First we had The Dress. Then the internet discovered “laurel” vs “yanny”. And of course, who could forget “brainstorm” vs “green needle”. Now, I present to you the latest conundrum that has divided TikTok: a scene from Toy Story 3
Okay, you're not crazy. If you can hear high freqs, you probably hear "yanny", but you *might* hear "laurel". If you can't hear high freqs, you probably hear laurel. Here's what it sounds like without high/low freqs. RT so we can avoid the whole dress situation. #yanny#laurelpic.twitter.com/RN71WGyHwe
between Ken and Barbie.
When you watch the following scene, where Barbie ties Ken up and destroys his shorts (wow, I did not expect that to sound so bad), what do you hear? Check out the clip below:
According to one TikToker, when Ken cries out “Oh Barbie!” in the clip, it sounds a lot like “Oh fuck!”.
They shared the video online with their observation, and of course, it popped the fuck off. At the time of writing their Tok has more than 30 million views and 63,000 comments.
And so, the latest debate to polarise netizens was born.
Obviously, Ken says “Oh Barbie!”. This is a Disney movie for children so there’s no dispute on the factual nature of that claim. When I first listened to the clip, I heard Barbie’s name just as I always have. But upon the second listen, I could totally hear the swear. And it seems a lot of others could hear it, too.
“There’s no way he says ‘oh Barbie’,” one person commented, which received 86, 800 likes.
Others noted they can switch between which phrase they hear if they concentrate hard enough.
So, WTF is going on?
Well if you remember the yanny/laurel debate, which I so clearly do because I studied it in a psychology course at university, it all comes down to some devious trickery. Okay, maybe not devious, but it’s definitely an illusion of sorts.
With yanny/laurel, the person whose voice was behind the audio confirmed they were saying “laurel”, but the audio recording was low quality and ambiguous enough that people heard different things.
People whose ears pick up lower frequencies heard “laurel” because of the shape of the sound wave. Those who heard “yanny” were more sensitive to higher frequencies.
The associate department head of speech, language, and hearing sciences at Arizona State University told this whole debate was born out of the audio’s poor quality.
“Typically, if you have a high-quality recording and you’re listening on a good device of some sort, you’re not ever going to be confused by those,” Story said.
Which brings me to my theory behind this viral scene.
The following clip is of the same scene, but it seems people really struggle to hear anything other than “Oh Barbie!” in it. It certainly does not sound like Ken is swearing.
My theory here is that the audio quality is much better, so there’s no ambiguity or confusion. The first video, however, is recorded on a phone of a TV screen from several metres away, with a bit of an echo. It’s not clear audio, so there’s room for ambiguity.
If we go by Professor Story’s logic, there’s a good chance that’s why some people can hear “Oh fuck!” in the original TikTok but not in this one. And as this Twitter user points out, if people turn the volume really low, only then can they trick themselves into hearing “Oh fuck!”.
So there ya have it folks. It’s not The Dress all over again. Thank God, because I don’t think I could cope with that kind of societal disruption. I choose peace!
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