This is a wonderful auditory illusion sent to me by Chris Lawrence….. once you think the doll is saying ‘If you are happy and you know it f**k with me’, you cannot hear it any other way…..
However, try playing it to someone without this expectation and post what they hear……
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January 27, 2011 at 5:38 am |
“Bop”… I think…
January 27, 2011 at 5:40 am |
Obviously supposed to be “bark,” but sounds more like “buck” to me.
January 27, 2011 at 8:31 am
Yes, the same. No effect on me, Dr. Richard. Especially the second and third times when the line is repeated the ‘B’ sound is quite apparent.
January 27, 2011 at 5:43 am |
My wife clearly heard “If you’re happy and you know it, bark with me.” in a British accent. Frankly, I did too. This should be tossed in the same illusion trash bin as the ‘aroused minister’ from Disney’s “The Little Mermaid” and various other similar urban legends. People with smut on the brain will find smut everywhere and are the most stringent in calling it out (but personally, I think they are all a bunch of hypocrites who must have something ‘in the closet’)
Childish.
January 27, 2011 at 8:07 am
Lol calm down there!
January 27, 2011 at 9:11 am
“Good teenagers, take off your clothes” in Aladdin, too. *heavy eyeroll*
I agree with your other points – what does it say about the people who “find” these things in movies, that they’re the ones who found them? Obsessed/repressed much?
January 27, 2011 at 5:52 am |
I heard bop with the first line but heard the anticipated word after that. I played it for my son without his knowing what it should be, and he listened to the full thing and suddenly heard f**k at the end.
January 27, 2011 at 6:10 am |
[...] If you have been happy as well as you know it f**k with me! « Richard Wiseman's … [...]
January 27, 2011 at 6:35 am |
Nah, I can’t help but hear “bark”. Maybe I have an innocent mind… though I can’t see any dolphins in that other illusion.
January 27, 2011 at 7:07 am |
Funny! Can’t hear anything else now but the f word.
January 27, 2011 at 7:18 am |
Seems a bit contrived to me, the English accent makes it quite clear that she sings ‘bark’ and considering the freakishly weird accents I’ve come upon, I’ve seen worse.
Not the best ‘illusion’.
January 27, 2011 at 7:19 am |
bark,obviously! (I m just playing smart here,if you haven t told us beforehand that it does NOT say f**k…, I wouldn t even have guessed!)
January 27, 2011 at 7:22 am |
first thought it’s “bark” with me since the dog have said so and still not sure is it “clap” or not.
January 27, 2011 at 7:23 am |
I have this with songs sometimes, when I accidentally mishear something or listen while tired, and whatever rubbish I imagine sticks forever.
Like the very end of The Prodigy’s ‘Smack My Bitch Up,’ which I can only hear as a robot repeating “Jewish” over and over again.
January 27, 2011 at 10:06 am
I get this with the Prodigy’s “Invaders Must Die”, where I hear “Salad Bowl” repeated over and over.
January 27, 2011 at 7:24 am |
These days he is posting some nude/bad stuff. I guess he is doing OK
January 27, 2011 at 7:39 am |
My wife heard “.. bark with me.” Needless to say, I heard it a little differently.
January 27, 2011 at 7:40 am |
As an American rather unfamiliar with the British accent, it was hard to hear any audible words to complete the phrase. In addition, listening for the expected phrase (in this case, “clap your hands”) threw me off too. After playing the video a couple of times, I was able to deduce that the dog-like creature was saying “bark with me”, and when I then read the text description, I “heard” the fucked-up version (pun completely intended).
January 27, 2011 at 7:41 am |
My 10 year old overheard me playing it and immediately asked why I was listening to a song with swearing in!!!
January 27, 2011 at 7:44 am |
Sounds like bark to me, even if I have been primed to hear otherwise.
January 27, 2011 at 7:54 am |
Take a look at the McGurk effect demonstrated in this BBC video. The visual information overrides the auditory information.
The side-by-side talking heads section is a really good demo.
January 27, 2011 at 10:07 am
The best part of that video is the comments – half of them say they can obviously tell the difference by looking at his mouth – the effect is so good that they don’t realise it is the exact same sound…
January 27, 2011 at 4:39 pm
I thought of the McGurk effect too.
January 27, 2011 at 7:54 am |
I’d venture a guess that the majority that hear a vulgar word have a British accent themselves, and those without are more likely to hear “bark”.
January 27, 2011 at 8:01 am |
Sounded like ‘bok’ to me, very clearly. So I didn’t hear the rude version but also it took me a while to realise it was supposed to be ‘bark’. These toys are so naf aren’t they?
January 27, 2011 at 8:09 am |
Well, I’m English and I speak with a Home Counties accent (Bedfordshire) and I heard the F word, even if it was pretty obvious in the context that it should have been ‘bark’. Because it’s a puppy!
January 27, 2011 at 8:44 am |
It’s not really working for me. If I concentrate on hearing ‘F**k’ I do hear it, but when I don’t, I just hear ‘bark’.
January 27, 2011 at 8:50 am |
I just hear it as bark. I can hear the other way if I want to, but I’m not convinced that’s what it’s really saying.
January 27, 2011 at 9:09 am |
I have no sound on this computer. But I tell you one thing, reading the comments is how I found out that was supposed to be a dog. That’s the big illusion, I think. It looks like a Power Ranger or something.
January 27, 2011 at 9:22 am |
I can’t hear anything other than “bark”. These “illusions” and puzzles are getting sadder and sadder…
January 27, 2011 at 9:25 am |
Another #fail here, I’m afraid: it’s “bock”, “buck”, or even “bark”.
January 27, 2011 at 9:41 am |
Definitely ‘bark’. On the other hand after someone said it, I cannot hear Jimi Hendrix sing anything other than “Scuse me while I kiss this guy” on Purple Haze.
January 28, 2011 at 10:46 am
LOL!
January 27, 2011 at 10:05 am |
Definitely “fok”.
January 27, 2011 at 10:47 am |
For each time the suspect word came along, I heard “fuck, bark, fuck” respectively. Sounds like quite a good night to me.
January 27, 2011 at 11:43 am |
This is similar to the McGurk effect:
Instead of hearing what we see, here we hear what we expect to hear.
January 27, 2011 at 12:44 pm |
I found the first bark sounding like the illusion.
The rest of the time I heard bark.
Then I saw that McGurk effect video, and now, when picturing a V-sound (biting the lower lip) instead of a B-sound (lips meeting), I can hear the illusion through all the barks.
Very interesting, specially the McGurk vision/hearing stuff.
January 27, 2011 at 1:48 pm |
I was viewing this video when, from the other side of the room the good lady (who’s never heard it before) said, “Did that just say ‘fuck’”? What’s even better is that I said the ‘F’ word on Wiseman’s site. Great!
January 27, 2011 at 2:28 pm |
Reminds me of the toy mouse that sings ‘pedophile’
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8398000/8398753.stm
January 27, 2011 at 5:38 pm
And reminds me of Rafiki arsing around in The Lion King:
http://www.snopes.com/disney/films/rafiki.asp
January 27, 2011 at 3:02 pm |
Sounds like “butt” to me. Couldn’t they have found a child voice actor that could pronounce “bark” correctly?
January 27, 2011 at 3:44 pm |
As a non-native speaker I would say: clearly ‚bark‘. I guess for me it comes more from the context. Anyway, this McGurk stuff was pretty impressive … check out the comments on the video on youtube
January 27, 2011 at 4:35 pm |
I heard ‘f**k’ the first time, but bark the second and third.
January 28, 2011 at 1:49 am
Most likely because the barking sound effect reoriented your mind to what the phrase was meant to be about.
January 27, 2011 at 4:56 pm |
I’m an American and I heard “bark” . I suspect that when we listen to accents that aren’t our own, we are more forgiving of things sounding a bit off— I’m not entirely sure how strong an R sound should be in this accent so I probably used the context more to figure out the word.
January 27, 2011 at 6:03 pm |
Of course first I heard f**k but second time I heard “bark”…
January 27, 2011 at 9:07 pm
Same here.
January 27, 2011 at 9:46 pm |
I head ‘f**k’ at first, then ‘bark’ on the repeats (English not American speaker).
Incidentally, a misheard lyric is called a ‘mondegreen’ as in the poem:
“They hae slain the Earl o’Moray and laid him on the green” which Sylvia Wright misheard as “…and Lady Mondegreen”
January 28, 2011 at 12:06 am |
[...] If you are happy and you know it f**k with me! This is a wonderful auditory illusion sent to me by Chris Lawrence….. once you think the doll is saying ‘If you are [...] [...]
January 28, 2011 at 3:52 am |
It sounds like “bark” done in a cockney accent.
January 28, 2011 at 3:56 am |
I completely disagree, I tried, quite honestly, still sounds like bark.
The McGurk illusion, now, that actually is something.
January 28, 2011 at 4:18 am |
Hey people, check your Loudspeakaers ! Or go and see the ear specialist….
Another misunderstandings between different languages:
January 28, 2011 at 4:20 am
OOOps, wan just to place the link, not embedd the whole video
January 28, 2011 at 8:26 am |
Because we were told we would hear *uck that is what I heard at first but when I cleared my mind of that could only hear bark.
January 28, 2011 at 11:21 am |
For a good auditory illusion listen to the Beastie Boys Intergalactic and to the chorus “Another dimension, another dimension, another dimension…” etc. Once I’ve put the words “I’m havin a big sh*t, I’m havin a big sh*t…” in your head you’ll never hear anything else!
January 28, 2011 at 11:22 am |
January 29, 2011 at 7:20 am |
I’m getting fuck, bark,fuck.
But it’s down to familiarity with the frankly fucked up, or rather ‘fakt ap’ way people talk in the English south east. Wouldn’t been a problem if they’d hired a northener to record the voice.
Jus sayin
January 29, 2011 at 1:17 pm
Living in North-East England, I can tell you that if they wanted to hire a northerner to record the voice, they’d have plenty of applicants – thanks to the new government!
January 29, 2011 at 5:29 pm |
It’s “bark” with a heavy British accent
January 30, 2011 at 1:48 pm
What is a ‘heavy British accent’? Never heard any British person saying ‘bark’ in this manner.
January 30, 2011 at 5:02 pm
I’m not British but to it sounds a lot like “buh-k” than how an American would pronounce it.
January 31, 2011 at 2:00 pm
I am English (North-East) and we would pronounce it as “bah-rk”. Though someone from the midlands would pronounce it slightly differently than somebody living elsewhere
January 29, 2011 at 10:54 pm |
Yeah, I heard the word fuck three times, it’s crazy man.
February 17, 2011 at 7:45 pm |
Not seeing the video, someone answered “If you are happy and you know it bump your feet!”
After reading the post, I heard something similar to “If you are happy and you know it f**k with me!”, but seeing the dog (I guess), I believe it’s “If you are happy and you know it bark with me!”.
February 18, 2011 at 11:31 pm |
This reminds me a lot of the “ba” “fa” illusion. If you hear someone say “ba” but their lips mouth”fa”, then your mind ALWAYS hears “fa”.