Thanks Twitter, you forced me

“It makes me question every other color I see now,” said Andy Ritter ‘17

Ah, the age-old question: What color is the dress? (By age-old, I mean day-old. And I predict that’s how long it will last.)

For those not on social media, a dress went viral. Yes, you read that correctly. A single dress with an unclear color blew up twitter in a matter of minutes.

The dress is either white and gold or blue and black. The camera obviously has an effect on it that varies its look especially in color.

I consulted experts on color who work here on campus.

Arts Department Chair Ms. Jackie White said, “It’s white and gold.” Being an art expert, she certainly knows her colors.

Mr. Kevin Quinn, our resident laser and light expert and science department chair, said, “I don’t think it’s either, your eyes might see something but it doesn’t mean it is that.”

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Surely this is true here. The color does in fact vary from person to person. This is especially interesting because some other rumors I heard throughout the school day included that perception of the dress’s color is based on your screen’s brightness and your ability to distinguished color in dimmed light.

All this taught me was that Twitter is broken. The fact that a dress can go viral in a matter of 15 minutes means that either Twitter is full of bots who mindlessly retweet pointless memes or a billion color blind people who were generally inquiring as to what color the dress is.

This meme was so huge that the government weighed in. Members of Congress voted on Twitter as to what color the dress is.

Important thing to note is that the Department of Homeland Security was going bankrupt while this was all happening.

After many hours of research, the dress’s color remains a mystery. This is an argument that goes much farther past 140 characters. According to a Business Insider article posted the morning after the Twitter explosion, the infamous picture was posted on a 21 year old Scottish singer’s fan account after the mother of her friend sent the picture to her. It was originally posted on Tumblr but also caused stirs on Facebook and Twitter.

Wired Magazine reports the science behind the frenzy. The fight goes past social media and back to primal biology. Based on the way our eyes perceive light through wavelengths and what they reflect off of. This whole discussion happened because our eyes are either discounting the white and gold or the blue and black due to a variety of reasons including brightness and how the viewer’s eyes are wired to see in daylight. So an owl would be more likely to see blue and black.

Regardless of what you see in the photo, if your mom was to go out and buy this dress at Roman Originals, then she would be getting a blue and black one.