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As a teenager, I held off on getting glasses for as long as I could, only caving once the DMV told me I’d be a danger to myself and others behind the wheel without them. Up until then, I’d figured everyone saw the world as I did, that is to say that everything became blurry and indistinct at about the distance I could accurately throw a baseball (and I was a football player, by the way).

Wearing glasses for the first time, I was amazed by how much detail I could see in the world around me. I could see the individual leaves on trees, for example. But as great as all the details that come with naturally good or corrected vision are, there’s apparently a tradeoff, as shown by this optical illusion that’s said to only be visible if you have poor eyesight.

Twitter user Kaeru recently shared the following two images.

“You’re only supposed to see the writing if your eyes are bad, but is anything really written there?” he wondered.

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While Kaeru couldn’t tell, several online commenters had no trouble answering his question.

“There’s totally writing there.”
“I can see it. Not if I have my glasses on, but it’s easy to spot if I take them off.”
“I can read it with no problem.”
“If I back away from the monitor, I can see it.”

Yep, it turns out there is indeed a semi-hidden message contained in the image. For those of you having trouble making it out, it’s located inside the area marked with the yellow box.

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As several online commenters pointed out, the characters become visible when your eyes start to lose focus, something that’s more likely to happen if you have poor eyesight. If you’ve been cursed with 20-20 vision, leave your name and home address in the comments, and I or another RocketNews24 staff member will be by as soon as possible to poke you in the eye.

If you can’t wait that long, though, you can try to create the effect in a number of other ways. Rocking back and forth as you stare at the image will keep your eyes from being able to properly focus on the distance to it. Scrolling up or down using the wheel on a mouse while the image is on-screen should also make it easier to notice.

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Alternatively, you can shrink the images down.

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So what’s the message say? Well, there’re three lines to it:

みえたら
目がわるい?
ホントかな?

Which reads as ”Mietara me ga warui? Honto ka na?” or “If you can see this, your eyes are bad? Really?”

We’re not sure if less-than-stellar eyesight is the sole reason behind this, but at the very least, it’s nice to know that some optical illusions work as advertised.

Source: Hamster Sokuho
Images: Twitter (edited by RocketNews24)