This Toy Train Track is the New #TheDress (and It’s Freaking the Internet Out)

The Dress incident of 2015 has so seeped into the cultural psyche that the phrase has now become shorthand for any baffling Internet phenomenon…

And so behold the latest thing that’s freaking the Internet (and us) out right now.

This video posted by BBC journalist, Mark Blank-Settle, which has been liked and retweeted thousands of times, shows his toddler’s train tracks. The two pieces placed one above the other do not look the same size, however watch what happens when he puts one on top of the other…

My toddler’s train track is freaking me out right now. What is going on here?! pic.twitter.com/9o8bVWF5KO

— marc blank-settle (@MarcSettle) April 6, 2016

Twitter-users were understandably unnerved by the video:

@MarcSettle If you do this too often you’ll increase the mass of the Earth to the point where we’re sucked into a black hole.

— Stefan Edward Jones (@StefanEJones) April 6, 2016

@MarcSettle @ericdeking just proves that ikea is basically the devil’s work

— Gordon Murphy (@Lordmuca) April 6, 2016

Thanks to twitter, the journalist got to the bottom of the strange illusion:

Apparently this has a name – the “Jastrow illusion” https://t.co/3IAu835wiR HT @Shadeewolf

— marc blank-settle (@MarcSettle) April 6, 2016

The Jastrow illusion occurs because our eye is comparing the short edge of the upper object to the long side of the lower one causing the lower one to appear longer.

Freaky…