An optical illusion has been making the rounds on social media claiming to be a stress test, but the artist says the whole thing is fake.
It all started when the image was posted on Tumblr last week with a caption saying the illusion was created by a Japanese neurology professor Yamamoto. The instructions the post gave were: “If it’s not moving, or just moving a little, you are healthy and [have] slept well. If it’s moving slowly, you are a bit stressed or tired. If it’s moving continuously, you are over-stressed.”
The post quickly went viral and people were convinced they were stressed AF.
“Overstressed and have mental problems, sounds about right,” one person said.
Over stressed and have mental problems, sounds about right that https://t.co/c3TSIkF9SA
— Georgina Hughes (@GinaHughes__) November 20, 2018
People were even questioning if the test could get them out of work. “Do you think I’ll be able to show my boss this today in proof that I’m absolutely shattered,” another person said on Twitter.
https://twitter.com/DaniEmilyx/status/1064427634573172736
The artist of the illusion, Yurii Perepadia, is a 50-year-old graphic designer and illustrator from Ukraine. He told BuzzFeed News nothing the caption claims is true. The image will not determine your stress level at all. He took to Instagram yesterday to set the record straight.
“I drew this optical illusion in Adobe Illustrator on September 26, 2016. To create it, I used the effect of Akioshi Kitaoka. This is a white and black stroke on a colored background, this is a white and black stroke on a colored background, which sets in motion the focus of vision and it seems to a person that the details of the image are moving,” he wrote. “Japanese psychotherapist Yamamoto Hashima has nothing to do with this picture. Moreover, Yamamoto Hashima does not really exist.”
https://www.instagram.com/p/BqVQ1fjBF2E/
It seems we’ll have to find another way to convince people we’re stressed out. It looks like this is just another viral post on the internet to remind us not to believe everything we read.