Picture book star Waldo of Where’s Waldo? fame was found doing lines of coke off hookers in Tijuana. Spotted by an eagle-eyed first-grader in Playas de Rosarito, the titular literary figure was caught with his pants down among illegal drugs and paraphernalia with a combined street value of over $7,500. Federales pursued the red-shirted rogue for several blocks before they came to a congested beach and lost him in the crowd. 

 

Waldo expressed frustration that this meritless rumor has dogged him for over two decades. He suspects the Wizard Whitebeard of implanting the false memories.

 

9.     Film legend Samuel L. Jackson invested his entire fortune in L.O.L. Surprise dolls. Seduced by their cherubic faces and matching accessories, Jackson funneled all his earnings from such films as Pulp Fiction into the adorable toys. He became addicted to the dopamine hit of the unboxing and the thrill of finding a rare doll like the boho Beatnik Babe or the glittering Queen Bee.

 

This, too, didn’t happen and couldn’t be further from the truth. If you’re ever lucky enough to be invited into Jackson’s personal toy repository, you’ll be struck both by the quality of his selections and the ingeniousness of his organizational system, but you won’t notice any single brand or style of doll taking precedence over the others. Jackson curates everything from vintage Barbies to original Cabbage Patch Kids (including, yes, some L.O.L. Surprise dolls) into a collection renowned for its comprehensiveness and balance.

 

Up next, more Mandela effect: These cherished members of your immediate family don’t actually exist!