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In 2005, Will Smith starred in a remake of The Matrix. It made a minor splash in the box office before quietly fading away into relative obscurity. You might have remembered it—which would be strange because that fact is, I just completely made this movie up.
And yet, just by reading those two sentences, there’s a solid chance that a good number of you reading this believed it. Not only that, but some of you might have even thought to yourself, “Yeah, I do remember Will Smith starring in a remake of The Matrix actually” even though that movie never existed in the first place.
This is a false memory, a psychological phenomenon where you recall things that have never happened. If the above story about Will Smith in The Matrix wasn’t enough to trick you, don’t worry: You probably have plenty of false memories already going back to your childhood. That’s not a knock on you—it’s just human. We tell ourselves stories and sometimes those stories get told and re-told so often that it morphs into something that’s only a little like the original event.