Today we’re feasting our eyes on the best optical illusions of 2017. – Let’s talk about that. (bright upbeat music) Good Mythical Morning! – T-G-I-T everybody and oh what a T it will be. We’re gonna be diving face first into McDonald’s brand new dollar menu, hitting you with a brand new music video from Buddy System Season Two. And revealing which Mythical Beast artist has won my actual mustache from Buddy System. But first, we trick your brain. – That’s right, every year the people at illusionoftheyear.com take a second to stop whatever non-illusion related activities they’re engaged in and name the latest and greatest optical illusions from around the world. And we’re going to experience the top 10 together. – Mm-hmm, you got the first one, right? – Yeah Link, are you in the mood for a complementary after image? Look right at the guy with the sunglasses and stare right at his sunglasses for about ten seconds without leaving his sunglasses. – [Link] Okay, doing it. – [Rhett] I know he’s, it’s great to look at that guy. Watch what happens when it changes. – [Link] Staring at it. – [Rhett] It’ll change here in a second, okay. Now does it feel like everything turned gray around him? – Yeah, the whole thing went black and white. Now look away and look back, does it still look gray? That’s what you were looking at. – Oh, no. – It’s not gray at all. You see what happens there. – I see colors, but not as vibrant as before. – Yeah basically what happened is the cones the color cones in your eyes were just over stimulated and then when it changes back to like normal colors your brain tricked you into thinking it was gray. – Wow. – And I know this seems like a really happy image but this is actually just from Jimmy Buffet’s funeral and he’s not even dead yet. – [Link] Oh my gosh, they’re anticipating his death? – [Rhett] Right, that might be him down in the corner. – [Link] In the lower right hand corner. Staring, he’s staring at a Pringle. Okay I’ve got another runner up, because of course they rank these with the top ten and we’re gonna show you number one, we’ll eventually get to it, but this one I’m fond of. It’s called the shrink and swell illusion which I participate in every time I get in and out of a cold pool – Oh. (laughs) Thanks for that. – But in this version, there’s gonna be images of Sigmund Freud and Drew Barrymore’s grandfather, he was an actor. – That’s good to know. – And it’s gonna distort inside of a triangle, but what I want you to do is tell me what happens to the outer edges of the triangle as the images move up or down, okay? – Okay, the outer edges of the triangle. – Yeah, take a look. – Uh, they look like they’re going like this. – Right, of course, they’re not, they’re staying in the same place, but now as it’s going up and showing Mr. Barrymore. – That’s Drew’s Grandaddy? – Yeah, it looks like. – Looks like a fun guy. – It looks like. – Looks like Willy Wonka. – It looks like the borders are either funneling in or expanding out. – But what you’re telling me is that line is staying in exactly the same place the entire time. – That is exactly what is happening. – Because it’s an illusion. – Mm-hmm it is an illusion. The sloped edges are not moving, but appear to be moving inwards or outwards. I can’t tell you why, I could but it wouldn’t matter. It’s just cooler if you don’t know. – Why did they choose Sigmund Freud and Drew Barrymore’s granddad, that’s my question. – I don’t know. – Couldn’t put Rihanna on there, we’d all be happy. – That’s true I’m not gonna argue that. Give me another one, trick my mind. – Okay, Link, this is called the material inversion effect. – I love, I love it when material inverts. – Now I want you to look at this image, it just looks like a hunk of metal, right? Like molten metal. – [Link] Looks like Terminator’s poop. – [Rhett] Yeah, exactly. Now check this out, does it look like glass to you now? – [Link] It does. – [Rhett] It does? – [Link] It looks like glass with the face of a bullfrog in it. – Okay ignore the face of a bullfrog, but this is actually fascinating, ’cause the only thing that happened. – Can you flip it back? – The only thing that happened is this thing flipped upside down, now this is phenomenal. Okay, this is gonna take a second to wrap your brain around, but basically. – My brain, my brain. – This is a piece of glass. Now when you take a piece of glass and it’s a piece of glass that was taken and picture was taken outside and there’s a refractive thing that happens inside glass where the sky that’s on top, moves to the bottom to the inside of the glass and the grass moves to the top and if it was flipped, if it was metal, the sky would reflect from the top and the grass would reflect from the bottom. So basically without even thinking about it, your mind understands the refractive properties of glass and can perceive that something is glass or metal based on whether it’s upside down or right side up. – That’s right, I am that smart. – So it’s just something that happens subconsciously so when at image is completely inverted inside of glass, it’s something that you’ve just learned by just looking at glass. – Metal turns into glass and a bullfrog. – It might take you a second, just play that back. And we’ve got links to these as well. They do an even better job of kind of explaining that. – I thought you did a pretty great job. – Alright, thanks, Terminator. – I’ve got one called the mask induced filling out and you may be thinking. – That’s catchy. – Isn’t that what happened to Ben Affleck when he played Batman? – Oh. – And that’s true, but it’s also an optical illusion. For this one, keep your eyes focused on the cross in the middle and as the texture blinks in and out you should see the texture fill the entire screen, okay. You see that texture? – [Rhett] When it goes away I see the texture fill the whole screen and when the circle comes in, I only see white inside the circle. – But if we were to pause that circle, you would see that the texture is actually only inside of the circle. As you focus on the cross, your brain is filling in the missing information of your blind spots, which in this case are the areas of the periphery of the image. Also, if you stare at it long enough, I can steal your wallet. That’s mine. – No my wallet’s in the bathroom, I left it there, I just remembered. – It’s not there anymore. (laughs) Alright give me another one. – That is kind of fascinating. Um okay. – It’s kind of fascinating. – The windmills of your mind illusion, Link. Welcome to this. – Love windmills, you know we visited those windmills and sometimes I’ll just sit down, close my eyes, and think about those windmills. – Well you don’t need to close your eyes. – Outside of Amsterdam. – I’m gonna take you right back to Holland right now, Link. Look at this and let’s begin the video. Now you can see that these all look like they’re rotating in the same direction, but now all of a sudden it looks like some of them are rotating the opposite direction. – [Link] Yeah, there’s an inner circle that’s going. – [Rhett] Oh it’s going the, but it’s not of course, because we’re living in a simulation. Basically what’s happening here. – Different parts are starting to move different ways. – Yeah but it’s always moving clockwise the entire time. – No it’s no. – The whole thing is moving. – It isn’t. – It is. I know you don’t want to believe it, Link. – I don’t. – We are and this is the Matrix. – I’ve been to a windmill. – It’s always moving counter clockwise or clockwise, but basically what happening is there’s like changing the colors of some of them, and removing some between and basically your mind is trying to correct for itself because these objects are grouped together and it makes it look like it’s going counter clockwise, but it’s not, it’s not, and the robots will kill us all very soon. – Dang it, I don’t know what it is about this, but now I hate windmills. You’ve totally ruined them for me. – I’m sorry, that wasn’t my intention. – That was one of my favorite things about our trip was that big that big thing that would grind the stuff and make the paint. – Yeah I remember. – They made paint using a windmill. This one is called the partial disappearance illusion. I could try to explain this one, but the guy in the video that does the voiceover does a better job and plus he has a pretty sweet accent. So let’s just let him explain it. – [Narrator] The three objects have identical shape with a rooster on the bottom and a hen on top. – Mm-hmm, chicken things. – [Narrator] But in the mirrors. – I like the music, too. – [Narrator] The rooster disappears. – Check it out, where’s the rooster? – [Narrator] The upper half disappears. – Where’s the upper half? – [Narrator] Or the lower half disappears. – Where’s the lower half? See now you’ve got to prove it to me, Mr. With an accent, rotate that Susan. There you go, she’s not too lazy. Check it out, it’s like freaking, I don’t know some sort of chicken origami. Chicken-agami. – Are the roosters real? – The roosters and the hens, all of the chickens are two dimensional and the shapes are three dimensional and when you show them in the angled mirrors it tricks your brain in a way that I could only explain if I had that guy’s accent, but I do know for a fact that they filmed this in a Sears dressing room. – [Rhett] Yeah they did, well a miniature one. – It’s like get every angle. That guy is a giant. – The Lego Sears dressing room. – He is a giant. – Okay Link, I want to show you Tilla at the beach. – Do it. – I know you’re interested in that. Check this out. Little girl running up to this giant wooden sculpture that spells her name, or is it actually giant? Maybe she’s a giant. – She seems to be a giant all of a sudden. – You see what’s happening? – Okay so this is, I’ve seen this in a number of like art pieces where it’s all about where you place the camera to, wow she runs slow. – Yeah it’s the worst baywatch ad ever. – So basically that’s just somebody figured out how to cure boredom at the beach. – Honestly I don’t know how this got so close to being in the top ten. It is in the top ten, but it’s close to the winner, ’cause if you can’t figure out how that was done, you just need help. – Right, camera placement. – But it is very cool video. It’s a very cool video, not much of an illusion. – I’ve seen some really cool art where they take random objects and it just looks like a pile of junk and then if you get in a certain spot or if you shine a light. – I’ve seen that too Link, I go on the internet. – You shine a light and then it makes art on the wall. – It’s called a shadow. – A shadow. – Yes. – You know, wall shadow. – Shadow art. – Alright I got another one for you. This one is called the Dynamic Müller-Lyer illusion. Alright, this is number three guys. We are to the top three now. So take a look at this. Of course these lines between the red dots are the exact same length. But when you start moving those arrow heads it gives it a stretching and shrinking effect. – Hmm. – Yeah. – That’s exciting to watch. – I could watch this forever. I’m not gonna show it to you forever, but if you want to keep watching it, you just need to go to Prince’s tombstone, this is what’s on it, it’s moving. – It’s a laser show? – He’s really into symbols. – His tombstone has a laser show? Okay that is pretty cool, now here is the actual runner up. – This is the number two, number two? – This is sky blue cafe wall illusion. That doesn’t excite you, I don’t know what will. Okay, now check this out Link. Now do you think that those light blue lines are slanted or parallel? I think you probably know the answer, because they look slanted, which probably means they’re parallel in this weird universe that we live in. – Hold on, hold on, you’re talking about the ones going across the screen like this? – Yeah. – The big light blue bands? – The light blue ones, the baby blue ones from left to right, horizontal lines, Link. – [Link] No they’re actually. – [Rhett] They are parallel. – No they’re not. – Show them, now remove the detail, make it fuzzy. – And they’re actually curving a little bit. – [Rhett] When you remove the detail, you see that is exactly what you were looking at. – What the crud? – You see they are completely parallel, but because of the alternating colors of those little shapes on the sides of the lines it actually makes your mind think that they’re not parallel. This one made me think I was going crazy. Definitely made me think I was going crazy. Can you believe that? Look it just looks like there’s no way that is parallel and it’s a perfect grid. The whole thing is a perfect grid. And you can go to the sky blue cafe anytime in your mind. – Speaking of mind, mine is pretty blown right now. – Yeah this one’s very, very good. – I would like to have a blanket like that. – Could probably be arranged. – If you squint your eyes and make a blanket blurry then it becomes very ordered. It would make me feel like I have control over my life, which is constantly slipping away. – Also an illusion. – Okay and now we come to the number one illusion of 2017. Are you ready for shape for motion only? – Wow they spent a lot of time on that one. – It is an optical illusion that shows shapes from motion only. – I don’t even understand what that means. – Well if you were to pause any of these videos that I’m about to show you, you wouldn’t see any image within it at all its just static, but when the static starts moving in a certain way you can see objects. I know it’s number one, I don’t want to build it up too much, just take it in for what it’s worth. What do you see? – [Rhett] Oh I see shape for motion only. – But what, what do you see specifically? – I saw rabbits, I saw rabbits. – You saw rabbits and then when they pause it, there’s nothing, see. Spatial rabbits look like rabbits, temporal rabbits also look like rabbits, but again if you pause that thing, you see nothing but static. And people in the comments below this one, because it is the winner are being kind of hard on it. – I’m gonna be a little hard on it. – It’s not the greatest ever – I don’t like rabbits. – You know I love static-y rabbits, but I don’t know, the best of 2017? I’m sorry to let you guys down, but this is what they chose as the number one. Maybe you’re really into rabbits and this is your thing. – That’s not better than the sky blue cafe. – No it’s not. – And the blankets that we’re gonna begin selling. – It just reminds me of trying to watch skinemax as a child. But that is it guys, that is all of them. – Those are the best illusions, now stick around for a brand new music video from Buddy System where we put Link’s tongue to the test in ways he never imagined. – [Link] Grab this new G double M crew neck sweatshirt, available at mythical.store for all your autumn stroll needs.