By Kyra-lin Hom

There are internet memes and then there are downright phenomenons. And for whatever reason, over the last two weeks a single photo of a dress, a color optical illusion has taken over the internet. You are very likely familiar with this story. If not, I can sum it up really quickly for you: is it white with gold lace or is blue with black lace? Let the fighting begin.

To catch a glimpse of this 'controversial' photo just google search for “white and gold or blue and black.” What you'll find is an awkward photo of an ambiguously colored dress. What you can see of the background is blurry and mostly distorted with glare.

This meme – “a humorous image, video, piece of text, etc. that is copied (often with slight variations) and spread rapidly by Internet users” – is beautiful in its simplicity: white and gold or blue and black, pick a side, defend with fervor. Yes, it's kind of dumb, silly and altogether unimportant, but that's why it has flourished so well. It's fun and easy, the kind of debate people enjoy taking way too seriously.

Qualtrics.com even ran a tongue-in-cheek story about it on Forbes.com, testing whether or not a person's demographics had any correlation with how they saw the dress. The study did find some entertaining results. For example, Independents were 36% more likely than Republicans and 27% more likely than Democrats to stay staunchly undecided on the matter – par for the course. Women were slightly more likely than men to see white and gold, and vice versa. People dissatisfied with the economy were 60% more likely to see white and gold, while people who were satisfied were 70% more likely to see blue and black. And vivid dreamers were also more likely to see the gold. Read into all of that however you will.

So what is the actual answer and why has it been so hotly debated? The manufacturer, Roman Originals, has confirmed that the dress is theirs and blue with black lace (*gasp*). I will irrationally deny this until the end of time. Lots of explanations have delved into the anatomy of your eyeballs, but there is a much simpler way to explain this – it's all cones and rods anyway – and that is how you see shadows.

See because the color of natural light changes throughout the day (pinkish-red to blueish-white to reddish-purple), our brains have adapted to automatically adjust what we see in lieu of the background colors. That's why our perception of color doesn't radically change throughout the day. But that also means our eyes can play tricks on us, and that's how color optical illusions (like the dress photo) work.

If you're sensitive to the blue lighting in the background of the photo, you perceive the photo to be poorly lit. Your brain compensates for the 'blue lighting' and thus you see a white and gold dress. If you're less sensitive to the blue hues in the background, you (whether intentionally or not) perceive the photo to be brightly lit. Thus your brain compensates, darkens the image and you see a blue and black dress.

If you don't believe me after you've seen the photo, compare the background shadows and highlights to how you see the dress. The photo actually doesn't make sense if the dress is white and gold. But as I've already stated, I still see white and gold. At this point, even against a white background, I still see a heavily blue-tinted white and gold dress. I'm doomed.

It just goes to show that you can't always trust you senses. Sometimes your thinking cap needs to get involved too.