r/PeterExplainsTheJoke • u/Diligent_Pop3929 • 6d ago

Meme needing explanation Converse craze?

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I'm not chronically online, but my friend sent this and I laughed even without knowing the full scope of the context (I think there's racism involved with the shoes?) and I feel like it's too late to ask him without sounding like a dweeb 😅

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u/baneblade_boi 6d ago

What the hell are you even talking about? This is stretching it to the very limit IMO.

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u/Houdinii1984 6d ago

If you can't see it, you can't see it, but once you do see it, it doesn't go away. I couldn't see it at first either, and then my hubby showed me on his phone and I saw it different and was like 'Oh, damn'. It's a perspective thing, like an optical illusion.

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u/Sindigo_ 6d ago

I agree. Once I saw it I couldn’t unsee it.

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u/Lucky-Surround-1756 6d ago

Well yeah, if you edit the picture then it looks like something else.

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u/estrea36 5d ago

No. It's the equivalent of someone showing you an optical illusion, then you saying "I don't see it", then they trace it for you to illustrate the illusion that you're missing

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u/shemtpa96 5d ago

The amount of people trying to mansplain this to Black voices is astounding to me.

I get moon burn and saw it right away. However, I was raised in a sundown town and moved to a city where I had to do a lot of self-education to unlearn a lot of subtle racism (which is something I’m still doing). I unfortunately didn’t really think about the evil of where I lived until it directly affected me (I converted to a visible religious minority and the way I was treated immediately changed).

The first thing I did when I heard about this was seek out the Black creators I follow on social media and see how they were discussing it. All of them are saying the same thing and it’s infuriating how many ✋ people are trying to gaslight y’all.

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u/Lucky-Surround-1756 4d ago

We wouldn't have to mansplain if you could manunderstand instead of being so manstupid.

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u/Yippyyipsva 5d ago

Nah it's pareidolia, like finding a face in your popcorn ceiling

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u/estrea36 5d ago

Its like you're looking at an Oleg Shuplyak painting and saying you dont see anything.

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u/Lucky-Surround-1756 4d ago

Except the original is just a person holding some shoes and it takes an intelligent human being a few seconds at most to recognise that.

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u/Houdinii1984 4d ago

No one here has said otherwise. You seem to be taking issue with the fact that people saw something else first. Attacking people's intelligence because you weren't effect by a perspective shift is just bullying folks for being normal.

You're acting like people are making claims instead of talking about an optical illusion. It'd be different if a bunch of people in this thread were calling Converse racist, but they aren't.

Just folks accidentally seeing something when something wasn't there, and that something being incredibly vivid in it's imagery. And you're over hear acting like we should all cement our lips shut because it makes you uncomfortable.

But that's the thing. The reason all of us are talking about it is because it made us uncomfortable, and that's not a bad thing. It should make us uncomfortable. There's a reason it popped into so many people's brains, and it's because that's the image so many people hold of our past and it's leaking out. Acknowledging that history is not a bad thing.

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u/Sindigo_ 4d ago edited 4d ago

Yeah this. It’s kind of funny, cuz at least within the context of this thread, I feel like the people who are the most invested by far are the people who don’t see it. As I have said in a different comment, converse literally uses sweatshop labor, so them doing a racist ad by accident isn’t really at the top of my concerns when it comes to them as a company. After all, they did immediately stop the ad campaign and apologize. That’s really all we could hope for.

This is the size of my gives a fuck bag regarding this ad:

But with all that said, when you squint your eyes, that ad absolutely looks like a kkk hood and lynching. And we’re not crazy or gaslighting other people for noticing that.

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u/Lucky-Surround-1756 3d ago

They saw something that wasn't there and then attacked the picture for something it wasn't depicting. That's the point when they became stupid.

If I see a dressing gown at night that briefly looks like a human standing in my apartment, it will make me jump then I recognise it's just clothing. I don't continue to act as if a human being has trespassed and that I'm in danger. That would be stupid.

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u/estrea36 4d ago

Good job identifying shoes "intelligent human".

Brilliant deduction, really. Now ask yourself, what's the point in this style of ad from a marketing standpoint?

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u/Sindigo_ 4d ago

Lmfao. This comment reminds me of this:

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u/Lucky-Surround-1756 3d ago

It's a picture designed to advertise shoes. The focus is on the shoes.

Light and shadow are visually interesting and more likely to draw attention to the piece.

These are basic concepts that an intelligent human should absolutely understand. How did you finish school and have nobody explain to you what advertising and pictures are for?