Nicole never claims to know everything. In fact, on her TikTok, @dimelifting, she often portrays herself as knowing absolutely nothing — like what the internet is or how mirrors work. While the internet is never short on know-it-alls eager to dunk on strangers, Nicole’s TikTok has accumulated over 28.4 million likes and, to judge by the comments under her videos, a viewership eager to learn along with her. Her deadpan delivery and unanimated demeanor offer viewers the illusion of a neutral but curious observer. Like she’s relating a headline from a tabloid at the grocery store checkout line. It might be crazy and it might be untrue. She’s just letting us know what she’s read.
She regularly discusses examples of the Mandela Effect, false memories shared by large groups of people who are otherwise unconnected. The term was coined by a paranormal consultant who first observed the phenomenon in 2010, when some people realized they were wrong to remember that Nelson Mandela died in prison in the 1980s when, in truth, he died a free man in 2013. The phenomenon came of age on social media: If you scan any platform, you’ll find that people clearly remember that the Monopoly Man had a monocle. That the sun on the Raisin Bran box definitely used to have sunglasses. Yes, Shaquille O’Neal played a genie in 1996’s Kazaam but whatever happened to Shazaam, the one starring Sinbad?
Through the first half of December 2023, Nicole was committed to getting to the bottom of one of the most ubiquitous examples of the Mandela Effect: the cornucopia in the Fruit of the Loom logo. In some of her most popular videos, she claimed to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that once upon a time, Fruit of the Loom’s logo included a cornucopia and that now the company is lying about it.
In our Information Age, research is entertainment.
“I’m convinced this is 100 percent corporate gaslighting,” she says in a video. Spidery lashes and a mouth wet with gloss push into the camera. She calls it one of the greatest marketing ploys in all of history and points to Fruit of the Loom’s current TikTok page, where the brand has posted in-on-the-joke memes while fiercely denying ever having had a logo that included a cornucopia. She accuses Fruit of the Loom of “straight up” lying about its branding’s past and “intentionally trying to cause chaos.” But if you follow in Nicole’s footsteps, only more chaos unfolds.
In our Information Age, research is entertainment. Online, we all snoop and fall down rabbit holes. Some dig while others debunk. We abuse our access to forums, social media, and even Google search on our quest to get to the bottom of things. Research-as-entertainment nurtures entire subcultures — from casual conspiracy theorists to true crime enthusiasts — and makes for easily viral content for creators like Nicole.
It almost doesn’t matter that her photographic proof of a real Fruit of the Loom T-shirt that includes a logo with a cornucopia is one of three photos that’s been tossed around r/MandelaEffect and r/Weird over the last five years. It almost doesn’t matter that she says someone named Claire (or Clare?) “really pulled through for us and went through all her old clothes and found an official logo,” because every time that image pops up, someone claims to have just taken the photo.
In the same way, it almost doesn’t matter that Nicole’s version of “official government documentation” is one of two real trademark applications. The one that mentions a cornucopia clearly notes it was canceled as soon as it was filed; the second, which remains active to this day, does not mention a cornucopia. But if you go on Reddit, at some point someone else will offer you the link to the first one, also saying it’s definitive official proof.
“After digging through the internet I found this old newspaper that specifically says the Fruit of the Loom logo was initially a cornucopia,” Nicole says. She points to the screenshot behind her, where the word “cornucopia” is underlined, twice. She says an actor from the Fruit of the Loom commercials mentioned a cornucopia. After digging through the internet, I also found a link to this old newspaper on a five-year-old Reddit thread, where I read the entire article. It’s from Florida Today, Oct. 14, 1994: The columnist (not reporter) Billy Cox was discussing an interview with the actor who voiced Sebastian in Disney’s The Little Mermaid, who spent a good portion of his career playing a bushel of grapes on Fruit of the Loom commercials. The columnist, not the actor, wrote that “Fruit of the Loom’s logo was initially a cornucopia swollen with an apple, green grapes… ” You get it by now.
Five years ago, someone on that thread also pointed out that the original poster misrepresented the quote, just as Nicole did. So the original poster reached out to Billy Cox and reported back with the columnist’s response: He was using a “figure of speech” or misspoke due to the influence of a certain “pharmaceutical plant.”
Still, none of this matters. In the comments, Nicole’s viewers are very much entertained. And all over TikTok and the rest of the internet, creators are building audiences by digging up old news to make new content. They tell half the story, relay only a portion of the facts, and take very little care in corroborating anything because that is not the point.
“This went from a cute little Mandela series to full on exposing and picking apart corporate America”
For stories with higher stakes, Nicole includes a disclaimer: “Keep in mind that I’m just a gal with a fixation. I’m not an investigative journalist, I have no credentials. Everything I’m saying might be false and this is purely for entertainment purposes.”
The first week of 2024, @dimelifting posted several videos detailing “the dark reason why 60 percent of Michigan residents currently have high levels of PBB,” or polybrominated biphenyls. In a series of videos, some of which have since been flagged and taken down by TikTok, Nicole walks us through Fruit of the Loom’s history with Velsicol, a petrochemical manufacturer whose plant is now home to one of the most expensive superfund sites in the United States. She describes how, after leaking 11 million gallons of wastewater, Fruit of the Loom went bankrupt to avoid paying for the cleanup, got a $43 million settlement, and made $850 million “by selling the company to Warren Buffett.”
And that’s the story of how “one plant site essentially contaminated all of Michigan and everyone involved made hundreds of millions of dollars.”
What’s weirder still: Apart from a handful of factual errors and misinterpretations, Nicole got most of it right. According to the state of Michigan, in 1974 Velsicol was at the heart of a flame retardant-cattle feed mix-up that poisoned thousands of sheep, pigs, and cattle — and 1.5 million chickens with PBBs. In 1982 Velsicol entered into a consent agreement with the Environmental Protection Agency and the state of Michigan, which the EPA’s glossary helpfully says is used to “initiate potentially responsible party response or cost recovery.” As a result, Velsicol agreed to build a slurry wall around the site and put a clay cap over it, to prevent further toxic waste from leaking into the Pine River.
Fruit of the Loom bought Velsicol in 1986 and in 1997 it was discovered that at least 11 million gallons of contaminated water had leaked out. By 1999, Fruit of the Loom filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and in 2001, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway bought it for $853 million in cash, per the Chicago Tribune. Nicole casually claims that this chain of acquisitions ended up “removing all legal responsibilities from any party involved.”
Here, she’s only sort of right: Those $853 million were split among Fruit of the Loom’s creditors because the company had filed for bankruptcy. Plus, Fruit of the Loom did not “get” $43 million in settlement money, as she claimed in a since-deleted video, because that’s not how bankruptcy works. There was, however, a $42.5 million payout on behalf of Fruit of the Loom’s insurance company. When Fruit of the Loom’s trust initially asked its insurance company to cover the costs of the cleanup, the claim was denied. A lawsuit was filed in 2005 and the $42.5 million settlement was reached in 2008. The insurance company paid the trust, and the EPA confirms the money went toward the cleanup of several contaminated sites.
As one commenter nodded, “This went from a cute little Mandela series to full on exposing and picking apart corporate America and I’m here for it.” Except this is not the wacky conspiracy theory it looks like. This particular story has been thoroughly reported out by local and national newspapers. And while yes, it certainly looks like the responsibility was tossed around from one bankrupt business to another, it was all done according to the letter of the law, which is the most nefarious part.
As I researched this story, I read through the archives of the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, and the Morning Sun, a local paper from Michigan. In the first half of 2024, the Los Angeles Times sustained one of the largest cuts in the paper’s history. That same week, the Chicago Tribune organized a one-day strike to protest slow contract negotiations and demand fair wages. The Tribune’s parent company, Alden Global Capital, also owns the Morning Sun and hundreds of other local titles.
For every news outlet that’s sucked dry by insatiable hedge funds and content-deficient social media platforms, countless archives and links are wiped off the searchable internet. What will our intrepid investigative entertainers cannibalize then?
Michelle Santiago Cortés is a Puerto Rican writer living in Brooklyn. She writes essays about technology, digital cultures, and life online.
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