Some of this "Roy Jay Effect," because it sound much cooler than "Reverse Mandela Effect," is likely a combination of the algorithms used in various search engines, and the way they return search information.

It creates a kind of (Self-Licking Ice Cream Cone) effect. Considering that Google, and pretty much every search engine out there makes money by clicks, selling advertisements, and personal information. Anything that gets more interaction will slowly make it’s way closer to the top of searches. Roy Jay didn’t produce income, so it was panned and other things were offered instead.

It’s likely that very few people were looking for this Roy Jay person, because few people would even remember *to* look for him (or remember him at all). Similarly those who do remember him, would have little reason to reference him in normal conversation – because nobody would “get” the reference. Bringing up something like Roy Jay in 2025 would be like speaking in “inside joke riddles” – to an audience who will likely think you’re crazy.

The references to Roy Jay in the past make total sense, because those people who remember him were younger when they put those videos on YouTube. Things of rarity and obscurity don’t always age well in the minds of those who experienced them. Think 1980s music videos. They were the same kind of fever dream nonsense stuff, and most people don’t remember them all that well. Some might, but there’s not many people going out and searching to find those videos – except to show younger people how weird they were.

There are rare videos that I remember from my childhood. We didn’t have Cable TV until I was high school in the mid 1990s. So, we watched on-air TV, or hung out with friends.

You might remember the phrase, “That’s kick’in like Van Damme on a Saturday!” Well, that phrase came from us people without cable, because the Saturday Movie Matinee was usually filled with some kind of action film – often with Van Damme and he was kicking!

But it was the strange things that they aired in-between – to fill in the time gaps between movies and commercials – those were some of the strangest videos I’ve ever seen.

One such video was around 10-minutes long with a man performing various wood-working tasks. He was very keen on safety, wearing safety glasses, making sure to wear gloves and whatever required PPE might be necessary. He measured, cut, and worked diligently. They only showed individual parts of what he working on.

From what you were allowed to see, he was building some large wooden tabletop looking piece, with a large coil spring, and some metal framing. Later he’s tying a rope around one metal piece, and using a hand crank/reel, to pull the metal frame part back, then securing it with a very touchy latch mechanism. I was thinking, “Oh… he’s making a catapult!”

Then finally they zoom out. He was building a giant mouse trap! He proceeds to remove all of his PPE, cleaning his glasses, and putting each piece in it’s proper place. Then he takes out a brush and a vacuum and cleans up all the wood dust.

Finally he walks over to the giant mouse trap, and lays his head on the release mechanism! Then the video goes dark, and you hear the trap close with a loud “SNAP!” Then the credits go up.

I’ve looked for that over the years, and I have not been able to find it. I have no way of knowing who was in it, who produced it, or where it came from. I only remember it because it was so weird.

However, if someone reading this remembers the video, they might have more information than me, and I can refine my search. See where this is leading?

I think the same thing is what happened with Roy Jay. It was a short-lived, obscure, and not particularly noteworthy production – other than the fact that it was weird. Once enough people started searching, and began figuring things out, subsequent searches would contain enough relevant meta data for search engines to start returning what people were looking for.