Member-only story
The Human Brain: Now With Fictional Memories
What happens when your brain fills in the blanks and forgets to mention that it made everything up.
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There’s this Reddit story from a few years ago that lives rent-free in my head.
Back in 2016, a Reddit user made a small post on r/tipofmyjoystick — a subreddit where people ask for help remembering video games they played but can’t recall the name of.
The user described a game they remembered playing years earlier. You play as a farmer who kills his wife early in the game, and then continues farm life as normal: tending crops, feeding animals, while periodically hiding her body from the police when they come to investigate.
Psychotic behaviour, yes, but that was the game.
Replies flooded in from people who remembered playing it. There were arguments about whether it was pixelated or more modern, whether it was a browser game or downloadable. They reminisced over how the police worked, backing each other up with details that seemed to line up.
Within weeks, the mystery had outgrown a single subreddit.
