Is THE DRESS black and blue or white and gold?
Is it black and blue or is it white and gold? Chances are you social meed feed was buzzing with dividing opinion on the true colour of what is now a viral dress. But what the bejesus is going on?
The Internet went into meltdown over a mind-blowing photo of a seemingly normal dress. But all is not as it seems, here's how #TheDress became such an Internet sensation:
Thursday, 26th February at 6:14 pm EST
Buzzfeed published the story 'What Colors Are This Dress?' based on a Tumblr post, where the hue of a Scottish woman’s dress was being fiercely debated among her friends. She had originally written: 'Guys please help me — is this dress white and gold, or blue and black? Me and my friends can’t agree and we are freaking the f*** out.'
A few hours later…
Hashtag #TheDress had gone viral with the likes of Taylor Swift, Blake Lively, Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga, Julianne Moore and Kim Kardashian wading into the discussion, along with all us normal folk. Taylor's tweet was our favourite:
Then Buzzfeed released this statement confirming the impact of THE DRESS:
'The BuzzFeed post about THE DRESS is breaking the Internet and setting new traffic records for us. It drew more visitors to our site at one time than ever before. At one point tonight more than 670,000 people were on BuzzFeed.com simultaneously, 500K of those on mobile and half of those people were reading the dress post.' And Kim K thought she had broken the Internet. Pah!
So, why do some people see black and blue and others white and gold? Here's a scientific explanation...
Cedar Riener, associate professor of psychology at Randolph-Macon College, told BuzzFeed: ''We are always making decisions about the quantity of light that comes into our retina. In the case of the dress, some people are deciding that there is a fair amount of illumination on a blue and black (or less reflective) dress. Other people are deciding that it is less illumination on a white/gold dress (it is in shadow, but more reflective).'
Put simply, people are seeing the dress as either white and gold or blue and black because of the way their brain interprets the light coming into their eyes.
So, there you have it, the phenomenon of THE DRESS in chronological order. Shall we all get back to normal life now?
BTW, it's definitely black and blue #blackandblue.