One year ago, the internet lost its mind over 'The Dress' that might be blue and black or white and gold — And now some people see the colors differently

One year ago, BuzzFeed unearthed photo of a seemingly ordinary dress on Tumblr. But quickly, the Internet began losing its mind over the garment. 

Was it black and blue or white and gold?

People who saw the dress couldn't seem to decide in an epic optical illusion. The BuzzFeed article exploded with more than 38 million readers arguing over the dress' colors (people who physically saw the dress later confirmed that it was indeed black and blue).

The Dress began on this Tumblr page, where a user posted a photo of the dress with the caption, "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--k out."

Here's the dress:

Tumblr/Swiked

And people on Twitter were completely freaking out whether this dress was blue and black or white and gold. (Note: some of the embedded tweets contain NSFW language.)

 

Taylor Swift saw black and blue. 

 

Mindy Kaling also chimed in.

As did BuzzFeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith.

 And New York Times tech reporter Mike Isaac.

And of course, Denny's.

 

Naturally, the debate surrounding the dress included the Illuminati.

 

And the llamas that were loose in Arizona earlier that day.  

Today, some people are seeing The Dress differently than they did one year ago. Like Inc journalist Burt Helm:

@ajs Whoa this year I see it as white and gold! What has happened to me?

— Burt Helm (@BurtHelm) February 26, 2016

 

So, what's the reason our eyes play tricks on us when it comes to the dress?

It has to do with rods and cones in our retinas. Business Insider's Dina Spector breaks it down: "We have three types of cones, each tuned to pick up green, red, or blue wavelengths of light. When light hits our eyes, the receptors turn these colors into electrical signals that are sent to the brain. Our brains determine the color that we see by blending the signals that each receptor senses — like how a TV screen made of millions of different-colored pixels makes an image. In person, the dress is clearly blue and black. The lighting of the image, which has a bluish tint, appears to be what is throwing people's brains off. It makes the blue part look white and black part look gold." 

There you have it. Still not convinced? Here's the complete scientific explanation for The Dress.

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