Microsoft And Sony Respond To #TheDress

Anyone who spent any time on the internet yesterday came across the dress, better known as #thedress. Some saw it as blue and black, some saw it as white and gold, and both camps see what they see with such conviction as to make the other half of humanity seem absurd. It's one of those moments when we wonder, for a second, if we have lost our mind, and then we remember that life continues on in the the same way regardless. Maybe I'm just lying in a mental hospital somewhere, the only person on earth seeing blue and black, and my recognition of this serves as a brief moment of clarity amid the otherwise incoherent ramblings heard only by a friendly nurse. Or maybe you're the crazy one? Naturally, social media had a field day, and neither Sony or Microsoft could resist getting in on it.  When Sony tweeted that it was going to be releasing a new white and gold PS4 controller, fans either expected to see a white and gold controller or to retreat once more into a prison of their own perception. Here's the controller:

Of course, because a bizarre optical anomaly like the dress doesn't happen every day, my guess is that everyone is just going to see that one as blue and black. Microsoft decided to chime in as well, albeit in a slightly less cheeky fashion than Sony. It tweeted a picture of a white and gold Xbox skin that you can actually buy for $27.99 with the text: "White and Gold… right?! #TheDress #whiteandgold #blueandblack"

Those following #thedress have yet to come up with any of the satisfying answers that the Internet so often provides in these situations.  It has something to do with the lighting: the photo of a blue dress may have been taken with blue light, making people think it looks white. That's not the whole thing, of course. Vice talked to color vision expert Jay Nietz, who had his theories, but still couldn't quite explain just how the image was working.

"In general, you're going to see differently than the person next to you," Neitz told Vice. "But this is a huge difference." He joked, "Now I'm going to spend the rest of my life working on this. I thought I was going to cure blindness, but now I guess I'll do this."