It occurs to me that there are people who weren’t on this website in 2012 and therefore never saw the magical gif that you can actually hear:
It’s been over five years and that still impresses the hell out of me.
wdym you can hear it?
Basically, it’s a form of synesthesia, movement-hearing. In this case, you expect to hear a thud, so you do. It’s estimated that 20% of people experience this type of synesthesia, as opposed to 2-4% for other kinds.
YO what the FUXK
The longer you watch it the more you get convinced that you can hear a distant thud and the air displace.
I heard the thud. I closed my eyes and the thud stopped. I opened my eyes and I heard the thud. My goodness but human brains are a mess.
[gif description:
A looping, deceptively well-animated manipulation of a photo of a line of transmission towers. One in the foreground and one in the background are swinging their telephone wires like a jump rope. Between them is a third transmission tower, unconnected to any wires, which ‘leaps’ in the air - animated so it’s four legs stretch outwards as it jumps up, expanding it’s lowest rungs in time to the ‘stretch’ of it’s legs, and including a stretch-and-squash to it’s upper tower as it arches body at the top of the jump and is mildly compressed as it lands. The animation effectively makes the jump look very full of effort and force. Additionally, the whole of the image briefly jitters every time the tower lands, adding to the feeling of force, as though the camera recording the motions is caught up in the seismic reverb of such a heavy object hitting the ground.
end description.]
THUD. THUD. THUD.
Beckoning Shai-Hulud, Maker of the deep desert. May His passing cleanse the world.
funny I “hear” boing boing boing, but I grew up on Warner Cartoons, and Carl Stalling, so I’m permanently damaged.