If you don’t know what dress I am talking about you must not be on any social media and I am even more grateful you found me and are reading this!
This 
is the dress that launched 1,000+ Facebook and Twitter posts, as well as offline discussion and mention on the nightly news.
To be up front about it, I am part of #teamgoldandwhite, but people I love dearly see the blue and black like some of you. I still love them. ;). I am very fascinated by the ideas that have been put forth attempting to explain the phenomenon involved and I welcome anyone to post links to valiant efforts in the comments section.
What I find even more fascinating is what the interactions over this issue are revealing about us as individuals and communities. Here are 10 things I have observed.
1) Some people really need things to be black OR white. They are not comfortable in the realm of gray.
As someone who prefers all of the in between, it might be better to say I love the full spectral range of color. It really is like some people are looking at gray scale and others are working in a whole different color palette.
This first point is one of the most fundamental differences I was aware of in all of this – people simply see the world, and interact with it – differently. Rarely does anything create such an instantly polarizing reaction, but this is at the heart of it all!
It is okay for those who are in a black and white world to hold to their perception. It is also okay for those of us who see all the colors to be very comfortable mixing and matching! It doesn’t mean we have no values or want to spin into anarchy. It just means we might wear sunglasses you don’t understand 
and, occasionally, might see a picture on the internet that we really see differently than you.
I think one reason this particular issue was so upsetting to some is that most of the black and white thinkers that I know have at least come to terms and/or learned to live with the fact that others don’t agree with them on everything. They might believe in their soul the other person is wrong (unless they disagree on the issue of whether or not we have a soul, in which case please feel free to correct my efforts as needed in order to interact with my proposed idea), but they have come to terms with the reality that other people are sometimes wrong and at some point will let it go.
For example, they may accept that you loved the movie Dumb and Dumber by simply determining you must be the dumbest and they will have to endure you. (Okay, I admit it, I hated that movie – and Napoleon Dynamite – and even though I really do sing with all the colors of the wind I also get judgey about people liking them. I am human.)
Unlike movies or music or tv shows – things we know people hold varied opinions on – this is the very reality of vision and what we literally see before our eyes. We might disagree on the value of Napoleon Dynamite (it really is a very bad movie – I am sorry – it just was 😉 ) we all can agree on what was actually in the movie! With this dress, we found ourselves looking at the exact same screen, at the exact same picture, and disagreeing on the colors we saw. And not just in a “Is that turquoise or teal?” way – a disagreement my dear friend and I spent literally HOURS over, including many web image searches and even some paint swatches at a later date :). This is black and blue verses white and gold!
Is it really possible that the diversity in people impacts more of how we experience and interact with our world than we ever realized?
2) Some people need to be right and cannot accept two separate and diverse ‘rights.’
One of my favorite little cartoons is a stick figure on a computer. Another stick figure asks if they will be coming to bed anytime soon and they respond, “I can’t, someone on the internet is wrong.”
Before we wrestle with too much of the metaphysical here, let’s just admit that everyone wants to be right – but some have a deep need to be right. I am fine entering that realm when the issue is a factual thing. When it isn’t, I am fine letting your world be beautiful with your neon (or whatever color you want to argue it is)! 5 children broke me of that. Now the main thing I resist is someone’s insistence that not only are they right, but that makes me wrong. Because, really, at the end of the day you can only see the dress the way you see the dress. To insist otherwise is to dismiss the other person’s equally real experience.
I see this in a lot of posts and memes insisting that things ‘simply are’ … whatever the issue is. One recently insisted everyone’s life is what it is because of nothing but the choices you have made. Or, put another way, if your life sucks it’s your fault. At one level I don’t disagree, but more in the sense that an empowered person will be able to perceive more choices and make healthier choices and can change their life from anything to something better! Where I disagree is with the assumption that everyone is empowered enough to even recognize that they can make choices that could change their life, or that a different life is even possible.
Empowered people can sit and talk all day about what unempowered people are doing wrong, but unless they work to actually empower them, it’s that proverbial clanging gong or banging brass.
But back to this dress, you can’t empower someone to see what they cannot see. And, honestly, we wouldn’t agree on which group needs to be empowered here. There really is no factual right or wrong to the question, “What colors do you see when you look at this dress?”
Of course, to be fair, the question was generally posed as, “What color is this dress?” Some people seemed to take this as presenting a question that was factually based. I saw it as a phrasing intended to set the person answering up for assuming there would be no disagreement – or at least a disagreement on nuance and saturation rather than one of this magnitude.
3) Some people perceive any disagreement as conflict.
I saw several posts to the effect of ‘can’t we all just get along?’ And others insisting it was ugly in any color. However they attempted to agree with everyone and get everyone to play nice, some people were really stressed just knowing everyone on social media was disagreeing about something.
It’s not that I enjoy conflict, it’s more that I don’t perceive every difference of opinion as conflict. In reality we disagree all the time about things. Some people like a movie, others don’t. In a sense, every time you don’t buy a shirt because you don’t like it or would never wear it you are disagreeing with those who bought it.
Disagreement can be healthy and, when handled maturely, an opportunity to grow and learn more about the other people in our lives. It is the diversity that gives life flavor! It can also be exhausting to try and avoid/prevent/stop conflict because …
4) Some people approach every disagreement as conflict.
While this goes back to the people who always have to be right, this is another level. Some people feel compelled to correct people in a way that is more aggressive and off putting.
I recently went through multiple courses on alcohol laws and policies (for multiple venues where I work with a Booster Club, not because I failed any 😉 ) and they were consistently clear that when confronted with someone too intoxicated to serve, the employee is expected to diffuse, not escalate, the situation. You never tell the person, “You’re drunk.” Rather, you offer alternatives and, when necessary, state your unwillingness to serve them using I statements that are factual and morally neutral.
This means instead of saying, “Listen Dude, you are drunk and you need to go somewhere and sober up,” it would be better to say something to the effect of, “Would you prefer some food or water? No? Okay, I will not be able to serve you more alcohol. I can get you something else, though.” I loved how it was explained for two reasons – first, I absolutely hate talking to anyone who escalates a situation and, second, when I encounter them I have always thought it best to handle them as I would a drunk person!
I don’t have to buy into someone else’s perception or accept their beliefs just because they demand I do. I also don’t have to make a big deal about not doing so in order to make sure they know I am not. People who approach every disagreement as conflict engage in debate instead of dialogue, and see the issue in terms of winners and losers. It is ok to hold your position without needing to annihilate your opponent’s. It is even okay to not see them as an opponent and just consider them a person with a different idea.
5) Some people are really squicked out by the very fact that the human brain is capable of seeing something two distinctly different ways.
There were some of my friends who were weirded out that people were seeing the dress so differently. Others got weirded out when they began to see it the other way! It can be very disconcerting to some to be confronted by two separate yet simultaneous realities. I have some friends who ended the day very unsettled and saying they would not be able to go to sleep because of this.
6) Some people believe that the ‘factual reality’ of the dress, as seen on Amazon actually matters to the discussion.
These are the people who would post links and declare the matter settled as though we were all picking out a prom dress and just grabbed the wrong swatches. It seemed logical that once presented with the ‘actual’ dress, all of our perceptions should just get on board and correct our crazy brains. Others of us are very comfortable with acknowledging the reality of the dress and the reality ‘as we perceive it’ of the picture of the dress. Yes, I see the Amazon ad as black and blue. No, that does not change the reality that I see the photo of the dress as white and gold.
7) Some people care a lot more about these kinds of issues than ones that truly matter.
I say this with no judgement because, honestly I have no idea why some people threw themselves into this issue. If it was less stressful than, say, the reality of a dying loved one, then I don’t blame you at all! If you find this kind of thing to be a fun way to blow off steam then, as long as you didn’t hurt anyone, whatever floats your boat.
I do pause with my friends who stop at these moments and ask what happened yesterday that the media wanted us to not notice. There is a very real possibility that we thought we were debating the colors of a dress and we were actually caught up in a wag the dog. Anytime something like this makes the nightly news I admit I wonder what headline they didn’t want us to see.
8) Some people will jump in with ‘answers’ and ‘facts’ whether they have any clue what they are talking about or not.
I would say I can’t believe the number of ridiculous claims circulated yesterday, but I am not new to the Internet and very little surprises me anymore. Some seemed plausible, some ludicrous. Some admitted they were guessing, others claimed to be the original poster. Some were trying to be helpful, others were just trolls. Another reminder to use skepticism with what you read on the Internet.
9) Some people will get louder as they try to persuade the other ‘side.’
This is like yelling at people from other countries who don’t speak your language–utterly unhelpful at either communicating the information or teaching them your language. I may have told one friend that it didn’t matter how emphatically she insisted it was blue and black, that wasn’t going to make me see it that way. (Okay, I *did* say that. I publicly apologize. I should have been kinder – and this interaction is what started me thinking on these things instead of the actual dress so thank you!)
And 10) Some people will let this disagreement ruin their relationships and some won’t. You get to decide which you are.
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