A CRINGE optical illusion that tricked thousands of people into seeing distorted faces has gone viral on social media.
Optical illusions sometimes work by using shapes and movements to confuse the human brain.
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An optical illusion that tricked thousands of people into seeing distorted faces has gone viral on social media. Credits: Tik Tok / stevepsychology
And a TikTok user with the hashtag @StevePsychology recently demonstrated this in a 47-second clip.
First, the content creator, named Steve Rathe, warned his users that this optical illusion “is a little scary.”
He then instructed his million followers to look at a cross (+) placed between two photo frames showing a series of faces.
“So what you have to do is look directly at the cross in the middle of the screen instead of looking directly at the faces,” Steve said.
“What you probably notice if you look at the cross is that the faces look distorted or weird,” he added.
However, the faces are not altered and look normal if you focus on them.
How does this work?
Steve explained that this optical illusion works due to something called the “blinking face distortion effect”.
It works by making our brain fill in the gaps when given limited information.
Steve went on to explain, “We have pretty poor peripheral vision. So what your brain is probably doing is noticing the differences between the two images and exaggerating so that the images look like cartoons.”
User reactions
Nearly 70,000 TikTok users have liked the reality show since it went viral, and hundreds have left comments expressing their thoughts on the video.
“The more you look, the more hype,” wrote one surprised user.
“Wow super interesting,” declared another TikToker.
“The brain is amazing. Absolutely amazing,” added a third person.
Categories: Optical Illusion
Source: HIS Education