A four-second video posted by Twitter user Cloe Feldman features nothing but a voice speaking — but it’s driven the Internet to a level of hysteria we haven’t seen since “the dress” in 2015. This voice is either saying the word “laurel” or “yanny” — and no one can agree which it is.
The most general reason for this seems to simply be that we all have individual brains, ears and audio playback systems — it’s a complex combination of frequencies that separates the two words, with a lot of variability involved.
Listen for yourself below:
What do you hear?! Yanny or Laurel pic.twitter.com/jvHhCbMc8I
— Cloe Feldman (@CloeCouture) May 15, 2018
Armchair audiologists have already stepped up to explain this discrepancy, including this pitch-shifting explanation, which significantly thickens the plot.
Ok, so if you pitch-shift it you can hear different things:
down 30%: https://t.co/F5WCUZQJlq
down 20%: https://t.co/CLhY5tvnC1
up 20%: https://t.co/zAc7HomuCS
up 30% https://t.co/JdNUILOvFW
up 40% https://t.co/8VTkjXo3L1 https://t.co/suSw6AmLtn— Steve Pomeroy (@xxv) May 15, 2018
We’ll see how Laurelgate reveals itself over the next few days, as the Internet is currently in such a brain-breaking stupor over this that few answers are to be found. For now, let us know whether it’s Laurel or Yanny in the comments below.