If You Can See X, You're Left-Brained

Submission 940

Part of a series on Engagement Bait. [View Related Entries]

Peché Africa > @pmcafrica Apparently, if you can see a tree, you're left-brained, and if you can see two people holding hands, you're right-brained 4:43 AM · Mar 14, 2024 6.5M Views

Rob L. White @therlwrites If you're right brained, you'll see a goat. If you're left brained, you'll see a eagle PromoteHorror

greg @greg16676935420 ... If you're right-brained, you'll see a rabbit. If you're left-brained, you'll see a fish. 2:17 PM Sep 8, 2024 493K Views

Out of Context Human Race @NoContextHumans If you're right-brained, you'll see a fish. If you're left-brained, you'll see a mermaid. 3:30 PM - Aug 15, 2024 22M Views

greg @greg16676935420 If you're right-brained, you'll see a horse. If you're left-brained, you'll see a gorilla. 5:23 PM - Jul 30, 2024 - 2M Views EXIT 67

Gavin Thomas • @gavinthomas2015 Apr 5, 2023 Apparently, if you can see two people hugging, you're left-brained, and if you can see a dinosaur, you're right-brained. What do you see in the mountain? 14K 11K 7.5K ili 79M I'm a little bit high. . HelenHighly @Helen_Highly Apr 6, 2023 Says who? Seriously, what's your source for this? I see neither, and it seems no one else does either. 10 271 247 383K Gavin Thomas @gavinthomas2015 There is no source. After 14 years of using Twitter, I've learned that if you ask a question with a blatantly obvious answer, people are extremely quick to respond. The purpose of this tweet was simply to create engagement and gain a few new followers. I know it looks like a dog. 11:52 AM Apr 6, 2023 422.9K Views

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About

If You Can See X, You're Left-Brained refers to a type of engagement bait on social media that involves posting a pareidolic image in which one can easily recognize a definite thing and pairing it with a caption that offers a choice between two completely different things that cannot be recognized. The engagement bait format has been used on X / Twitter since early 2022.

Origin

The concept of "right-brained" and "left-brained" people is considered a myth that oversimplifies the tendency of some neural functions to be specialized to one side of the brain or the other.^[1] In popular culture, being a "left-brained" individual has been associated with a predisposition to creative tasks, while being "right-brained" has been linked to analytical capabilities.

On January 8th, 2022, X^[2] / Twitter user @grimmyyyyyyy made an engagement bait post exploiting the concept, posting a pareidolic picture resembling a yellow bird. The caption of the post, however, insisted that right-brained people would see a dog, while left-brained people would recognize a giraffe in the image. The post (shown below) garnered over 6,400 reposts and 860 likes in two years.

Nick Grimstead • 1M @grimmyyyyyy If you're right brained, you'll see a dog. If you're left brained, you'll see a giraffe... 3:19 AM Jan 8, 2022 •

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The bait format first went viral in April 2023, after X^[3] user @gavinthomas2015 posted a fake image of a dog-shaped mountain on April 5th that insisted that people would see either two people hugging or a dinosaur in it. The post (shown below) received over 79.3 million views, 11,000 quote tweets and reposts and 7,500 likes in one year, with @gavinthomas2015 admitting to engagement baiting in a separate post.^[4]

Gavin Thomas @gavinthomas2015 Apparently, if you can see two people hugging, you're left- brained, and if you can see a dinosaur, you're right- brained. What do you see in the mountain? 12:20 PM Apr 5, 2023 79.3M Views

In 2023 and 2024, @gavinthomas2015 and other users on X / Twitter made similar posts based on real and fake, including AI-generated, pareidolic images.

Notably, on March 14th, 2024, X^[5] user @pmcaftica posted an image of a wooden plank with a fiber pattern resembling an ostrich, which went viral through quote posts. For example, a March 14th post by X^[6] user @richhimiekhan (shown below) garnered over 9.5 million views, 11,000 reposts and 165,000 likes in six months.