You’ve probably heard/read about this dress. You’ve probably also hopped from friend to friend asking them what colour they think the dress is.
Well, you’re not the only one. Thousands of people online have been doing the same over the past day-and-a-half. It turns out that this dress didn’t just break your brain and a few friendships, it broke the Internet.
With dedicated hashtags, #blackandblue and #whiteandgold, the debate has two opposing sides. That’s not it – Yahoo Finance reports that sales for the dress have gone off the roof with a 347% increase [What?]. It even has its own Wikipedia page [more popular than you]. The latest from Business Insider tells us that the two women behind the dress are looking to take these viral hashtags and spin them for a good cause. Printing and selling tees with the prints ‘Team Blue and Black’ and ‘Team White and Gold’, the proceeds from the sales will go to the Princess Project. Why not buy the t-shirt and help someone get a beautiful prom dress?
Now, for those of you out of the loop, a picture of the dress [the original picture is in the centre of the three above] was posted on Tumblr by a friend of the bride it had been bought for. The bride and her groom disagreed on the colors they saw [oh, dear] and from there it sky-rocketed to fame on Facebook, Twitter and other platforms.
Not just social media; mainstream organizations like The Daily Mail, TIME, CNN, and other media outlets have also covered this miraculous dress. Celebrities like Kim Kardashian – who sees the dress as white-and-gold, and her husband Kanye West, who sees it as blue-and-black, have been tweeting about it. Mindy Kaling sees the dress as blue-and-black, as does Taylor Swift.
Don’t worry. Nothing has gone awry with the world and there certainly isn’t dark magic at play here. There’s a clear scientific explanation for #thedress phenomenon. You can read about it here, or watch this video:
This proves as a true testimony to the real commercial power of the internet. Like the Harlem Shake and Gangnam Style videos, ‘random and peculiar’ seems to be the formula for getting famous.
On that note, what colour do you see the dress as?