🧩 BND Motif Index · M1648
The story keeps changing
A person's account is said to shift from one telling to the next, blank when first questioned and full of detail later, and the shifts are offered as proof it is made up; defenders answer that memory comes back when jogged.
🗣️ Arguments🗂️ Crime and punishment
- 1claim filed under it
- 1left show it came up on
- 1right show it came up on
⚠️ A story people tell, not a claim that it's true.
A motif is the shape of a story as its tellers tell it, named the way a folklorist names a tale type, so the same story told about other people, by the other side or in another year lands in the same place. Some of the claims below are true, many are false. Arguing against a story is often a story of its own, its answer (Voter fraud is answered by Voter suppression, Lawfare by No one is above the law), and we file it there; where no answer has a motif yet, the arguments against a story sit with its tellings.
🎙️ Who it came up with
the shows we follow where its claims came up (1 left-leaning, 0 center, 1 right-leaning so far), colored by the show's lean; the bar is how many of its claims each one heard
- left-leaning
- right-leaning
"Came up on" means one of its claims was heard on the show: told, reported or argued against. We don't yet mark which. Show leans are our own grouping of the shows we transcribe.
🗣️ In so many words
the words that carry it
💬 the tellers' own words: “He agreed that there had been some inconsistency in his account. but explained it away as saying that since these events started there's been escalating recollection.” “He's definitely getting burned over the fact that when he first sat with police, he did not remember” “So she accused him of kind of making up his evidence as he was going along.”
🧶 Its claims
what's been told in this shape, in our words, by who told it: newest first in each; a claim's dots are the shows it came up on, in their lean's color (point at them for their names)
Told on the left 0
claims heard on left-leaning shows, and no right-leaning one
🦗 No claim heard only on the left so far.
Told on the right 0
claims heard on right-leaning shows, and no left-leaning one
🦗 No claim heard only on the right so far.
Told on both sides 1
claims heard on left- and right-leaning shows alike
- 2026-11-06 “Russell Brand claimed his inconsistent accounts were due to an escalating recollection of the events.” 2
M1648 · first seen 2026-11-06 · what this is · how the index works