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'Yanny Or Laurel' Debate Divides Internet

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- A four-second audio clip posted on Twitter has everyone buzzing.

The tweet asks: "What do you hear?! Yanny or Laurel"

The Internet is pretty much divided, including some celebrities who weighed in on Twitter.

One Twitter user pointed out if you shift the pitch in the audio, "you can hear different things."

The Yanny-Laurel controversy is similar to the white and gold or blue and black dress debate back in 2015 when people worldwide argued over the color of a picture of a dress that was posted online.

In that case, experts said the photo captured how people's brains perceive color and contrast in different ways.

The whole thing started when a student in Georgia had the word "Laurel" on her vocabulary list, but when she looked it up on vocabulary.com she heard "Yanny."

She posted it on Instagram and from there it went viral. Since then, Team Yanny and Team Laurel are duking it out over social media.

Dan Ackerman of CNET says after interviewing scientists and audio experts, there's a reasonable explanation.

"Our ears are attuned to different frequencies," he said. "As you get older you lose the ability to hear some high frequencies. If you have some hearing damage from listening to music over the years, and people's ears are just attuned differently."

Still, the debate continues.

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