The Great Dress Debate

[Accelerando]

This dress is causing a major meltdown in the internet-verse, and people are forming strong opinions about it.

Ok, so this dress....what color do you see?





I see the colors are white and gold, but there are folks out there who see black and blue. I just had a major debate about this, and I feel like I'm going insane.

Here' tumblr page it was originally uploaded from.

https://snacksandharts.tumblr.com/post/112146191370/swiked-littlewotsit-swiked-guys-please-help-me



WHAT DO YOU SEE?!?

[Implode]

Set this fucking dress on fire



black and blue

[bl5150]

I think people are having a lend....................I saw this on another site and it was blue/black and now here it's white/gold.   Although I just checked back on the other site and it is now white/gold.

Either some people are putting a lot of time into a prank or there's some crazy shit going on with our vision.

[Prog Snob]

It could be the lighting, I don't know.  It looks, at first sight, white and gold.  However, I can easily see that white being a light blue color. 

[Dark Castle]

White and Gold, and that's what I'm seeing every single place it's being talked about.

[Anguyen92]

My first impression of it is that it is light blue with kinda a brownish-gold color.  I can easily see how people can say white and it could be a lighting thing that can make it light blue.  I don't know how anyone can think that has parts of black though.  Maybe my eyes are screwed up.  It happens when I'm staring at a screen for hours and hours.

[Zook]

On my phone I see white and gold/diarrhea.

[Dark Castle]

Saved it, and now it's black and blue.
What the fucking fuck.

edit: AND NOW IT'S BACK TO WHITE/GOLD WHAT THE FUUUUUUUUUCK.

EDIT 2: Now it's just Black/Blue. Once I pulled up the saved image it's been stuck on that.

[LieLowTheWantedMan]

I've only ever seen blue and gold.

[Implode]

It's amazing how fast this blew up. Here you go, guys:

Your eyes have retinas, the things that let you interpret color. There’s rods, round things, and cones that stick out, which is what gives your eye a textured appearance in the colored part. The “cones” see color. The “rods” see shade, like black, white and grey. Cones only work when enough light passes through. So while I see the fabric as white, someone else may see it as blue because my cones aren’t responding to the dim lighting. My rods see it as a shade (white). There’s three cones, small, medium and large. They are blue sensitive, green sensitive, and red sensitive.
As for the black bit (which I see as gold), it’s called additive mixing. Blue, green and red are the main colors for additive mixing. This is where it gets really tricky. Subtractive mixing, such as with paint, means the more colors you add the murkier it gets until it’s black. ADDITIVE mixing, when you add the three colors eyes see best, red, green and blue, (not to be confused with primary colors red, blue and yellow) it makes pure white.

—Blue and Black: In conclusion, your retina’s cones are more high functioning, and this results in your eyes doing subtractive mixing.

—White and Gold: our eyes don’t work well in dim light so our retinas rods see white, and this makes them less light sensitive, causing additive mixing, (that of green and red), to make gold.

**** UPDATE to prove this theory I turned my phone brightness from the lowest to highest and saw it switching from white and gold (at the lowest) to light blue and darker gold (at the highest) meaning people that see blue and black are more sensitive to light (better eyesight and not looking at the sun like your moms told you)

**Also if you see white and gold sometimes, blue and black another, or a combination of the two, your eyes are very average, and it could change because of YOUR rooms lighting or the tilt of your phone. This is the same manipulation they use for optical illusions

And then a bonus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbVmxkVC5kc

[Jaffa]

I can see it both ways.  And I don't mean I see it differently at different times or with different lighting - I mean I can literally change my perception of the colors at will by changing my focus on the image.

[sneakyblueberry]

If I adjust the brightness on my laptop I can see both colours. 

[LieLowTheWantedMan]

Darkened my screen a ton, brightened it more, no matter what I get blue and gold, haha.

[Jaffa]

For me, it's all about context.  If you see the light part as white, you won't see the dark part as black, because there isn't enough contrast between the shades for them to be black and white.  Similarly, if you do see the dark part as black, the light part is going to look blue by contrast. 

If you see it as black and blue, try focusing on the top right corner next time you look at the image.  You might be able to trick yourself into seeing white.

Meanwhile, if you see it as white and gold, try focusing on the left side of the central dark stripe,  where the dark color is at its darkest.

Then again, maybe it's just me.  I have color deficient vision, so I'm very used to second guessing myself when it comes to my perception of colors.  People who see colors normally might have a much harder time shifting their focus the way I'm talking about.

[Prog Snob]

light to dark dark to light light to dark dark to light?

[TempusVox]

Blue and gold.

[Chino]

Light blue and brown.

[wasteland]

At first, black and blue. Now, blue ans gold at the top ams blue ans black at the bottom. My mother only sees white and gold, and a friend of mine sees the uncanny white ans green combination, which is really puzzling.

[MrBoom_shack-a-lack]

Yea it fucked me to, saw first white and gold and later blue and black. I refuse to accept my brain to fail like that so:

https://www.wired.com/2015/02/science-one-agrees-color-dress/

[RuRoRul]

I suppose I can see why this could catch on and cause debate, since at first glance when I scrolled past this on another site I thought it was white and gold and had to so a double take to see how people were saying it was black and blue, now I can see how people can see it either way... But seriously, have people never seen stuff like this before:


Or perhaps a better example in this case:



The square in the middle of each face doesn't look the same colour at first glance (at least to most people), but it is. We see one as brighter / darker because what's around it makes us percieve one as in the shadow and one as in the light.

For that dress picture, obviously the actual colours in the picture are not literally the bold black and blue of the actual dress, or the bright white and gold that it seems many people thought it actually was (you can see that if you try comparing the light bits with the pure white Or the dark bits with the black on a computer). Taken out of context the colours are probably more a pale washed-out blue and a gold brownish diarrhea colour.

But I think my eye's original interpretation was that it was a crappy picture of a whitenand gold dress with poor lighting leaving the front (the side we can see) in shadow with bright light coming from behind. But in actual fact, it's a crappy picture of a blue and black dress with bright light coming from in front and / or high brightness settings.

Personally I don't buy that it's to do with whether you have "better" or "worse" eyesight, my guess is that the way your brain interprets the lighting (and hence what colour it sees the actual dress as) has to do with the screen you are looking at it on, its surroundings on the page or your surroundings in real life, and let's face it some random chance, considering the way lots of people claim to see it one way then the other each time they see the image.

I know the standard internet culture is more "OMGG is this real life?! Halp im scarred!" but I'm surprised I haven't seen more reasonable reactions (not talking about this thread, just in the general cesspool of the intetnet) after the initial WTF that might occur, like when people see the optical illusion posted above.

[hefdaddy42]

It is apparently actually blue and black.  But my eyes definitely see it as white and gold.

[Kotowboy]

MEH

[Phoenix87x]

white and gold is what I'm seeing

[Kotowboy]

white and gold is what I'm seeing

That seems to be the general consensus.

[jonnybaxy]

I saw it as black and blue originally and thought someone must be trolling here.

then I saw it somewhere else as gold and white, scrolled down and back up, and it was black and blue again, it really scared me 

But now I can change my perspective of it and see either

[Evermind]

It is apparently actually blue and black.  But my eyes definitely see it as white and gold.

Yeah, this. I see white and gold and I just can't see black and blue here at all.

[Chino]

The truth of the color changing dress is that it's made from GMO cotton developed by Obama's minions to tear this country apart.

[Phoenix87x]

This is freaking me out. It now looks blue and black

[Sir GuitarCozmo]

Approves

[Chino]

I friend of mine has been photoshopping different versions with slightly different colors. He's driving people nuts.

[Kotowboy]

I turned my monitor right off and now it definitely looks black 

[masterthes]

Now I see the blue, but it still looks gold to me

[Kotowboy]

maybe it's just a very slow gif that changes slightly very so often

[rumborak]

Wouldn't be surprised if somebody replaced the jpg it actually points to on a regular basis.

[Stadler]

I've always seen it as blue and black.  The picture here looks white and gold, but as I scrolled down (and the picture moved up off the screen) it changed to blue and black.

I do know that I flatly reject the notion that seeing one combination of colors over another indicates any kind of vision "superiority".  There are too many variables to equate this with a quantified analysis.

I'm already tired of this (and like some others here, I am waiting for the "trick"), but as of now, I'm hitching my wagon to Demi Lovato, who says it is blue and black.