Optical Illusion Goes Viral, Causes A Crisp Picture To Show Up On A Blank Wall

It doesn’t take much for an optical illusion to go viral. They are, by nature, some of the most shareable phenomenons on the Internet because they blow people away by turning the mundane into the fascinating.

This particular illusion has been around for years. It falls into the ‘afterimage’ subcategory of optical illusions which indicates that an image will continue to appear after a person stops looking at the original image.

What really makes this one mind-blowing, however, is that it takes on a whole new life after 30 seconds.

The instructions are simple, stare directly at the red dot on this negative image for 30 seconds. Afterward, turn to a blank wall and blink your eyes rapidly. Without spoiling it, you should see an entirely new image.

Negative afterimages are caused when the eye's photoreceptors adapt to overstimulation and lose sensitivity.

Mind = Blown. It’s not that you see the figure from the picture on the wall, it’s that you see the reverse image and it actually looks more like a photograph than the original Afterimage optical illusion.

After being tweeted above by ‘Massimo’, this took off on Twitter and went viral.

One person replied “This is wild” and another added “Witchcraft.” Someone asked if the image is supposed to be moving side to side as they blink which I believe it’s not supposed to. However, one person also replied “She floated upwards when I did it” so there are a lot of people seeing movement as they blink.

Basically, this optical illusion is meant to look like this…

OMG, my wall now has nice photo. pic.twitter.com/aMuh8PQFLX

— Pankaj Singh (@Pankaj_Si9gh) May 5, 2023

If you didn’t see a full-color portrait on the wall after staring at the red dot for 30 seconds then go back and give it another try because it really is wild.