I refuse to believe this optical illusion isn't slanted

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Every so often an optical illusion comes along that actually makes me feel ill. And this is one of them. What appears to be a series of decidedly unstraight lines placed in a wonky grid actually turns out to be a very normal grid made up of parallel lines. Which you can see if you squint, study the distances between the lines and the edge of the image and generally look at it for far longer than anyone should have to.

But however much you do that, when you look at the image as a whole, you will undoubtedly think that those parallel lines are slanted. It's really confusing, actually, and could be in line for our best optical illusions ever roundup. It's the first static illusion to produce a dizzying effect in me much like that rotating head illusion I published yesterday. See it for yourself below.

Each line is straight, with no deviation, and parallel throughout from r/opticalillusions

"That's messed up, man," one comment reads over on the Reddit thread, which has erupted. Yup I agree. "Stop this witchery or be damned!" says someone else.

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One comment explains how you can verify the lines are actually parallel. "If you pick a line and follow it you can see it is straight. The tricky part is seeing them all as straight lines simultaneously," it reads. But one committed optical illusion fan needed more convincing. "I didn't believe it, so I copied the image into photo shop and compared the left and right edges together, and by god, they are perfectly parallel," they say.

So why do they look slanted? One person offers their opinion: "It’s th[e] alternating black/white diamonds making the squares seem uneven. If you squint and get it all blurry, everything becomes straightened out".

And "I think it’s because the patterns inside the blue line are slightly tilted," another person offers.

However it's working, I don't like it. If you do, see this optical illusion we were sure was gaslighting us with its confusing use of colour.

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