INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
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"It's definitely Yanny, Laurel."
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a "laurel"
No one can decide.A widely shared audio clip has divided the internet into two warring tribes - those who hear "yanny" and those who hear
"laurel".The rival factions, the Yannies and the Laurels let's say, have been locked in a bitter battle for aural supremacy since at least
Monday, when Reddit user RolandCamry - the anonymous harbinger of internet meltdown - posted the clip online.After the video migrated to
Twitter, the armies' numbers swelled
In the last 24 hours, "yanny" has been mentioned more than 310,000 times
The Laurels are currently edging it with closer to 330,000 uses of the word.Model Christine Teigen - who better to lead the Laurels into
battle - nailed her colours to the mast with a swipe at the Yannies."It's so clearly laurel," she roared to her 10 million followers,
possibly all the while bedecked head to toe in chain mail of gleaming bronze."I can't even figure out how one would hear yanny," she
continued.Lining up alongside her, one Stephen Fry - broadcaster, British national treasure and Laurel fo' life.YouTuber Logan Paul struck
the first, inevitable blow of the wars to come.But the Yannies are a proud and noble band
They refuse to let such blasphemy pass unchecked
And when their need was greatest, the hour at its latest, up stepped Toronto councillor Norm Kelly with a veiled threat to "clean" the
Laurels' ears out.The subtext could not be clearer - this was obviously a warning to the Laurels that their ears would be removed and worn
as trophies around his neck.Fortunately, just when all seemed lost, a ray of hope was glimpsed.A voice of reason emerged, one who could
bring together the warring clans and explain their differences.The secret, it turns out, is frequency
The part of the sound that makes some people hear Yanny is higher frequency than that which makes some people hear Laurel.As Lars Riecke,
assistant professor of audition and cognitive neuroscience at Maastricht University, explained to The Verge: "If you remove all the low
frequencies, you hear yanny
If you remove the high frequencies, you hear laurel."If your ears emphasise both the higher and lower frequencies, you can toggle between
the two sounds."So we can all agree to disagree
