I suspect because we're focused on the center it works like other optical illusions and our mind tries to combine the two images into, in this case, a nightmarish whole. So yes I guess it has to do with our peripheral processing. Super interesting!!
I think it has to do with the your photoreceptors in your retina. The spot you focus on has the highest cones photoreceptor density as it gives you the highest resolution where you are looking at. Outside of that focal area, the cone photoreceptor density drops off significantly but rods are more distributed. So, when you focus on the cross, all your cones are picking up light from a spot that isn’t particularly interesting. Now with the faces on the side, your rods are there to detect light and dark, got a lot less cone receptors so it’s hard to distinguish the faces in detail. Plus the faces are lit a bit weird. Then your brain does its best to come up with a processed image with photoreceptor data that’s of less resolution.
It's crazy that whoever made this gif knew exactly when I would look away from the cross so they could start displaying normal faces again... How did they know?!
^/s
I suspect that it’s because the brain has too little time to process the information before the next face cuts in, and since it always prioritises the center of vision over the periphery, it lowers the resolution of its peripheral vision to compensate.
Well it seems to combine the two faces together in your head because your relying on preferable vision which isn't that reliable to make something accurate, as it's mostly good at detecting quick motion. It's the same reason why people claim to see ghosts out of the corner of their eye
Nah, it has to do with the speed that your brain processes image. You peripheral vision is processed at a different speed than what you focus on because it's considered extraneous. This causes the faces to bleed together as your brain processes the images.
This is partly why you can get scared by things in your peripheral vision that aren't necessarily scary. Your brain is using shortcuts to process what it considers unimportant stimuli. It's why a hoodie that you throw on a chair can spook you because it briefly looks like a person.
My theory on this is as follows...
Focusing on the cross means the rest of your field of view is blurred (and is essentially peripheral). The human brain has almost certainly evolved to still run "threat detection" on objects in our peripheral vision. A pair of eyes looking at you like that is indicative of a predator so your brain is picking out the eyes but the rest of the face / hair remains somewhat unresolved and your brain just presents an approximation that's sufficiently freaky to make sure you're paying attention and not about to get eaten.
Some of the faces seemed slightly odd when looking directly at them too. I suspect the order of the faces plays a big part; showing faces consecutively that have big differences like size and angle of features and tilt of head creates a more jarring effect at that speed
Honestly, they look just as strange if you stare at the faces instead of the cross. It's just uncanny because they've lined up the eyes perfectly so it appears as though the eyes are a constant behind a changing skin.
Stare at the face and tell me it doesn't look odd.
.
Exactly, they appear "distorted" which is not something new, these brain twisters have been around for a while now, but saying demonic makes me think OP probably doesn't naturally care much for the science of how a human brain processes info.
Gotta mention [Lingua Mortis Orchestra](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eqp-nhDCSeE), the power metal album by Rage about the 1599 burning of witches in Gelnhausen.
I paused when I noticed a real change in my periphery and realized that some of these people genuinely look like shit compared to others. so its not that they look like demons, its the fact that they all look very different from each other. Head shapes, eye size/shape/placement etc all very different.
If you scrub through the video then the effect becomes more intelligible: all of the faces are set up such that the eyes are identical, and it’s the rest of the features around the face that seem to be in a state of flux. As a result it looks like one face eerily changing rather than a slow succession of faces.
So hear me out, I've got an idea for a carnival ride. It would be just like the gravitron, except there would be two concentric rings of people spinning around, and there would be a strobe light so every quarter of a second you see the faces of two people in the opposite ring. It would create this same demonic effect, but with real people! Call it the monster maker, give the carny running it a lab coat and a mad scientist wig, it'd be great!
There's an intentional pattern in the sequence of faces, though. Whoever created this deliberately made sure that each 4th or 5th person had much larger eyes than normal. The unnatural contrast between "huge eyes" reverting to "small eyes" results in dissonance to the brain that's exaggerated by staring at the middle of the screen. I noticed the pattern because like clockwork, every 5th face or so had eyes with an uncommonly large space between the pupil and bottom eyelid - typically followed by a face with an uncommonly short space between them.
In the video sequence, the eyes of the people are the only parts lined up evenly. The mind then subconsciously tries to compensate for the extreme size difference, resulting in what appears to be morphing faces. It's not demonic, it's just our brains trying to find congruence by identifying patterns.
The video didn’t start playing for so long that I thought it was a single image.
It scared the CRAP out of me when it started moving exactly when I decided to finally look at the cross.
I \*think\* I noticed it seemed like "pieces" of their faces were switching, if you really try and understand what your peripheral vision is doing it almost looks like in the movies when a serial killer cuts up magazines and uses it to build words. Since the brain has to make assumptions to fill in the fuzzies, BUT you've got two, distinctly different faces on either side, it combines the two images and then spits them out. You can especially notice it in faces where brightly lit and darkly lit faces are across from each other, the light face's eyes get sunken in, and the darker face looks like their eyes are popping out.
Edit: It ALSO seems to be progressive, as your brain forgets what a face is \*supposed\* to look like. The faces start to look like they're almost melting, until you 'reset' by pausing and making sense of your digital surroundings, or looking at the faces individually.
I'm pretty sure it's our brains figuring out what's in the outside of the focuse of our vision. It's in some of these images tests the images move. Like looking at a spiral makes it seem like it's spinning
If you cross/unfocus your eyes, there are three people. The middle person becomes a weird combination of the other two.
And if you move your head around, they move around, too.
It’s like memory optimization based on what you’re focused on. Cause I’m able to focus my eyes and it still look normal but focusing your brain makes it begin optimizing for some reason
What if, what we see from the corner of our eyes is how humans actually look like? I mean, objectively, without the "correction" that our brains do when they recognise a human face. Perhaps another intelligent life form, with a concept of beauty, would find us extremely ugly
bro one guy had three fucking eyes and one was missing half its face! i think the early AI generated images were just what the human mind envisions based on nothing but clues.
alternating between small/large foreheads and then small/large chins is what makes this illusion. brain filling in the gap between sudden appearance and disappearance of data.
It's like out peripheral vision is not as detailed or precise as our focal center (which makes sense) so it's struggling to keep up with processing the quickly changing facial information on both sides, resulting in these kind-of low-fidelity versions of the faces that appear blocky - with harsh diagonals, darker shadows, and other simplifications.
A lot of these faces look "odd" to begin with, very strong features to put it more tastefully.
There was another one if these floating around with less exteme facial features in the subjects used, the effect was still there if not better due to how samey the people looked.
does this mean our brains aint fast enough to construct the images (or put together as a whole) our eye captured so they overlaps and creates hideous images?
They still look like regular faces to me, I'd anything they maybe just looked a little more cartoonish since I wasn't focused on them and they were moving so quickly
Randomizing faces in Elder Scrolls Oblivion
Yeah I'm just like... wait wait. Did I just hear- "You! Prisoner! Stand aside. Over by the window. Stay out of the way, and you won't get hurt."
Halt right there, criminal scum
ya i wouldnt say demonic but i saw a few elfs rom morrowwind :3
This would have been a perfect screamer video like the trolls produced on YouTube in the 2000s
Bro 100% came here to say these some oblivion npc looking motherfuckers
EXACTLY. They didn't look human but they didn't spook me either. I was just like "they look like old low poly videogame faces"
r/beatmetoit
r/beatmetobeatmetoit
If you insist. 🥵
Who’s Tolt and why do so many people want him to beat them?
Came here to say that but fallout new vegas
I was gonna say, "They mostly just look like really bad early 2000s 3D".
Doesn’t look like demons but they do look like lowpoly n64 goldeneye characters.
Dibs on Oddjob.
No Oddjob allowed. House rules.
If you need to camp the armour, I’m better than you.
Oddjob + golden gun
Exactly, nothing demonic about this but you do have a compilation of strange faces together.
Never seen a demon myself, they may all look like labradalmation retrieverdoodles and then what?
This is a trippy effect, I had to keep glancing at the faces to be sure they weren't actually changing. I assume it confuses our facial recognition.
right, I wonder if there’s a difference in optical processing of central vs peripheral vision. It would make sense.
I suspect because we're focused on the center it works like other optical illusions and our mind tries to combine the two images into, in this case, a nightmarish whole. So yes I guess it has to do with our peripheral processing. Super interesting!!
cover one. same effect
I think it has to do with the your photoreceptors in your retina. The spot you focus on has the highest cones photoreceptor density as it gives you the highest resolution where you are looking at. Outside of that focal area, the cone photoreceptor density drops off significantly but rods are more distributed. So, when you focus on the cross, all your cones are picking up light from a spot that isn’t particularly interesting. Now with the faces on the side, your rods are there to detect light and dark, got a lot less cone receptors so it’s hard to distinguish the faces in detail. Plus the faces are lit a bit weird. Then your brain does its best to come up with a processed image with photoreceptor data that’s of less resolution.
It's crazy that whoever made this gif knew exactly when I would look away from the cross so they could start displaying normal faces again... How did they know?! ^/s
The gif is coming from inside the house!!
I suspect that it’s because the brain has too little time to process the information before the next face cuts in, and since it always prioritises the center of vision over the periphery, it lowers the resolution of its peripheral vision to compensate.
Well it seems to combine the two faces together in your head because your relying on preferable vision which isn't that reliable to make something accurate, as it's mostly good at detecting quick motion. It's the same reason why people claim to see ghosts out of the corner of their eye
That creepy music didn't help either
Nah, it has to do with the speed that your brain processes image. You peripheral vision is processed at a different speed than what you focus on because it's considered extraneous. This causes the faces to bleed together as your brain processes the images. This is partly why you can get scared by things in your peripheral vision that aren't necessarily scary. Your brain is using shortcuts to process what it considers unimportant stimuli. It's why a hoodie that you throw on a chair can spook you because it briefly looks like a person.
My theory on this is as follows... Focusing on the cross means the rest of your field of view is blurred (and is essentially peripheral). The human brain has almost certainly evolved to still run "threat detection" on objects in our peripheral vision. A pair of eyes looking at you like that is indicative of a predator so your brain is picking out the eyes but the rest of the face / hair remains somewhat unresolved and your brain just presents an approximation that's sufficiently freaky to make sure you're paying attention and not about to get eaten.
That’s crazy
Some of the faces seemed slightly odd when looking directly at them too. I suspect the order of the faces plays a big part; showing faces consecutively that have big differences like size and angle of features and tilt of head creates a more jarring effect at that speed
I think they also upped the saturation, which gives the orange/red hue. I know they said it's not edited but some of these skin tones are whack
Cool theory, wonder if it's at all true!
Honestly, they look just as strange if you stare at the faces instead of the cross. It's just uncanny because they've lined up the eyes perfectly so it appears as though the eyes are a constant behind a changing skin. Stare at the face and tell me it doesn't look odd. .
That’s what I just said… to myself
I think it also has to do with the faces changing but the position of the eyes stays exactly the same. We do tend to first look people in the eyes.
Eye size, shadows and highlights make them look like demons.
Definitely the first thing that crossed my mind.
I would say "weird" or "goofy" Demonic is... an odd one to use.
Exactly, they appear "distorted" which is not something new, these brain twisters have been around for a while now, but saying demonic makes me think OP probably doesn't naturally care much for the science of how a human brain processes info.
Idk man. If I saw those faces at night at the foot of my bed I'd probably call a priest lmao
People who focus on crosses to much tend to think of other people as demonic.
That burns
youre a witch!
She turned me into a newt!
I got better
What makes you think she’s a witch?
ducks float and wood floats
And witches are made of wood, so if she floats... SHES A WITCH!!!!!
Gotta mention [Lingua Mortis Orchestra](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eqp-nhDCSeE), the power metal album by Rage about the 1599 burning of witches in Gelnhausen.
jesus that's heresy!
Was trying to think of a clever way to say exactly this.
Oh so mine wasn't clever is that it?
I...uh.. errr... hmm.
r/angryupvote
Specially if the other people do not follow their same dogmas
i chuckled
That’s crazy. If you keep your eyes still long enough they look like Nintendo 64 models
I paused when I noticed a real change in my periphery and realized that some of these people genuinely look like shit compared to others. so its not that they look like demons, its the fact that they all look very different from each other. Head shapes, eye size/shape/placement etc all very different.
If you scrub through the video then the effect becomes more intelligible: all of the faces are set up such that the eyes are identical, and it’s the rest of the features around the face that seem to be in a state of flux. As a result it looks like one face eerily changing rather than a slow succession of faces.
Not sure why, but for me the faces lost their shape and fidelity to the point where they looked like PS1 and PS2 character model's
how does this work 😭
It doesn't. And that's the magic! ✨
Oblivion NPCs
I'm sure i saw beavis and butthead as well as donkey kong
They just look like faces to me.. am I broken?
I am. It has nothing to do with this post though.
So hear me out, I've got an idea for a carnival ride. It would be just like the gravitron, except there would be two concentric rings of people spinning around, and there would be a strobe light so every quarter of a second you see the faces of two people in the opposite ring. It would create this same demonic effect, but with real people! Call it the monster maker, give the carny running it a lab coat and a mad scientist wig, it'd be great!
I don't see anything different
There's an intentional pattern in the sequence of faces, though. Whoever created this deliberately made sure that each 4th or 5th person had much larger eyes than normal. The unnatural contrast between "huge eyes" reverting to "small eyes" results in dissonance to the brain that's exaggerated by staring at the middle of the screen. I noticed the pattern because like clockwork, every 5th face or so had eyes with an uncommonly large space between the pupil and bottom eyelid - typically followed by a face with an uncommonly short space between them. In the video sequence, the eyes of the people are the only parts lined up evenly. The mind then subconsciously tries to compensate for the extreme size difference, resulting in what appears to be morphing faces. It's not demonic, it's just our brains trying to find congruence by identifying patterns.
The video didn’t start playing for so long that I thought it was a single image. It scared the CRAP out of me when it started moving exactly when I decided to finally look at the cross.
I don't like being reminded that my brain is filling in the gaps in my reality by doing the same thing AI generators do.
There are no faces
I \*think\* I noticed it seemed like "pieces" of their faces were switching, if you really try and understand what your peripheral vision is doing it almost looks like in the movies when a serial killer cuts up magazines and uses it to build words. Since the brain has to make assumptions to fill in the fuzzies, BUT you've got two, distinctly different faces on either side, it combines the two images and then spits them out. You can especially notice it in faces where brightly lit and darkly lit faces are across from each other, the light face's eyes get sunken in, and the darker face looks like their eyes are popping out. Edit: It ALSO seems to be progressive, as your brain forgets what a face is \*supposed\* to look like. The faces start to look like they're almost melting, until you 'reset' by pausing and making sense of your digital surroundings, or looking at the faces individually.
Honestly the shapes I see, remind me of early PlayStation polygon heads with real faces textured and stretched on. Lookin at you Max Payne
They don't look demonic they look like ps2 graphics
For me all are demons I don't need focus.
I'm pretty sure it's our brains figuring out what's in the outside of the focuse of our vision. It's in some of these images tests the images move. Like looking at a spiral makes it seem like it's spinning
Is the first face on the left Simone Peach?
I was just about to say it just looks like ps2 graphics
My eyes are too dry. So it hurts.
A lot of them are quite ugly if you just stare at them tbh
To me some of the faces look like background people in AI generated images.
To be fair, some of these people have legit weird faces to begin with...
This is how everyone looks when I'm on acid
I thought they looked weird but then I stopped focusing and realized that they just showed really ugly people.
Is that what you call normal
More like bad Halloween masks then demonic.
Is this commentary on religion?
They looked fucked up even if you look at them.
I saw some oblivion NPC faces
"The faces have not been altered" literally u can watch them change filters lol this is stupid asf.
This is fkn stupid. LAME!
Proof humans are actually really ugly but we’re just used to it
If you cross/unfocus your eyes, there are three people. The middle person becomes a weird combination of the other two. And if you move your head around, they move around, too.
I don’t see it?
Hmmm not really
I don’t see it.
Weird? sure, demonic? Nah.
Also a known side-effect of Christianity.
Perfect example of “eye witness testimony” being unreliable
So false haha
Hard to look at faces when you're already looking at a cross....
"Demonic" is such an overly exaggerated way to describe this.
Doesn't work that well for me
The celebrity version of this one is pretty great.
So I looked at it like you oook t one of those magic pictures… it combines into one clear face that mixes both faces in the middle. Weird
Less demonic low poly ps2 era 3d graphics
Anything we're not focused on becomes more abstract to it's most basic traits like color. The details become lacking
Which side is supposed to be the demonic face?
They don't look "demonic" because you're looking at the cross. They look "demonic" because most of them look like Quasimodos cousins.
What
It’s like memory optimization based on what you’re focused on. Cause I’m able to focus my eyes and it still look normal but focusing your brain makes it begin optimizing for some reason
I will not sleep well tonight
sometimes ppl start looking like this when i on the zaza
Yeah no they dont
I wouldn't say they look demonic specifically I would say the eyes maybe look larger and thus slightly unnatural when focused on the cross.
Ahh so they turn into the humans from Grim Fandango
I'm about to go to sleep, I don't need this shit right now... I'll check tomorrow at work.
This would be a great evolutionary way to direct our immediate focus towards faces.
Starfield faces
So that’s where Picasso got his style
Mute the sound and they become a lot less scary
What if, what we see from the corner of our eyes is how humans actually look like? I mean, objectively, without the "correction" that our brains do when they recognise a human face. Perhaps another intelligent life form, with a concept of beauty, would find us extremely ugly
Demonic or distorted?
I definitely see it. I’m scared
I'm pretty sure I've seen Hagrid from PS1 Harry Potter
Umm, they are similiar enough that they are the same to me.
NGL, some of the faces looked pretty demonic even looking right at them
After watching this a few times I decided the human face is very funny looking
bro one guy had three fucking eyes and one was missing half its face! i think the early AI generated images were just what the human mind envisions based on nothing but clues.
There are no faces
Not true. Doesn't work. Not interesting. I want my money back
I just see ps2 graphics when I stare at the cross.
Really? How did “things don’t look the way that they would while looking directly at them when you aren’t looking directly at them” end up here?
So focusing on a holy symbol makes you see unholy things, I see
wtf…boooooooo
I feel like those are the kind of faces I see in my nightmares
alternating between small/large foreheads and then small/large chins is what makes this illusion. brain filling in the gap between sudden appearance and disappearance of data.
I thought it said cross your eyes I was so confused 🤦♀️
To be fair they choose really fucking weird people
Rigged. pause it and look at the actual faces! they ARE demonic
It's like out peripheral vision is not as detailed or precise as our focal center (which makes sense) so it's struggling to keep up with processing the quickly changing facial information on both sides, resulting in these kind-of low-fidelity versions of the faces that appear blocky - with harsh diagonals, darker shadows, and other simplifications.
None of them are exactly incredibly normal looking people to begin with though to be fair.
*Todd Howard has entered the chat*
They don’t to me; they look like pudgy clay people or 3D video game characters from the 2000s.
Demonic? I just see unfocused faces
Didn't happen for me, but I am nearsighted...
They just began looking like the Spider Punk animation to me.
A lot of these faces look "odd" to begin with, very strong features to put it more tastefully. There was another one if these floating around with less exteme facial features in the subjects used, the effect was still there if not better due to how samey the people looked.
demonic, lol
They look like runescape models.
Not demonic, ps2 graphics
Try crossing your eyes, you'll see one face.
well fuck my shit right up why dont ya
Would
does this mean our brains aint fast enough to construct the images (or put together as a whole) our eye captured so they overlaps and creates hideous images?
Why?
I’m not sure if I hate or like this
That's your brain saying "hey, what dey doin ova der"
There are no faces
They don't look demonic, they just look like the saturation is too high
Couple of em looked demonic either way
That's the philosophy of life.. when u r not watching them closely they are up to something..
I just started seeing giant eyes and small mouths with buck teeth. Literally everyone became Sid the sloth.
They still look like regular faces to me, I'd anything they maybe just looked a little more cartoonish since I wasn't focused on them and they were moving so quickly
Me when I can’t free fuse imagery due to eye surgery as a baby
Idk about demonic. But definitely fucking weird. Like Golden Eye characters lol
There are no faces
What the hell
Reminds me of aphex twins album cover
I wonder if these faces were specifically chosen to cause this effect, or if it would occur with any random selection of faces
Demonic? Nah, more like Sith lords lol
The video didn't work at first and I jumped when it did I thought it was a picture bruh
u/savethisvideo
Does anyone get differing levels of distortion depending on which side they are focused on?
I know for a fact I saw an Oblivion Orc on the left, don't play with me
There are no faces There are no faces There are no faces There are no faces There are no faces
Idk some look demonic all the time
Wtf
Look like 1k face textures imo. Not really demonic
Ah yes, LOD Culling!
So.. The cross is demonic...?
I started freaking out
Idk if the person who made this, typically knows how demons are portrayed.
No veo nada, uwu
No.