The Three Main Reasons that the Dress Went Viral

There have been many articles recently about why the infamous dress went viral. Many authors compare the phenomenon to other viral episodes, and discuss a so-called "equation of virality" (which, in most equations, includes a key component of luck). Some argue that virality, or making something go viral online, is completely random and based on luck. Others, on the other hand, have put their careers on the line in the pursuit of making content go viral (see Viral Gains). In this instance, however, it was certainly more than luck that turned #thedress into the viral image that took the Internet by storm this past week.

There are three core reasons that this very simple tumblr post turned into a national sensation. The dress asked us, in a unique way, the basic question that we all struggle to understand each and every day, "how can someone view something so differently than myself?" With that in mind, these three key factors led the dress to occupy the minds of a nation.

The dress had to be shared with someone else

Without sharing the picture of the dress with another human being, either through text, online, or in person, there was no way to ask that person what they thought the color of the dress was. In this way, the dress was perfectly positioned for virality; if you did not share the image in some way, you could not receive either confirmation or contradiction that the colors that you were seeing were "accurate."

The dress created polarized communities 

A core component of the dress' success in latching onto people's psyche was the image's creation of two opposing camps: those who saw the image as blue and black, and the people who saw white and gold. Immediately after the image began to be shared, questions and hypotheses arose regarding the deeper meaning behind why you saw one image or the other. For example, one Twitter user, BradTheLadLong, swore that people who saw the image as blue and black had a more negative emotional state. 

Later, Twitter users, and even celebrities, started to chime in with their identified camps of #blueandblack and #whiteandgold. This appeal to the viewer's identity created a feeling of camaderie with people who saw the same colors, and adversaries between those who saw differing colors, leading to intense debates and continued conversations to find more comrades and disprove the adversaries. Large news websites, including Fox News and Buzzfeed, even started a national poll in order to monitor these groups in an attempt to "prove" which of the groups was right.

 The dress challenged us to understand another’s visual perception

At the heart of this phenomenon is the deeper human craving to understand others’ points of view. In this case, our lack of understanding was a literal one; those who saw blue and back simply could not understand why someone else saw white and gold, and vice versa. In our society, we teach kids to “walk in someone else’s shoes” in order to emphasize with them. There comes a time, however, when that child (or adult) realizes that he or she cannot take this advice literately; we cannot actually see the world from another's perspective because the self is too deeply rooted in our physical beings. The dress reminds us of this limitation; that we are truly blind to other’s physical, visual perceptions. It prompts us to consider just how closely our perceptions are tied to our physical reality. Without this underlying idea, the dress would not have been successful in capturing our minds, thoughts and imaginations.

If any one of these key factors were missing, the dress would have been just another passed over Tumblr post. The picture’s innate shareability, its natural creation of divided groups, and its appeal to our need to understand others led to the national spectacle that continues to amaze, spark intense debates, inspire blog posts like these, and, of course, be shared all over the Internet.