The Floating Double Dildo

Hold two identical dildos with the tips pointing toward each other. Focus your eyes on a spot a few feet beyond the dildos, like on a wall. Keeping the focus of your gaze steady, slowly bring the dildos together until their tips are almost touching. You should see a small double-ended dildo floating between them. If you don’t have two identical dildos you can also do this with your index fingers.

How you do it:

What you see:

How it works: This is based on the so-called Floating Hot Dog illusion that you might have learned as a kid. Each of your eyes sees the world from a slightly different angle. You’ve probably noticed that if you close one eye, then quickly open it and close the other eye, you’ll see things shift position a little in your field of vision. When your eyes focus on an object, your lines of sight converge, your brain merges the two images, and you see a single picture. When your eyes are unfocused, you see “double”.

Because the images never match up perfectly, your brain has to decide which image to pay attention to, the one from your right eye or your left eye. Most people have a dominant eye and that one wins out, and your brain suppresses some of the visual input from your other eye. However, if the images from both eyes are very similar, your brain may have a harder time sorting them out. Your brain will alternate between the two images. In this case, each of your eyes is seeing the shaft of a dildo and the tip pointing away. As your perception of the dildo tips flickers back and forth, you see what appears to be a solid, two-ended dildo. If you try this with dildos of two contrasting colors, say a pink one and a green one, the “double dildo” will alternate colors as you gaze at it, and sometimes appear to be half pink and half green.