In 2009, paranormal researcher Fiona Broome first coined the term “Mandela Effect,” which, at its most basic, can best be described as a collective false memory shared by a large group of people. This was named after her observation that she and thousands of other people recalled vivid news coverage of Nelson Mandela’s death in the 1980s (Mandela, of course, didn’t pass away until 2013).
We can’t quite trace the source of any such false reports, nor are we entirely sure they existed in the first place. But, if such a journalist exists, we imagine the term for collective gaslighting will receive its name in due time. Until then, it shall be simply known as the “Tumblr effect.”
And the latest victim of the Tumblr effect is none other than Martin Scorsese and, by extension, those who adore or even keep up with his work; according to the recently-reignited social media website, Scorsese released a film back in the 1970s titled Goncharov; a homoerotic Russian-Italian mafia film.
Goncharov suffers from a unique hurdle, as the film does not exist and, as far as we know, has never existed even on the edges of Scorsese’s imagination. But, the Tumblr effect is in full swing, and it seems to be getting to a point where we’ll all just have to accept that Goncharov occupies a reality-adjacent space, if for no other reason than hoping that accepting this will cause the gaslighting to die down.
So, for those of you looking to make a biopic about Russian novelist Ivan Goncharov, you’ll have your work cut out for you; beyond the already monumental amount of effort that goes into making a biopic, you’ll have to figure out how you’ll manage to market your movie in a way so that no one confuses it with Goncharov, the timeless Martin Scorsese classic that, against the impossible odds of not existing, continues to be one the storied filmmaker’s most beloved works of all time, somehow.
