Driving With Astigmatism

Submission 29,439

About

Driving With Astigmatism refers to a series of viral posts that attempt to describe what driving at night is like for someone with the vision condition astigmatism, which causes blurred vision. These posts feature traffic at night with traffic lights and lights from automobiles appear blurred and glared.

Origin

On February 27th, 2019, Facebook ^[1] user Ashley Hughley posted a set of images of traffic at night. They wrote, "So if u have astigmatism, then this is what lights look like to you. I always thought this was what they looked like for everybody." The post received more than 55,000 reactions, 73,000 comments and 581,000 shares in less than two months (shown below).

Spread

Days later, on March 1st, Twitter ^[2] user @bombela11 tweeted the image set with the caption "FYI if you drive with me at night, this is what I see. Astigmatism is horrible." The post received more than 32,000 retweets and 52,000 likes in less than two months (shown below).

On March 7th, the website TruthOrFiction.com^[3] attempted to prove the validity of the posts, declaring it as a "decontextualized" claim. The site also found that the images in this post were pulled from various sources, only one of which explore or examine the condition of astigmatism or its symptoms. The first image comes from a blog post entitled "Astigmatism? Wear sunglasses, or don’t go out at night" (shown below, left).^[4] The second image comes from the website driversedguru.com, which discusses driving at night (shown below, center).^[5] The final image is from a post on the /r/pics subreddit (shown below, right).^[6]

They wrote of the validity of the post:

None of the images appeared to originate from an “astigmatism test” or screening of any sort, and one was initially unrelated. All three have been used to informally demonstrate astigmatism by internet users, but their selection appeared random and subjective. People with astigmatism clearly felt in some cases that the images were accurate, but there’s no evidence they accurately simulated astigmatism or originated with the intent of doing so.

Several weeks later, on March 24th, Twitter^[7] user @UnusualFacts6 posted a new version of the post. They wrote, "Astigmatism is when the cornea is slightly curved rather than completely round..With astigmatism, light focuses on several points of the retina rather just one point. This is what people with Astigmatisms vs without." The post received more than 23,000 retweets and 55,000 likes in less than one month (shown below).

Users responded with excitement and surprise to the post. Many seemed to share in the symptoms and reported that they thought that this was a common occurrence (examples below).

Several media outlets published reports on the posts, including The Daily Dot, ^[8] The New York Post,^[9] The Sun^[10] and more.