Optical Illusion Or Engagement Bait? Check This Photo To Decide

Optical illusions are a good way to test your eyesight and improve creativity and problem-solving skills. Now one such “optical illusion” is going viral. This puzzle is a photo of clouds. “If you’re right-brained, you’ll see a chicken laying an egg. If you’re left-brained, you’ll see a man riding a horse,” reads the post.

Interestingly, instead of picking either of these two, an overwhelming majority of people commented that they saw some version of a gorilla smoking a cigarette. So far this post has over 2 million views.

Commenting on it, an X user wrote, “I don’t know what you all see but that’s definitely donkey Kong smoking.” Donkey Kong is an old arcade video game character that is based on a gorilla.

Another person wrote, “All I see is Donkey Kong smoking a blunt. There must be something wrong with me.”

In response to a number of comments about a “gorilla smoking a cigarette”, many speculated that the post was not an optical illusion but a misleading picture or engagement bait.

Making this point, an X user wrote, “Haha i get it. Nobody sees either of those getting people to reply saying “what I see monkey smoking a blunt!” causing you to get interaction and getting a $18.42 Twitter paycheck! :D”

Another person wrote, “Posting two incorrect options knowing people will engage with your tweet on the actual thing they see is some wild impression farming.”

According to Meta, engagement bait is a post that “explicitly requests engagement (such as votes, shares, comments, tags, likes or other reactions) for purposes other than a specific call to action (such as seeking help to find missing people or property, raising money or sharing a petition).” However, engagement baits are different from posts that request information on emergencies such as asking people to post time-sensitive information about natural disasters and life-threatening events.

In July last year, X users (those who pay a subscription fee for the blue tick) could sign up for the Creator Ads Revenue Sharing program that would pay them if their posts exceed certain engagement metrics. Many think that this program has incentivised engagement baits by many folds in the last year.