Do you remember where you were when #TheDress tore our nation asunder?
Get ready. It’s happening again.
Twitter user @totallymendes made a simple request of her followers Wednesday evening. “Which color [of nail polish] matches the shoes the best.”
Whether or not it was their intention to start a Twitter-wide controversy – and in this day and age, who knows, it could be some kind of stunt for a nail polish company – that’s how things ended up. The original Tweet has, as of this writing, more than 5,000 retweets, and it doesn’t look like it’s stopping anytime soon.
Incidentally, we’d like to remind you of what Jason Silva, host of National Geographic’s Brain Games, told us in the middle of #DressGate. “The largest takeaway,” he explained by phone, “is that color exists in your brain. It’s not an objective feature of reality.”
“We don’t see the world objectively as is, we see the world through the lens of our preconceptions, cultural operating systems … reality is coupled to perception, so change perception, you change reality.”
“You never experience an objective reality,” he continued. “Your brain is shielded from the world by this box that is your skull; all it’s doing is receiving a signal and interpreting it, like a cable box does for a television. What you call the world is more like a TV screen in your mind.”
So, to recap, we’re all collectively hallucinating what we actually call reality, and whichever nail polish matches the shoe, it doesn’t matter, because it’s not real. Thanks everyone, good talk, have a great Thursday.
This article originally appeared on People.com
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