Mefite Amazon reviews of The Dress on Vox's famous website

February 27, 2015 9:35 AM

I just wanted to give a shoutout to naju and NoraReed for having Amazon reviews quoted in this article from Vox about The Dress. If other mefites were also featured, I apologize for not recognizing your username.
posted by oceanjesse to MetaFilter-Related at 9:35 AM (83 comments total)

They didn't mention me, and I'm feeling kind of blue about it. Or, gold? I'm feeling pretty gold about—wait, no, I—
posted by cortex (staff) at 9:36 AM on February 27, 2015 [32 favorites]

This issue is polarizing in a way I haven't seen since the great Sit or Stand Debate of aught-six!

(it's white and gold and WHY WOULD YOU DO ANYTHING BUT SIT TO WIPE YOU ANIMAL)
posted by kate blank at 10:02 AM on February 27, 2015 [6 favorites]

So my friends from MetaFilter were recognized by Vox for their review on Amazon about a dress that was a very popular point of discussion on Twitter and Facebook because of an article on Buzzfeed about a picture from tumblr.

I love this version of the future.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 10:05 AM on February 27, 2015 [62 favorites]

The dress is white(ish) and gold.

Also, a professional white background with black text is headache inducing and hard to read. Dark backgrounds FTW.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 10:07 AM on February 27, 2015 [2 favorites]

A lot of my friends on social media are acting irritated about the dress, which makes me wonder why we are friends.

The dress is the funniest thing to his the internet in ages. It's just killing me.
posted by maxsparber at 10:10 AM on February 27, 2015 [16 favorites]

I FINALLY SAW THE WHITE AND GOLD DRESS!!!!!!!!!

(I had to tilt my laptop monitor at an insane angle, and then stare at the light coming through my living room window for a while, and then glance very quickly at the screen)
posted by chainsofreedom at 10:12 AM on February 27, 2015 [1 favorite]

Mefi, Ask, and now MeTa?

Ok, now Cortex has to write a song about the dress and post it on Music, someone needs to post a review to Fanfare about a TV show where they discuss the dress, and we need to have an IRL meetup at Ann Taylor or Kohls or wherever the hell you can buy that dress.

Because I know you're going to discuss the hell out of it on the Podcast.
posted by bondcliff at 10:16 AM on February 27, 2015 [20 favorites]

I still don't understand. Were the llamas wearing dresses? I can't keep up with the memes!!!
posted by m@f at 10:21 AM on February 27, 2015 [5 favorites]

someone needs to post a review to Fanfare about a TV show where they discuss the dress,

Related: I've been thinking all morning about how some television executive has probably been trying to think of some way to pitch a show that can monetize the public's new found fascination with optical illusions or color science. This imaginary executive is amusing me greatly.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 10:21 AM on February 27, 2015 [4 favorites]

somebody needs to compose a song about the got dang thing and then we can have a meetup to hear it. That'd be some kind of crazy metafilter site bingo.
posted by boo_radley at 10:27 AM on February 27, 2015 [1 favorite]

They didn't mention me, and I'm feeling kind of blue about it.

I have never wanted a downvote button on metafilter more than I do right this moment.
posted by phearlez at 10:35 AM on February 27, 2015 [7 favorites]

it's orange
posted by philip-random at 10:50 AM on February 27, 2015 [1 favorite]

I have never wanted a downvote button on metafilter more than I do right this moment.

You seriously can't see the downvote button?!?!?!
posted by Pater Aletheias at 10:54 AM on February 27, 2015 [43 favorites]

Mike- NatGeo already beat you to it.
posted by InfidelZombie at 11:00 AM on February 27, 2015 [1 favorite]

Mefi, Ask, and now MeTa?

Someone needs to write a song about the dress and post it to Music
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 11:11 AM on February 27, 2015 [2 favorites]

Someone needs to write a song about the dress and post it to Music

That's a good idea that you just had.

hamburger
posted by bondcliff at 11:14 AM on February 27, 2015 [2 favorites]

For real, I wouldn't be surprised if there isn't a podcast talking about this by month's end. Which will inevitably end up on fanfare.
posted by dinty_moore at 11:28 AM on February 27, 2015

hmmm... dress-based meetup?
posted by isthmus at 11:31 AM on February 27, 2015 [1 favorite]

> Ok, now Cortex has to write a song about the dress and post it on Music, someone needs to post a review to Fanfare about a TV show where they discuss the dress, and we need to have an IRL meetup at Ann Taylor or Kohls or wherever the hell you can buy that dress.

So you're saying nobody can start a Project involving it?
posted by ardgedee at 11:40 AM on February 27, 2015 [1 favorite]

Dress colors. That's where I'm a viking.
posted by dirtdirt at 11:56 AM on February 27, 2015 [5 favorites]

Dis dress is causing distress.
posted by Atom Eyes at 12:00 PM on February 27, 2015 [1 favorite]

For real, I wouldn't be surprised if there isn't a podcast talking about this by month's end.

They were talking about it on Here and Now this afternoon. What is this world coming to.
posted by backseatpilot at 12:06 PM on February 27, 2015 [2 favorites]

I poked my eyes with a stick after staring so long, and now it has a blinking red border, like I'm low on health.
posted by SpacemanStix at 12:19 PM on February 27, 2015 [5 favorites]

What is this world coming to.

Text received from my mother who is visiting my grandmother: "What's this dress? can you explain it in ways that make sense to me and your Grandma. your father is no help."

Basically what I'm saying is that the television executive I imagined above better get to work because this thing has demographic legs apparently.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 12:20 PM on February 27, 2015 [14 favorites]

Dress colors. That's where I'm a viking.
As a Minnesotan, I need to tell you that Vikings are purple and gold, just like that dress.
posted by soelo at 12:44 PM on February 27, 2015 [12 favorites]

Dis dress is causing distress

I'm stressed by dis dress dis, sis.
posted by GenjiandProust at 12:53 PM on February 27, 2015 [2 favorites]

Cortex where is the song.

We should have a song by now.
posted by The Whelk at 12:58 PM on February 27, 2015 [1 favorite]

I have been absentmindedly workshopping a rewrite of Sting's "Fields of Gold" but shit's just kinda busy today.
posted by cortex (staff) at 1:06 PM on February 27, 2015 [10 favorites]

"The colors on a dress of rayon....."
posted by The Whelk at 1:07 PM on February 27, 2015

I did write a song about it in the thread, if anyone really wants one. (To the tune of "Black or White," obviously.)
posted by ilana at 1:34 PM on February 27, 2015

A perfect trifecta: The Blue, The Green, and The Gray.
posted by SLC Mom at 1:37 PM on February 27, 2015 [3 favorites]

Someone in that Amazon thread left a review that said "This dress is a horcrux." This made laugh so much.
posted by DingoMutt at 1:38 PM on February 27, 2015 [6 favorites]

Even the NDP (progressive party up in Canada) decided to get in the game, although they used too many #hashtags.
posted by Lemurrhea at 1:44 PM on February 27, 2015 [1 favorite]

So my friends from MetaFilter were recognized by Vox for their review on Amazon about a dress that was a very popular point of discussion on Twitter and Facebook because of an article on Buzzfeed about a picture from tumblr.

I love this version of the future.
posted by infini at 1:59 PM on February 27, 2015 [1 favorite]

It's fitting that this has gone pan-mefi. This is our great monoculture moment. I'm greatly looking forward to ONLY 10s KIDS WILL UNDERSTAND THIS: WHAT COLOR IS THE DRESS??
posted by naju at 2:06 PM on February 27, 2015 [16 favorites]

Its global. Saw the dress on sale last night on a tweet from a Nigerian ecommerce site, asking what colour is it...
posted by infini at 2:11 PM on February 27, 2015

I love this version of the future.

Alternatively: this is the darkest timeline.
posted by phunniemee at 2:13 PM on February 27, 2015 [6 favorites]

Alternatively: this is the darkest timeline

About 1/3 of us see it as the darkest timeline.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 2:19 PM on February 27, 2015 [22 favorites]

Alternatively: this is the darkest timeline.

It sure is.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 2:22 PM on February 27, 2015

In the grim future of What Color Is This Dress 40K, there is only war!
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:23 PM on February 27, 2015 [7 favorites]

"meet the dress that made the entire internet stupid". It's like that pokemon episode that killed those kids.
posted by boo_radley at 2:44 PM on February 27, 2015 [4 favorites]

I have to say, after all grinding metadrama that's been going on (productively! Productively, I hasten to mention!) for the past several days, when I saw mathowie's "You are a witch" comment as the second comment to the FPP, something broke inside me and I laughed helplessly for about ten solid minutes. It was a great feeling.
posted by KathrynT at 2:46 PM on February 27, 2015 [16 favorites]

Well played.
posted by Golden Eternity at 2:53 PM on February 27, 2015

KathrynT: "when I saw mathowie's "You are a witch" comment as the second comment to the FPP, something broke inside me and I laughed helplessly for about ten solid minutes. It was a great feeling."

mathowie is also a witch.
posted by boo_radley at 2:55 PM on February 27, 2015

oh sweet are we playing Witch Witch No U again
posted by cortex (staff) at 3:26 PM on February 27, 2015 [5 favorites]

Psssst. Wanna buy a dress?
posted by Too-Ticky at 3:27 PM on February 27, 2015

Well played.

I agree, Blue Eternity.
posted by maxsparber at 3:39 PM on February 27, 2015 [6 favorites]

I have to say, after all grinding metadrama that's been going on (productively! Productively, I hasten to mention!) for the past several days, when I saw mathowie's "You are a witch" comment as the second comment to the FPP, something broke inside me and I laughed helplessly for about ten solid minutes. It was a great feeling.

I really like it when we can all laugh around here. I wish we could find a way to do more of it.
posted by SpacemanStix at 4:07 PM on February 27, 2015 [1 favorite]

Who cares what color it is? How does it look on my floor?
posted by cjorgensen at 5:19 PM on February 27, 2015

Linty and covered in cat hair. Christ you need to vacuum more often.
posted by phunniemee at 5:30 PM on February 27, 2015 [20 favorites]

I want photonic mittens!
posted by clavdivs at 6:06 PM on February 27, 2015

I'm only available in baryonic!
posted by mittens at 6:43 PM on February 27, 2015 [3 favorites]

LLAMAS SHOULD WEAR DRESSES!!!!
posted by Deoridhe at 6:51 PM on February 27, 2015 [5 favorites]

I find malarkey is good for this

I do enjoy those times. It's kind of like when boxers hug in the middle of a bout. They are punching each other repeatedly under certain allowable conditions, and then you are like, aw, they do like each other.
posted by SpacemanStix at 7:33 PM on February 27, 2015 [7 favorites]

This woman supposedly sees hundreds of colors more than your average person. What color combo does she see on the dress?
posted by Ik ben afgesneden at 7:51 PM on February 27, 2015 [1 favorite]

Related: I've been thinking all morning about how some television executive has probably been trying to think of some way to pitch a show that can monetize the public's new found fascination with optical illusions or color science.

Say WTF To The Dress
posted by threeants at 7:55 PM on February 27, 2015 [20 favorites]

The largest viral non-grar WTF ev-ah. I imagined 300 million folks running to their partners/spouses "WHAT COLORS DO YOU SEE, QUICK"
posted by clavdivs at 8:33 PM on February 27, 2015 [2 favorites]

Not to stir the pot, but the background to Metatalk has always looked brown to me. I never understood why it was referred to as The Grey.

After my switcheroo from Team White/Gold to Team Blue/Black tonight around 6:30, however, now I see this here background as grey. Obviously Leonard Nimoy altered the universe as his last act.

Should I look for llamas in the backyard?
posted by goofyfoot at 8:38 PM on February 27, 2015 [8 favorites]

Say WTF To The Dress

I might have just snorted wine through my nose.
posted by jaguar at 8:39 PM on February 27, 2015 [4 favorites]

@raqqa_mcr: "End of the story LOL
#TheDress"
posted by Golden Eternity at 9:22 PM on February 27, 2015 [1 favorite]

It does seem like a redder grey.
posted by oceanjesse at 10:36 PM on February 27, 2015

thx for a meta about how great i am
posted by NoraReed at 11:11 PM on February 27, 2015 [18 favorites]

I imagined 300 million folks running to their partners/spouses "WHAT COLORS DO YOU SEE, QUICK"

I did that thing.
posted by taz (staff) at 12:41 AM on February 28, 2015 [4 favorites]

I'm glad it's peace and love in here. At my office this afternoon, the discussion became rather heated and I was accused of being an elitist colour-ist! Harumph! Just because I can perceive soooo many more colours than my cow-orkers.
posted by a humble nudibranch at 3:06 AM on February 28, 2015 [2 favorites]

Thursday night, when we were lying on our air mattress, exhausted from moving nearly all our earthly belongings into a storage unit, I heard my partner chuckle and I asked him what he was laughing about. "There's this big kerfuffle online right now about a dress," he said.

"That blue and black one?" I asked, pointing to the photo I could see on his phone.

His jaw dropped. "But it's not blue and black. It's white and gold! Do you really see blue and black?"

The next day, I read the whole ridiculous Mefi thread. The reaction to this has been one of the weirdest things I've ever seen on the internet.
posted by ocherdraco at 6:48 AM on February 28, 2015 [7 favorites]

The reaction to this has been one of the weirdest things I've ever seen on the internet.

Yes and no. I think the it illustrates that people really do see things differently, even those closet to us. That's what's freaking people out.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:55 AM on February 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

I think this is a very special corner case which is why color scientists are so surprised by it. If we were often seeing things this differently, The Dress wouldn't have been a big deal at all: people disagreeing on color would happen all the time. Perhaps the opposite is indicated:
the fact that so many of us are 'white balancing' just this one image this incorrectly would seem to indicate our white balancing circuits (or whatever) are basically identical regardless of other social and genetic differences. There is a threshold that is set to be very nearly the same in all of our brains. And this image has landed right at that threshold; something color scientists have never even seen before. Many of us have seen the exact same image both ways.
posted by Golden Eternity at 8:21 AM on February 28, 2015 [4 favorites]

I think the amazing thing is that most of these color illusions require priming, like you need to stare at a red square for a minute and then look at a white wall. But with this, I can see a completely different dress just by starting top down versus bottom up. I can watch it appear to change color just by staring at it. There are grad students who are going to make their careers figuring out why it works and reproducing the effect.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 8:43 AM on February 28, 2015 [4 favorites]

Well said, Blue Eternity
posted by Rumple at 8:56 AM on February 28, 2015 [20 favorites]

> If we were often seeing things this differently, The Dress wouldn't have been a big deal at all ... There is a threshold that is set to be very nearly the same in all of our brains. And this image has landed right at that threshold ...

Yep, totally. Color constancy (the way the brain adjusts color perception for different lighting conditions) is well known in cognitive psychology, but we're usually really consistent in what we see. Somebody managed to take a photo that provided almost no cues about the lighting of the foreground object, so we end up seeing really different things. It also confronts people with 'Hey, wait a minute! You mean what I see isn't the same thing as what's there?' That's kind of hard to deal with if you haven't had to think about it in a concrete way before.

I'm a former art student who later switched to psychology. I'm happy that people are having fun arguing about this, and maybe some of them will follow links posted here and elsewhere and learn more about perception.
posted by nangar at 10:22 AM on February 28, 2015 [4 favorites]

So much for the famous blue raincoat.
posted by Ideefixe at 12:42 PM on February 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

"I cannot bring a world quite round,
Although I patch it as I can"

-Wallace Stevens', 'The man with the Blue Guitar.'
posted by clavdivs at 12:56 PM on February 28, 2015 [2 favorites]

The reaction to this has been one of the weirdest things I've ever seen on the internet.

So very weird. People refusing to participate in "some stupid meme." It's not a meme, it's an optical illusion. People going on and on about monitor calibration and photo retouching. Um, it's not any of those things, it's an optical illusion. However, it's an optical illusion that just so happens to have come out of a very ordinary, unplanned photograph. And the color differences are quite stark. It does not seem like you could get white and gold from a blue and black dress.

I, for one, applaud our brilliant yet remarkably stupid brains. We're amazing! And doofuses. The universe finds this perversely lovable so it keeps us around for maybe one more trip around the sun.
posted by amanda at 3:35 PM on February 28, 2015 [4 favorites]

This shall be dined for years.
posted by clavdivs at 4:55 PM on February 28, 2015

On Friday morning I got a text from Sky News about this:

Sky: Hi Adrian, TKTKTK here from Sky News. I wondered if you might be willing/able to talk about 'the dres' - this optical illusion that seems to be driving everyone wild. Not sure if you've seen it?

Unfortunately I haven't been a neuroscience researcher for practically ten years and would have felt acutely embarrassed to have gone on the news in place of, you know, an actual working scientist. But... it would've been pretty sweet!

Also I happened to be wearing a blue and black sweater that day, which would've been perfect.
posted by adrianhon at 5:47 AM on March 1, 2015

Learn how a dress designer figured out one weird trick to break the internet. Everyone hates her!
posted by double block and bleed at 6:20 AM on March 1, 2015 [2 favorites]

Dress: "I love you"

Dress: "no you don't "

Internet: "quiet you two, this is important."
posted by clavdivs at 3:05 PM on March 1, 2015

Also I happened to be wearing a blue and black sweater that day

Looks white and gold to me.
posted by yoink at 8:54 AM on March 2, 2015

THERE... ARE... FOUR... DRESSES!!!
posted by Splunge at 10:41 AM on March 2, 2015 [1 favorite]

Tumblr staff add up the favs, notes, reblogs, views and fan mail from "Dress Night"
posted by infini at 12:51 PM on March 2, 2015

"During the I Love Lucy Show in the US, so many American’s flushed their toilets during commercial breaks that massive water pressure drops happened in big American cities (Toledo and NYC)."

I wonder if a similar study could be done using the same criteria but apply it to cell phone recharging. (power spikes or more the average phone breakage for example)
posted by clavdivs at 1:47 PM on March 2, 2015

What's the military application for this?
posted by Ik ben afgesneden at 2:23 PM on March 2, 2015 [2 favorites]

Hacked electronic toilet seats flapping in unison the homes of the petite-bourgeoisie. Essentially, the Bidet revolution.
posted by clavdivs at 4:30 PM on March 2, 2015