5 pointless viral questions the Internet is obsessed with, from The Dress to Dog with Pants
Have you ever been so bored in life that just for the sake of passing some time, you asked a stupid question on social media and before you knew it, the scene blew out of proportion?
Have you found people who continously comment and take sides and passionately share perspectives even though you know that the question in question is outright stupid and like a waste of your time? However, people will still go ahead and give their two cents? Especially when it has nothing to do with them and even when they all know that you cannot really reach a conclusive answer?
Here's the thing: Though we do have enough resources to conduct a global physical verification and have an inherent curiosity to know the deepest of truths, we never will. At least not to find answers to these questions, coz how does it matter? Is anyone getting an award to answer this?
So, despite knowing that we really won't go to any lenghths to find the actual answer, we find it fun to argue for our own points, coz atleast here, we can be our own lawyers.
Here are some questions that drew intense debates:
1. THE DOG WITH THE PANTS
There was a question asked on Twitter and I want you to answer it before you read further: How will a dog wear his pants?
The results were this: about 89% said that a dog can wear pants on his two hind legs. But even those were bashed vehemently:
While logic says that a pair of trousers should cover up 'all' of your legs, somewhere you cannot imagine 4-legged trousers. While a dog wearing trousers on its two legs seems in sync with how humans wear trousers, dogs aren't humans, are they?
But that did not stop people from commenting their views:
Meanwhile, the dog waits to be asked for his personal opinion and tries to pass the day wearing overalls.
2. WHAT'S MORE? WHEELS OR DOORS?
Ryan Nixon experienced this explosion of comments on his Twitter query recently when he randomly tweeted and asked his followers about their thoughts on what was more available in our world: More Doors or More Wheels?
What do you think the answer is?
He probably got a shock and could not believe it when an unbelievable 2,23,347 people replied to his Twitter poll! 53.6% of them guessed that there were more wheels in the world. What was interesting was that one person tried to act like Sheldon Cooper and worked out a complex formula on a piece of paper to solve the question, while another argued that a wheel can be a door, but a door could not be a wheel. But that had a counter argument too.
Meanwhile someone spent far too long to create this:
Whereas, some argued over other's comments:
Also, people started sharing reminder photos to those who were busy analysing the count:
Well, I guess we will never know the answer to this question now.
3. THE ONLY DRESS THAT EVER MATTERED
In 2015, a photo of a dress went viral on social media and unified netizens across the world who argued on the colour of the dress. This began when a girl selected a wedding dress and when she shared a picture of the dress with her mother, there was a miscommunication about the colour of the dress. She then asked her friends and they still couldn't figure out what colour the wedding dress was. The girl then shared her dilemma on Tumblr.
This caught up on Facebook and other social media sites, and within days, the post went viral.
Why?
A certain set of people could see a black and blue coloured dress, while others could see the same dress was white and gold. There were so many blogging sites and thousands of comments where users were asking each other about what they saw and then marvelled at their answers.
(I remember doing this with my team, and though I saw it as a blue and black dress, my entire team thought that it was white and gold.)
Many social media and news outlets saw the dress post gaining millions of views and brands even came up with innovations based on the issue.
As per a survey by Buzzfeed, 67% saw it as a white and gold dress whereas the rest saw it as a black and blue dress. The story puzzled so many people at the same time that people saw the image on different browsers, different phones and then even asked eye experts. In 2017, there were even scientific studies published to tell why people saw different colours.
The family finally took the dress to the original store where they purchased it from, where it was established that they sold a blue and black dress.
But why did this phenomenon occur? Because of a scientific concept called Colour Constancy. How does this work? Watch this video:
4. WHEN IS CHERYL'S BIRTHDAY?
A math question that was asked to test the logic skills of students participating in the Singapore and Asian Schools Math Olympiad has stumped people around the world who just want to know when Cheryl's birthday is.
TV host Kenneth Kong posted a photo of the puzzle to his Facebook page which then viral across the globe. The hype was so much that media houses hired math tutors to solve the problem live. Here is what it looks like:
While some got it easily, while others broke a sweat but still got it:
Others didn't like it at all:
Even Shashi Tharoor tweeted about this and shared it with his followers and in case you want to work this out, here is the link.
5. WHAT'S THE COLOUR OF THE BAG?
Like any other excited shopper, Taylor Corso tweeted a picture of her new purchase in 2016, when she flaunted her 'Mystic Blue' Kate Spade handbag. She was completely unaware of the chaos that would follow once her tweet went viral.
She was soon complimented for her brilliant WHITE bag. And then the White vs Blue war began.
Later, another photo was posted which proved that the bag indeed was Mystic Blue.
Have you answered similar stupid, mind-bending online questions? Cue Farhan Akhtar asking aasmaan hai neela kyu, paani geela-geela kyu... (btw, the first question is answered here.)