Once upon a time, there was a dress. Like many dresses before it, it was photographed and put on the internet. That’s when things became a bit crazy, and the online world not invested in the fate of two runaway llamas split into two camps: #whiteandgold and #blueandblack. Both sides aggressively defended what they saw, accusing the other of deception, pranking and conspiracy. The internet hadn’t been so bitterly divided since the days of Team Aniston vs Team Jolie.
For a while on Friday, the debate was impossible to escape, entangling millions across the planet in its threads. Because we live in the age of scams, internet hoaxes and “ironic” pranks, people couldn’t quite believe they weren’t being hustled. After all, why else would anyone say the dress was blue when it was so clearly white? And when the argument was definitively settled once the dress’s owner got involved — it really is blue and black, apparently — it sparked off a thousand existential crises about colour and perception and the meaning of life. Vision specialists were hunted down and made to explain what this cognitive split meant and how it came about. Were the white-and-golds smarter than the blue-and-blacks? Was this how the day of reckoning would be decided? Didn’t someone say the devil wears a blue dress?
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Considering, though, that online philosophical disagreements about matters that might politely be described as “first world problems” are essentially business as usual on the internet, crippling concerns over the impending apocalypse are perhaps a trifle exaggerated. And this sartorial mystery is merely a particularly striking example of the occasional mass frenzy that makes the Web such an entertaining space.
