this post was submitted on 13 Apr 2026

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Misleading Thumbnails

misleadingthumbnails@lemmy.ca

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Links from posts on Lemmy, for which there is a misleading thumbnail.

Friends from other places:

/r/MisleadingThumbnails

How to make a post?

For the link, use the original image or website link from the other post
For the title, describe what the subject of the thumbnail appears to be, and don't describe the full-size image in any way.
Add a link to the original post in the post body or comments (to help people discover new content and communities)

Detailed Description, based off the description from the subreddit:

A place to share links that, when posted to Lemmy, generate a thumbnail that misleads people into seeing something entirely different than what the full-size image ends up being. This almost always occurs in an unexpected fashion, where shrinking down an image to thumbnail-size suddenly creates an illusion one would not have expected.

Note that your particular front-end or app may cause the illusion to be different!

Rules

Please use the report button on posts that don't fit the theme!

Only post images where the Lemmy thumbnail creates a unique optical illusion, causing the subject in the thumbnail to appear to be something totally different from the subject in the full-size image. Some content will be better off posted to different communities.
No images that are essentially what you say they are.
No images that are intentionally set up to mislead or intentionally designed to look like your post title. This includes AI generated illusions.
Do not post images that are screenshots or that have superimposed text.
No NSFW posts for now

founded 2 years ago

moderators

otter@lemmy.ca

qaz@lemmy.world

Javelin pierced his face (lemmy.world)

submitted 3 months ago* by qaz@lemmy.world [M] to c/misleadingthumbnails@lemmy.ca

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[–] partial_accumen@lemmy.world 87 points 3 months ago (4 children)

oh, its a shadow on his face. That took me way too long.

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[–] diffaldo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 24 points 3 months ago (1 child)

Holy fuck, I thought u were trolling at first 😨

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[–] IntrovertTurtle@lemmy.zip 13 points 3 months ago

Right?! I had to zoom in to notice where it crosses over!

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[–] billwashere@lemmy.world 11 points 3 months ago (1 child)

Yeah this hurt my brain.

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[–] ayyy@sh.itjust.works 3 points 3 months ago

His, too.

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[–] Routhinator@lemmy.ca 8 points 3 months ago

It's fascinating because even a slightly different angle of the sun, a minute earlier or later, and you introduce an angle that would break the illusion

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[–] thirdBreakfast@lemmy.world 7 points 3 months ago

Thank you

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[–] Rentlar@lemmy.ca 11 points 3 months ago

This is the first one that wasn't apparent at first even after seeing the image full size.