inb4 anyone refers to the linked thread with Lore’s blue post, about people saying it “did happen in vanilla”, keep in mind this was way over a decade ago. Without forum logs from back then or screenshots to back it up, it’s just not believable considering the frequency of it now with the layering and the resemblance it carries to the layer hopping.
Because it falls under the same logic people used when they were dismissing anything claimed about vanilla by true vanilla players, that they “remembered it wrong”.
There is also the condition known as mythomania (you never truly know in short interactions on the interwebs who’s got it and who doesn’t when it’s between strangers), and memory can get manipulated with psychological tricks.
For example, if you show an all-yellow item as you talk about dresses several times in a day with a friend or family member, then eventually asks about the dress worn during the summer 15 years ago which the other person just so happens to only remember in a very fragmented state, then the person is likely to say it was a yellow dress as they act like it clicked for them.
It’s subliminal messaging. Some are more easily affected by it than others.
In other words, by having Lore say it, there are the compulsive liars who will feel the need to follow that lie (whether or not it is a lie is irrelevant in this paragraph, because it’s such an uncertain thing to claim and so hard to prove, it’s easily perceived as a lie even by a mythomaniac), and there are those who did play back then but with the memory so fragmented it just “made sense” in their subconscious so it filled a gap, even though it might not be true.
The brain can be funny that way.