In our contemporary media landscape, the online world of social media is renowned for driving the growth of viral global sensations. Amongst the YouTube propaganda piece, “Kony” (2012), and also Metro commercial, “Dumb Ways to Die” (2012), one of the latest online phenomenon is the controversial “Blue and Black or White and Gold” photograph, otherwise dubbed on social media as, #TheDress.
The image originally posted by Tumblr blogger Swiked, gained world-wide attention on February 26th 2015 after the influential social news and entertainment website Buzzfeed re-posted the image to their site, it received an enormous 200 million views. The hype of the dress increased due to rapid and constant sharing of the image amongst social media users, particularly by popular celebrity figures such as Taylor Swift. Berger and Milkman (2012) state that, online virality is propelled by physiological stimulation. They consider that information eliciting vastly positive or negative emotional responses is more likely to go viral. The notion that viewers, including the famed, perceived the dress to be contrasting colours created huge publicity due to its inexplicability.
Group identities also formed based on the observation of different colours. Historically, the Internet predominantly functioned as a tool for collecting information. However through this constant process of globalisation and growth in accessibility, we are now able to utilise technology for our own social needs, such as building rapport. Identity and a feeling of belonging can now be perpetuated in not only physical interaction, but also online. Allsop, Basset and Hoskins (2007) report “59% of people report that they frequently share online content with others”. Whilst we know people must have shared the image privately, conversation around the dress can also be seen in public online behaviour such as playful witticism like tweets, hashtags and memes. This viral sensation has functioned to create a sense of belonging for users online. The self titled teams “Blue and Black” and “White and Gold” illustrate this notion.
The virality of the dress stems from two things. The first would be the innocent amusement people gained from it. It was an image that contrasted the horrific images of worldwide news that are reported daily. It formed group conversation and jokes, and not at the expense of a person. Secondly, the image did not discriminate or divide people based on personal characteristics; it merely split people on what colour they saw. Therefore, online users could form a connection with other world-wide users within the online community. It could be viewed from almost any country of the world and could be relatable to the people seeing the image.