This ‘Ames illusion’ is already mind-boggling enough, but wait until the pen turns up

Poke Staff. Updated November 25th, 2022

We’ve been trying to get our head round this for so long our brain has started to hurt. So now it’s your turn.

It’s something called the ‘Ames illusion’ which has just gone viral on Reddit for reasons which will become apparent.

And if your brain’s spinning at the beginning, wait until the pen turns up.

What did we just watch? Answers on a postcard, please.

‘The pen. It broke me.’
Roto-Wan

‘The pen part nearly gave me a seizure.’
robin_yoursoul

‘It kept breaking physics and there was nothing I could do to stop it.’
jld2k6

‘My brain’s not working.’
LoonaticLaskdorp

‘Did you turn it off then on again?’
MacRubys

‘This makes me more uncomfortable than I needed to feel this morning. Now all I can think about is what else is my brain tricking me into? Is it all just a big optical illusion that my puny brain can’t process?’
beingrudewonthelp

‘Oh plenty of things. Like for example sometimes the brain stops registering what you’re seeing for a very short time, making you practically blind, but then so quickly reconstructs what probably happened during that time, actively retconning what you experienced, that you don’t even notice that you went blind.

‘That’s why sometimes you think a second is WAY longer than normal when watching the clock. The brain stopped taking in visual information but didn’t reconstruct it in a way that makes the seconds hand keep going.’
sfPanzer

Source Reddit u/1aibohphobia1