By Bianca Branham
Managing Editor
Opinion Column
That dang dress! It seems like every time I turn around there is another meaningless, time-consuming, addicting thing trending on Facebook. About a week ago, a Tumblr post about the color of a dress went viral. The debate was centered on whether the dress is black and blue or white and gold. There have been countless media arguments geared specifically toward this dress. There have also been those conspiracy theory freaks, constantly posting about how this is just another ploy dreamed up by the government in order to distract the American public from the serious issues at hand, and blah, blah, blah. So what in the heck makes this dress so controversial? Why do some people see this dress as black and blue and others see it as white and gold?
In a blog post on yahoo.com/tech, David Pogue claims that data scientist Bhautik Joshi says that the reason some people see the colors differently is attributed to how the human eye adjusts to seeing indoor and outdoor lighting. He goes on to state, “this means two different people looking at the picture of the same dress may experience opposite on-the-fly vision and perceive different color arrangements.” Some think it is a checker shadow illusion, which means some people see the dress as one color in a bluish, darker shadow (yellow and gold) and the some see the dress in another color in a yellowish, lighter shadow (blue and black).
Whatever the case, people on social media have become so argumentative about it, and for what reason? I think that as time progresses and technology advances, we become so consumed in media and being “plugged in” that any little trend catches our attention. The millennials generation in particular seems to always be following or keeping up with everything that trends. But seriously, who cares? Is the color of the dress going to pay your rent or help you ace that exam that you have next week? I don’t believe so. I think people stress and focus on things that don’t matter way too much. Why not try doing something productive, like spending time with family or reading a good book, which, by the way, a lot more people need to do.
This constant social media engorgement in not healthy for a fully functioning mind. Wherever you choose to spend your time, just make it count and make it worthwhile. And just for the record I would like to state that the dang dress is BLACK and BLUE!
