Featured Image Credit: TENGKU BAHAR / Contributor / Deepak Sethi / Getty
Social media users are convinced they’ve seen and sent a particular emoji to their friends - but it turns out it’s just another Mandela Effect.
A Mandela Effect in case you’re unfamiliar, is a type of false memory that occurs when many different people incorrectly remember the same thing, according to Medical News Today.
Popular visual Mandela Effect include gamers believing the Monopoly man wore a monocle and Pokémon fans claiming Pikachu sported a black-tipped tail.
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Of course, neither of these things are true but they are universally believed by many people - thus becoming a Mandela Effect.
Another of these phenomena is the idea that a robber emoji was once available to send on Apple and Android phones.
Some social media users believe a thief wearing a black-and-white striped shirt, a black mask and a beanie resided on their emoji keyboard.
However, of the whopping 3,782 emoji in the Unicode Consortium, there has never been a robber.
Taking to Reddit to express their confusion, one user wrote: “I can’t take this anymore. I know for a fact there was a robber emoji. You sure they just didn’t remove it from new OS?”
A second typed: “Holy s**t I'm finally experiencing the effect first hand I know for a fact it existed.”
“I 100 [percent] remember the robber emoji,” commented another. “I was bummed when he disappeared. I called him The Bandit emoji.”
While there has never been an actual robber emoji on the keyboard, there are a few theories as to why this Mandela Effect has taken place.
One is that a hacker character named Jailbreak was included in the beloved 2017 Emoji Movie.
While Jailbreak doesn’t wear a mask or a striped shirt, the film character does wear a black beanie and somewhat resembles the missing emoji.
Moreover, it’s claimed that some users may be confusing the robber with the Skype bandit emoticon.
However again this differs from users’ general perception as the emoticon is just a yellow head wearing a black ski mask.
A third reason for this Mandela Effect is because a robber was thought to be present in a game called Bitlife.
The life simulation game was played on your smartphone and allowed you to take control of a stranger’s life from beginning to end.
Fans of Bitlife claimed that a robber carrying a money bag featured in this game, which is perhaps where the emoji idea stems from.
However, according to the emoji guide, gamers recently replayed the app and were unable to find the robber emoji that everyone claimed existed.
Interestingly, the robber emoji isn’t the only Mandela Effect from the Unicode Consortium as others have claimed there used to be a hiker and igloo emoji.
Funnily enough, much like their thieving counterpart, neither the hiker nor the igloo has featured on a keyboard, despite what some may say.
