A few days ago, Madeline Ochoa posted a mirror selfie of her in a cute striped crop-top, and the internet is kind of freaking out about it.
— $ugar (@mmmadelinee) December 29, 2016
Madeline’s picture might seem totally normal, but it wasn’t long before people started noticing something unusual about her simple striped top. It turns out, the shirt seemingly changes patterns depending on what format it’s viewed on.
BuzzFeed was among the first to report this strange happening: mobile users saw the shirt as almost completely gray, while those who opened the photo to make it larger saw a swirly black and white pattern, and those who zoomed in even further saw a black and white horizontal pinstripe pattern. Weird, right?
It turns out that this is actually pretty normal in images with stripes, and that this specific type of optical illusion is called the “Moire effect.” Still cool, though! The more you know…