this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2026
331 points (92.8% liked)
Lemmy Shitpost
38762 readers
4023 users here now
Welcome to Lemmy Shitpost. Here you can shitpost to your hearts content.
Anything and everything goes. Memes, Jokes, Vents and Banter. Though we still have to comply with lemmy.world instance rules. So behave!
Rules:
1. Be Respectful
Refrain from using harmful language pertaining to a protected characteristic: e.g. race, gender, sexuality, disability or religion.
Refrain from being argumentative when responding or commenting to posts/replies. Personal attacks are not welcome here.
...
2. No Illegal Content
Content that violates the law. Any post/comment found to be in breach of common law will be removed and given to the authorities if required.
That means:
-No promoting violence/threats against any individuals
-No CSA content or Revenge Porn
-No sharing private/personal information (Doxxing)
...
3. No Spam
Posting the same post, no matter the intent is against the rules.
-If you have posted content, please refrain from re-posting said content within this community.
-Do not spam posts with intent to harass, annoy, bully, advertise, scam or harm this community.
-No posting Scams/Advertisements/Phishing Links/IP Grabbers
-No Bots, Bots will be banned from the community.
...
4. No Porn/Explicit
Content
-Do not post explicit content. Lemmy.World is not the instance for NSFW content.
-Do not post Gore or Shock Content.
...
5. No Enciting Harassment,
Brigading, Doxxing or Witch Hunts
-Do not Brigade other Communities
-No calls to action against other communities/users within Lemmy or outside of Lemmy.
-No Witch Hunts against users/communities.
-No content that harasses members within or outside of the community.
...
6. NSFW should be behind NSFW tags.
-Content that is NSFW should be behind NSFW tags.
-Content that might be distressing should be kept behind NSFW tags.
...
If you see content that is a breach of the rules, please flag and report the comment and a moderator will take action where they can.
Also check out:
Partnered Communities:
1.Memes
10.LinuxMemes (Linux themed memes)
Reach out to
All communities included on the sidebar are to be made in compliance with the instance rules. Striker
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I always saw blue and black, no idea how anyone could see it as white and gold unless they were colorblind tbh
the original photo was much more faded than the one posted here, so people's colour perception depended on how yellow/blue they perceived the photo's light to be tinted, and how bright/dark their screens were.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a3/Wikipe-tan_wearing_The_Dress_reduced.svg/960px-Wikipe-tan_wearing_The_Dress_reduced.svg.png
I've always been able to see both colors of the dress by changing the size of the image, so the phenomenon "made sense" to me, but I legitimately have no idea how that image is supposed to explain it lol. There's two different colored dresses with seemingly random parts highlighted with different colored boxes.. are they supposed to look the same in the highlighted area or something?
The connected boxes show that the same color appears on both sides; however, the colored boxes provide context based on the lighting which is further reenforced by the rest of the dress outside the box.
Technology Connections did a video about brown that has the same color of orange on a background that cycles between white and black and the color of orange seems to shift to brown or orange depending on the background.
Id never seen this image before but it's the clearest and most intuitive illustration of the effect I've seen.
Change the size of the image? Can you elaborate?
I always saw it as black and blue, until I was scrolling Reddit (as was the style back then) and saw a thumbnail for a meme that had the image of the dress in it. I didn't pay attention to the thumbnail before opening it, so I only noticed a vaguely light colored object. But when the image loaded full size, the dress was the distinct black and blue I'd seen before. I backed out and took a second look at the thumbnail, and again it looked white and gold.
Now that I'm thinking about it, it could have been the surrounding colors of the screen that effected how I perceived the dress. After discovering this I recreated the effect by taking a screenshot of the dress while zoomed out really far (to essentially turn it in to a thumbnail on its own), but both that and the Reddit thumbnail had a dark background that may have made the dress seem lighter in comparison.
That seems like a pretty spot on, organic way of figuring out how it works.
The issue I still have is the people who seemingly still only see white and gold or whatever. Is it trolling? Is it being pedantic? Can those people not read captchas? Do they just have trouble? Is it just to make a point? Mental inflexibility? It's a damn mystery.
In every configuration, every lighting condition, every monitor, every color manipulation, I see that picture as white and gold. Not once have I managed to see the blue dress, except in separate pictures of the same dress.
I understand the actual dress is blue and I understand the color theory, but even with the picture very heavily tinted blue my brain still interprets the dress to be in shadow and therefore white.
I've seen the original one back when it was first popular, still couldn't understand the white and gold people
That one is easy, on the left is black and blue and on the right white and gold
That image shows how a white and gold dress could appear to be the same color as a black and blue one by putting a filter of blue over it, but the original has a shop window in the bg that looks yellow/white, so for me it's hard to see it as anything but blue and black (which is the actual dress color).
The original can be interpreted in two ways either as the dress being in too much light, which was the actual case, or as the dress being in the shadow compared to the light background - which explains the blue tint as the effect of the shadow and leads to the gold and white perception.
It's the lighting.
What'a always bothered me is, the lighting in the original is so ridiculously blown out that it MUST be blue and black! It could only be white and gold under very dark lighting which is clearly not the case. Unless maybe people are thinking the front is in shadow...?
Yep, I thought the front was in shadow, so I always saw gold and white.
Crazy, its almost as if color perception is individual and dependent on lighting and surroundings. Obviously only your perception of reality is the "real" one.
Blue and gold maybe, but white and gold doesn't even make sense to me. For a white dress to look blue it needs to be under blue light, which would cause the gold highlights to be dark with a blue sheen. The missing blue sheen indicates that either it's gold under natural lighting or black under yellowish lighting.
I am not colourblind afaik and I could not for the life of me see it as blue and black. The lighting just made no sense for that to be the case.
It looks like the dress is in a less lit part with a very strong backlight.
thats because the OG** photo** (left) it is gold lace on a "white dress" (with a blue tint lighting effect etc) while IRL the dress is black & blue. right side is the edited OP photo. the difference is 'night and day' and if these all look the same i've got some news for you. ...........
You've got it backwards, when this happened people found the exact dress and it was blue and black, but the lighting can make it look white and gold.
I know I wa stalking about the OG photo. Though to be honest even the edited one does not look completely blue and black to me. I know the dress is blue and black in reality.
Ok this confirms my suspicion! In order for it to be white and gold you'd need to see the dress as in shadow. I always assumed it was in light because the image was lile blown out max lighting, but if you then assume that since it's backlit the dress is in shadow and there isn't significant front lighting, it could actually be white and gold. This theory has been nagging at me for YEARS and you just solved it, thank you!
No problem. I know the true colour but looking at the actual image I cannot force myself to see it as blue and black. It always looks white and gold even though that makes no sense if you analyse the image even slightly. It has to be in the light but my brains just refuses to see it that way.
Okay, something weird just happened to me... When I sent my last comment, I couldn't perceive it as anything but white and gold... Now, out of nowhere, i can't perceive it as anything but blue and black... Why? How? What just happened?
I don't think that's it. I can't perceive the original image as anything but white and gold. I tried to convince my brain about the lighting situation, but I don't think it has helped.
Edit: nvm, I misunderstood your comment.
That is what I am seeing now too, same as the first time I saw this.
However, when it got posted to Lemmy ~7months ago I could switch it between colours.
I posted then, about how to do it. Something like defocussing your eyes, and then looking at the sunny part on the right-side, to switch to white&gold.
In 11 years, I'm still unable to see white and gold
Turns out this is a fine shitpost.
Posting a saturated picture that is only a black and blue dress, rather than the orig picture.
That’s the one I’m talking about
I'm mildly colorblind and it's just too dark for me to make out. It could be white, blue, etc. But the black part doesn't look solid enough to be black either. I just think the camera failed to properly get a read at that lighting level .