Have you ever experienced going on the internet or social media and discovering a fact that was so wild to you, you immediately had to fact-check it before you could move on with your day?
Well, that's inevitably how some TikTokers were feeling after watching a recent video created by a young woman whose husband is colorblind.
Because there are so many filters available on TikTok now, including filters to see how our beloved cats and dogs see the world, Tess of @tessromie created a TikTok video using a filter that she believed would be the closest match to her boyfriend's experience.
The video appeared in a gray and muted yellow tone, but when the TikToker turned toward her husband, his shirt was a radiant blue.
It's been a trending subject on TikTok lately for pet owners to use cat and dog filters to pick out their pets' Christmas gifts, so they could get their pet a toy that was the most vibrant to them possible.
And it seems the same may also be true for humans, who are purchasing clothes and other items based on what is the most visually appealing and vibrant to them.
She turned to him to let him see the video, and he confirmed that "nothing looked different."
The woman next to her was less than stealth about her feelings as she said:
"Eww! So we all look like ghosts to you?"
But the wild thing about the video wasn't even the video itself, but how it left other people feeling. Like the husband, many viewers couldn't see anything "wrong" or "different" from the video than their usual day-to-day experiences, so much so that they thought they were being pranked.
It became clear to them that they might need to have an evaluation of their own done to see if they, too, might have some level of colorblindness, which may have been impacting their visual experience without them even knowing.
You can watch the video here:
Some were heartbroken for the TikToker's husband, knowing that this is how he sees the world.
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But others were left uncomfortable when they realized they might be seeing the world "wrong."
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It's shocking how much we can learn from the internet and how much social media can reality-check us.
Of course, no one should self-diagnose themselves based on one filtered video alone, but maybe an important conversation will happen for that viewer now that wouldn't have happened otherwise.
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