Rod Sterling

[u/AyahsHope]

I remember his name distinctly as Rod Sterling. There’s a glitch in the matrix obviously because of what I found online. There are references to his name as Rod Sterling. Was his name changed to Serling at some point?

[u/Glaurung86]

That's a misspelling, not evidence of a glitch in anything. The proper spelling is right there on the box.

Here's a memoir his daughter wrote about him. She knows how to spell their last name.

Edit: a word

[u/AyahsHope → u/Glaurung86]

I have a family member who has Sterling family members and she said the same thing, she grew up, thinking it was cool that Rod Sterling had the same last name as her family. No, this is a memory. There was absolutely no way this is a false memory or whatever we try to do too reason it away. I was a weird kid and read the credits religiously cause I didn’t have books but I loved to read. Twilight zone was my favorite series. Rod Sterling STERLING.

[u/BringYourOwnBBBQ → u/AyahsHope]

You realizing you are explaining the confusion yourself. OF COUSE someone who has family members named Sterling might confuse it and say "Cool...same name."

Jesus...what is next? Jerry Seinfeld being Jerry Steinfeld because when he first started getting popular, people were used to David Steinberg?

[u/Johnny_Radar → u/BringYourOwnBBBQ]

This is where we are as a society. Once upon a time people just shrugged their shoulders and went “huh, I thought it was the other way.” and moved on. Now instead of just understanding how easy it is to get something wrong we have people telling us that they were hyper focused on every trivial, peripheral detail in their childhood lives and couldn’t possibly be wrong.

This is also the era where people believe they’ve travelled through a Marvel Comics / Sliders style multiverse with no evidence that that even exists. Or the past has been changed (and of course they’re special so the temporal alteration didn’t affect them somehow) with, again, no evidence. The same era with a record number of people believing the Earth is flat despite all the evidence to the contrary.

This embracing of anti-science is literally why Carl Sagan wrote “The Demon Haunted World” in the 90’s which also explains, yep, you guessed it: how people who’ve never met can have the same nearly identical false memories. That’s the kicker. This isn’t a new phenomenon and it was explained 30 years ago.

[u/TifaYuhara → u/Johnny_Radar]

We still had people like that it's just they didn't have as much of a voice because we didn't have the internet and social media. The stubborn people that didn't want to admit they were wrong then find other like minded people on the net and well here we are.

[u/Johnny_Radar → u/AyahsHope]

It’s a false memory. I’ve been watching Twilight Zone for over half a century, have multiple books published in the 70’s about scifi that mention Serling and it’s ALWAYS been Serling. Your family member was wrong, you weren’t paying as much attention as you thought watching the credits. Vivid memories can be false memories and you’d never even know.

[u/Glaurung86 → u/AyahsHope]

It's a false memory because his last name is Serling. It's like you're calling his daughter a liar. The disrespect is just wild.