About

Brick Wall Optical Illusion is a Facebook post which challenges its viewers to identify a visual oddity within a seemingly unexceptional photograph of a brick wall. Upon being uploaded to Facebook on May 16th, 2016, the photograph went viral due to its unexpectedly difficult and deceptive nature.

Origin

The optical illusory image has been circulating online since as early as the late 2000s, with the earliest known instance posted by Javier Blanes^[1] on his paranormal investigative blog on August 25th, 2008 (shown below). In the following years, the image continued to spread across the Spanish-speaking web, including a Facebook post^[2] highlighting the image on the official page for Academia Nakis, a high school located in Lugones, Spain, on May 30th, 2014.

Spread

However, the image didn't draw massive attention on the English-speaking web until May 16th, 2016, when British Facebook user Arron Bevin^[3] shared the image with a caption challenging others to spot an oddity (shown below).

Within 72 hours of the post, the Facebook image garnered more than 75,000 likes, 68,000 comments and 55,500 shares. Soon, the news about the "brick wall illusion" challenge began spreading across Twitter.^[4] In the following days, the viral image of the brick wall was highlighted by over a dozen of news outlets and internet culture blogs in the U.S. and the U.K., including Slate^[5], Metro^[6], The Huffington Post^[7], Cnet^[8], New York Magazine^[9], The Telegraph^[10], Uproxx^[11] and Bustle,^[12] among others.

The Answer

While the photograph may appear as an ordinary brick wall at a casual, first glance, a closer examination of the image reveals a cigar stuck into a crevice on the brick wall.

Search Interest

External References