'The Dress' 2018: The 'Yanny' or 'Laurel' debate has the whole world confused but we have an answer
The Internet is a crazy wild place and sometimes, it is enough to turn your world upside down. A little bit of shaking up once in a while is good to get the brain ticking. On Wednesday (May 16) social media was sent into a frenzy after a clip was uploaded online which sounded more like a robotic voice trying to say a name out loud.
The question accompanying the clip asked listeners to identify which name they could hear in the clip. Now you must be thinking what is so special about this? Well, here's the catch! While some people happened to hear the name 'Laurel', the others were hearing 'Yanny'. Soon, there was a debate online where people tried to put their heads together to come up with an answer. Well, thanks to Wired, we now know the truth. It all started when a group of high school students uploaded one of their projects online. They needed help in getting an answer.
Freshman Katie Hetzel explained that she had recorded the voice from a vocabulary site for a school project and saw her classmates debating over its contents - one group thought that the voice was saying Laurel and the other which thought it was saying Yanny.
However, the voice recording became an Internet hit when her friend, Fernando Castro posted it to his Instagram as a poll, and later, it was posted on Reddit by her other friend, Roland Szabo. It didn't take it long enough to appear on Twitter and before they knew it, EVERYONE was talking about it. Right from Piers Morgan to Stephen King.
And now to answer what you really heard. Well, brace yourself, the real answer is - LAUREL! So, way to go team Laurel, you won. However, this game does not have any winners or losers and it is only because there is science behind this. The answer or the name you hear lies in the frequency of the sound that people hear. The higher frequency sounds make the listener hear "Yanny" while the lower frequency sounds like "Laurel."
For instance, a child who is 9 years old will probably hear the word 'Yanny', while someone who is older might hear the word 'Laurel'. One could say it is the same case of blue or the gold dress which people found difficult to wrap their heads around. If you are still looking for an answer to that one then here it is - the dress is really royal blue and black. There, problem solved.