this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2023
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Antique Memes Roadshow

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Giving you the backstory and appraisals of vintage memes!

Submissions should be vintage memes or commentary about vintage memes. Commenters are advised to appraise the internet value and provenance meme antiquities.

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[–] The_Picard_Maneuver 114 points 1 year ago (6 children)

I can't do this again...

I know I'm wrong, but it's just staring at me gold & white. It's right there, clearly, and I don't know how to explain it to those who see it the other way.

[–] Cheems 14 points 1 year ago (3 children)

No brother. You are correct. The blasphemers are wrong

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

I can't really See einher white and gold nor black and blue. It's more a baby blue and brownish to golden color for me. Can't really say it's black or white at all

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm the same, looking straight at it all I can see is white and gold. Like a bright gold even, it's not even brown.

If I look at it in my peripheral vision it's very clearly blue and black though 🤷.

[–] The_Picard_Maneuver 7 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I just tried peripheral vision, and it's still solidly gold/white to me. Damn

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I was able to see it blue and black one time, I'm not wasting my time trying to see it again, lol

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[–] thorbot 54 points 1 year ago (8 children)

how the fuck does this look like anything other than blue and black?!?!

[–] kryptonianCodeMonkey 22 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Looks to me like a white and gold dress that's being shaded from the ambient light. In reality, it's a black and blue dress with a yellow light cast on it.

Your mind naturally tries to compensate for color shifts caused by light. For example, a white car still looks white to you at sunset and in the moonlight even though it is actually reflecting that red or blue light, not white light (i.e. all colors of light). That's because your eye recognizes the general pallete of the ambient light and makes an interpretation automatically about the colors of the objects you see.

That's happening in this picture too, either correctly interpreting it as black and blue in yellow light or incorrectly as white and gold in shade. But even knowing it's incorrect, changing your brain's interpretation is not easy.

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[–] Ghostalmedia 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

My guess is that some people don't see the gestalt, they get stuck on the actual RGB color values, which float around light gray/blue, and a dark gold.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

From what I read at the time, there's an intrinsic lighting judgement being made. It could be one dress being lit in natural light, or another lit under a florescent bar. They both would produce the same RGB values.

Interestingly nobody has been able to replicate the effect in another image. It's truly remarkable and one of the best things off of the internet.

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[–] TheGiantKorean 38 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I can't not see white and gold. The white just looks like it's in shadow.

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[–] Diprount_Tomato 35 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Only once in my life did I see it gold and white

[–] Ghostalmedia 40 points 1 year ago (2 children)
[–] Diprount_Tomato 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Look at the darker side and tell me you don't see black and blue

[–] Ghostalmedia 35 points 1 year ago (2 children)

My brain is broken. I still only see white and gold.

[–] Diprount_Tomato 12 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Well, afaik it was confirmed to be black and blue. Whatever, you may see it gold and white because your brain focuses more on the lighter parts. Try covering them with your hand or something

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I've tried so many things from squinting to covering parts of the picture to adjusting the light in my room. I know this dress is blue and black because I've seen it while not being over exposed. I just can't get my brain to recognize it any other way than gold and white in this picture.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago
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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

afaik it was confirmed to be black and blue

I do believe it actually was black and blue, but I find it very hard to believe that anyone would perceive the way it is presented in this picture, with that lighting and level of overexposure, as black and blue.

Even looking at the RGB values of individual pixels, they are distinctly brown/gold-ish and a pastellish faded out purple.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The actual dress is black and blue. The pixels in that image are a VERY light blue and like a beige type color. You can drop it into that color picker app and see.

Basically the pic is fried to hell and back.

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (2 children)
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[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's always been white and gold for me

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

Me too. Everyone else is fucked.

[–] expatriado 27 points 1 year ago

whoever get this confused has never fix the white balance of a picture's color temperature

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (2 children)
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[–] mingistech 21 points 1 year ago (5 children)
[–] kryptonianCodeMonkey 22 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Literally looks like two different colored dresses. I know that's the real color, but I just cannot see it. Shrug.

[–] justhach 14 points 1 year ago

Right? Thats always been my take.

The picture's exposure/brightness whatever has been so overadjusted that the black and blue looks white and gold.

You can tell me over and over that its "actually black and blue", and even show me the real dress beside it, but I cannot for the life of me shift my view on the original picture and somehow view the dress as black and blue.

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[–] CDenno 20 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I see blue and gold. Am I having a stroke?

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago

Fun Fact: The same day, February 26, 2015, the Interwebz blew the fuck up about this goddamn dress, some Llamas escaped from captivity and we were all equally captivated by their chase for hours, it was an amazing 24 hours online

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago

The colour picker continues to tell me that it is a light shade of blue, near white, and a medium shade of brown, similar to gold.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

Not this shit again!

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

This dress is now connected to a murder attempt. Don't believe me? Here you go.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (3 children)
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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

https://imagecolorpicker.com/en for those seeing white and gold. Also the screen you're looking at it on matters so much.

Edit: I did find a neat bug with DarkReader on though. It reads the white pixels as black with the magnifier on the right. Even turning off it's still pretty blue and white... Apparently it actually pulls the color judging by what your screen shows though... which is pretty neat all considering. The crosshair is on the large white empty space to the right of the large black stripe in the middle.

DarkReader off: https://i.imgur.com/0ofjl8W.png

DarkReader on: https://i.imgur.com/OpcDGCH.png

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So I tried this and even https://colors.artyclick.com/color-name-finder/ but it will find only brown/gold and light blue/blue/white depends where you focus it on. This image itself contains no black pixels simple as it is.

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[–] Buffalox 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Seems to me a color picker confirms white and gold. Although the white has a bluish tint, some areas don't even have that, and are light grey. There is no doubt the gold (black) is different tones between brown and yellow, which is the RGB you'd expect for a gold color.

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[–] Ddhuud 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

White and gold

[–] Nariom 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I am no longer able to see the white and gold glory :(

[–] flying_gel 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Same here. When this was new I had 10 tabs open with articles about this dress, they were all white and gold. Then all of a sudden on the 11th tab I saw it as blue and black and thought it was a different picture. Went back through the other 10 tabs and they were all blue and black now.

I was able to see white and gold once more a few days later, but it was short lived and I haven't been able to see anything else but blue and black for years now.

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[–] FlyingSquid 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

Logically I realize the "white" is bluish-gray, especially if I stretch it out to the edges of my phone so I'm not influenced by the backlighting in the photo. But I held it up next to my black cat and the "black" isn't even close. At most it's brown, which is what gold looks like in shadow. Compare it to your background if you're on night mode, or your text if not. No black there.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It is important to remind the audience that the author of this picture heavily abused his girlfriend/wife

[–] Ghostalmedia 11 points 1 year ago

Craziest part is that it was used in a famous campaign for domestic abuse several years before the husband in the wedding got arrested for domestic abuse.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I see black and blue with a yellow over wash because of lighting.

To see white and gold in shadow, I have to remove all context prompts, like strip out the background and all lighting artifacts.

I just can't see the white and gold in context. Too many years of colour correcting photos.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)
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[–] DeaLikesTrains 8 points 1 year ago

I always see lavender and gold, dunno if I should worry or not.

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