Photo: Maridav / Shutterstock
What do you see?
By Merethe Najjar — Written on Jun 15, 2020
Do you think you know how dirty your mind is? Well, one simple optical illusion can let you in on whether your thoughts are squeaky clean or just downright filthy.
Though men may not actually be thinking of sex every seven seconds, they still do think about it pretty frequently — and certainly more often than women do. But those thoughts of sex can be fairly pervasive in everyone, and it can literally end up changing your view of the world.
For instance, in what should only be a simple, abstract drawing, you can end up picturing something a little more than the innocent image pictured on your screen, since your brain is trying its best to “matrix” the image and create something else for you to see.
So, what will it see? Well, that basically depends on you now, doesn’t it?
Optical illusions can be super fun, but they can also be pretty enlightening as well. Do your thoughts always border on the unclean, or is your mind as bright and shiny as the sun?
If your mind is literally clean enough to eat off of, then you’re only going to see something innocent in the picture that appears below:
But if you’re like basically every other adult in the world, you’re going to see exactly what you’re supposed to see: a naked woman’s birthday-suited torso. You might even be struggling to wrap yourself around the idea that it’s anything other than that.
According to the makers of this optical illusion, what you’re really supposed to be seeing — if your brain doesn’t spend all day tap-dancing in the gutter — are two stick figures grooving it up, mirroring the other’s movement.
The curves at the top are supposed to be the stick figures' arms, while the other lines make up the rest of their bodies. But this illusion still made people all over the internet pretty confused.
It is actually possible for your brain to witness both of the images simultaneously, according to psychologists, but one is definitely going to be more apparent to you than the other one is, and whichever image “sticks” out the most to you is going to vary, based on your thoughts and life experiences.
In other words, if you’ve got a raunchy brain, you’re going to spend far more time muddling through how people arrived at “two men dancing” when you’re very clearly looking at a pair of breasts.
So if you fight to find the dancers in this image, then maybe put down that adult magazine and pick up a children’s book for a while; that is, once you stop ogling this illusion.
Merethe Najjar is a professional writer, editor, and fiction author. Visit her website, MeretheWalther.com, or follow her on Twitter and Facebook.
Editor's Note: This article was originally posted in November 2016 and was updated with the latest information.