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No One Sees Eye to Eye on What Color These Flip Flops Are

2 minute read

Do you remember The Dress? It’s back, with a twist.

Back in February 2015 the internet broke after Scottish musician Caitlin McNeill posted a picture of a dress on the micro-blogging website Tumblr with the caption “guys please help me — is this dress white and gold , or blue and black? Me and my friends can’t agree and we are freaking the f*** out.” The photo went viral as people made impassioned arguments over the colors in the photo.

Now it’s happening again, but with a photo of flip-flops. On Nov. 17, Twitter user @positivedemi posted a photo of a pair of Havianas flip-flops and asked, “What color do you see?”

And with that simple question, the internet machine was off and running again arguing about whether the sandals were black and blue or white and gold. (Gift it: for men here, for women here)

The reason that people see different colors is that human eyes evolved to see in daylight, but daylight changes color at different times of day. “The wavelength composition of the light reflected from an object changes considerably in different conditions of illumination,” Science Daily wrote at the height of the frenzy over The Dress. “Nevertheless, the color of the object remains the same.”

For the record, Buzzfeed was able to confirm that the flip-flips are actually blue and black. Strangely that hasn’t settled the argument online yet.

What do you see?

You can get blue and black Havaianas similar to the ones above for men here, for women here.

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