Fuck the Colorblind
- Posted by Daniel Flück on April 1st, 2006 filed in Pics
…that’s what it says on the shirt you can buy at TShirtHell.com. Do they target at colorblind people or better at not color blind people? Or maybe people knowing somebody who is colorblind? Girls with colorblind boyfriends…
I don’t know and I suppose I never will. The only thing I know is that I will not buy one of those. I’ll wait till the slogan gets a bit more friendly to us colorblinds.
By the way, they use a so called ishihara pictures to hide the message from us trapped by red-green color blindness. To find out what it reads I used two different methods. First the daltonize tool from Vischeck and second eyePilot a tool for colorblind people. Funnily enough both showed me the same result :-)
The shown t-shirt can be ordered here.
Related articles:
BP advertises with Ishihara Pictures
Simulating Color Blind Vision
Battle against Color Blindness with EyePilot
April 2nd, 2006 at 9:08
Anything to provoke. Still it’s funny. Don’t you think?
I mean, sometimes you need to laugh at your own deficiency, if one could call it a deficiency that is.
/silfverstierna
April 2nd, 2006 at 19:08
Is it funny? I am not sure about it. This doesn’t mean that I can’t laugh about my ‘deficiency’ but the saying is a bit to provoking for my sensation.
What about: “I am colorblind” or “Dear colorblind, please read aloud” or something like that?
April 3rd, 2006 at 0:03
Yes. I do agree with you it’s somewhat short in taste. But still.
April 3rd, 2006 at 19:37
The more I think about it the more I dislike it and therefore I suppose it is nothing to think about.
April 6th, 2006 at 23:10
Daniel, the whole of TShirtHell.com is in bad taste and not funny at all. Their tshirts are alternately racist, misogynistic, and just plain obscene. I would never buy any of their tshirts and would think ill of anyone who I saw wearing such a tshirt.
April 7th, 2006 at 3:48
i think it’s hilarious. I’ve never seen anyone to do a piss take on us colour blinds before. Learn to laugh at yourself.
April 7th, 2006 at 13:27
Hey, I can laugh at myself and my “problem with the dots”. But this is not really a good joke. I think it is racist.
Or what about a t-shirt written in chinese saying: Fuck the Europeans. Or you could simply write: Fuck the Blind. They can’t read it anyway. And what about: Fuck the Illiterate. That one I like most :-(
April 13th, 2006 at 2:28
I actually got this shirt today, and I love it. I’m only offended by a statement if someone was trying to be _mean_, and Tshirthell.com’s stuff is humorous, not mean. The guy who runs the site clearly has no ill intentions towards the colorblind (or women, or blacks, or whites, or..), so why be irritated?
And by the way, no, I can’t read the shirt (I checked the text with The GIMP.)
April 13th, 2006 at 22:46
I’m colourblind and I was tickled pink by it. I think.
Cliff
September 9th, 2006 at 9:55
I would love to wear this t-shirt! But I can´t read it, because I´m really colorblind! :D
November 23rd, 2006 at 22:53
I am an ophthalmologist, and I have deuteranopic (colorblind) relatives (a brother and two cousins). I found this t-shirt terribly funny.
I am tempted to get this t-shirt as a joke to my brother, but I think it would upset my patients if they ever got a sight of me in that t-shirt.
I am not at all trying to make a joke out of any of my patients, so I would like a sincere opinion on the part of deuteranopic (colorblind) people.
November 25th, 2006 at 15:51
Raban, when reading through the above comments I think there are two opinions around: Some find it very funny - others not.
Concerning your patients I suppose you could raise a laugh but also angry looks. Maybe you just have to try it out and see what happens…
For me - I am colorblind - it is not funny. And if my ophtalmologist would wear it, I suppose I wouldn’t visit him again.
December 27th, 2006 at 18:59
HaHa i can see it
January 16th, 2007 at 7:48
im colorblind and yes it is funny but its a litle 2 harsh
January 30th, 2007 at 17:14
i can see it. HEHE!!
February 14th, 2007 at 0:08
How can anyone find this Tshirt offending? Im colorblind, and I think it’s hilarious. I just heard someone said they saw a guy wore this tshirt, and I immediately got jelous for not coming up with this idea myself! hehe. Too feed my ‘deficiency’, Im a web/graphic designer; and yes, I survive. Final words: I’m ordering the shirt now!
-Kris
PS: (Please people; dig a little deeper, and I bet you’ll find something worse to get offended by)…
February 15th, 2007 at 17:24
Somebody could make a T-shirt with a message only discernable to the colorblind as well.
Won’t this shirt get weird once the colors wash out and change?
March 5th, 2007 at 16:21
I’m a little worried at how negatively congenital colour vision ‘defects’ are portrayed (apologies if this is not the case elsewhere on this site which I have only just discovered) - how about the benefits of the extra sensitivity to those colours that are seen (must be useful somewhere in industry and beyond)? Are opportunites being missed?? Colourblind is a term that accurately applies to very few people indeed.
March 8th, 2007 at 8:18
I thought it was funny initially, but I imagined if my friend wore that shirt and I couldn’t see it and my friend had to read it out loud to be, I think it would be totally humilating.
April 10th, 2007 at 14:11
I’m “colorblind” (if you will), but I can read the text. It doesn’t exactly jump out at me, but I can make it out.
Perhaps they should also make a tee-shirt with an ishihara pattern tuned to deuteranomalous cones (i.e. a pattern written in subtle shades of tan/khaki) that says “you’re not colorblind” that only so-called “colorblind” people like me can read.
The fact is, the vast majority of colorblind people are deuteranomalous trichromatic. It just means that the cones in our eyes that for most people are highly sensitive to green are, for us, more highly sensitive to yellow. The only symptom is an inability to pass carefully-crafted colorblindness tests. There are no problems with seeing colors in real-world situations.
True colorblindness, where one of the three colors of cones are missing or not working, is pretty rare. And those people will know of their colorblindness early on, because it actually creates problems for them in real-world situations. They would, for example, not be able to tell the difference between a red and a green apple.
So deuteranomalous people are not as good as normally sighted people at discerning green tints from red ones, but we’re better at discerning shades or yellow and tan, such as you might have if you sprinkled mustard powder onto the ground in a desert.
I had often wondered why so many concrete buildings and things painted in cream tones appeared to have noticeable defects in their color matching. I assumed that everyone else noticed it, too, and it was just accepted as OK. I didn’t realize until I understood deuteranomaly that, to most people, the building/bridge/whatever looks perfectly fine. It’s only my abnormal vision that makes the error visible.
Really, we’re all colorblind. The only question is one of which combinations of light wavelengths a person has high or low sensitivity to detecting. If most people’s eyes were like mine, then the people with what we now consider normal vision would be the ones considered “colorblind”.
June 12th, 2007 at 13:27
FYI
F (For) U (unlawful) C (carnal) K (knowledge)
is not a word. Used in the Mideval Courts of England; For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge. Think about it! Does your Slogan make sense????
June 18th, 2007 at 3:17
I got this T-shirt for my colorblind boyfriend (who could read it, incidentally, the colors aren’t picked carefully)and he laughed so hard he cried. He wore it today and got one compliment and a lot of chuckles.
July 3rd, 2007 at 3:03
I’m caught between thinking it’s funny and being put off because so many people out there won’t take it as ironic humour.
Surely there are more creative possibilities though. “I took the (colour plate) pill” springs to mind (vary the colour plate to suit sentiment ;)).
July 9th, 2007 at 7:04
I like the concept, but bad execution. I do like the idea of laughing at yourself
July 11th, 2007 at 19:41
I’d buy one that read “Congratulations! You’re not colourblind!”, but not this one.
November 24th, 2007 at 18:13
It seems to me that most of you unfortunate enough to be colourblind, have also lost your sense of humour! I bought one for my nephew who is colourblind. His brother had to tell him what it said. He nearly pi. Oh. Sorry. i nearly said ‘wet himself’, but i wouldn’t want to offend the incontinent…
November 26th, 2007 at 18:31
it’s not a site against colorblinds!
this site makes fun with everything!
and thats why i like those shits so much!
January 17th, 2008 at 7:57
i’m colourblind and cant see what it says, but im not offended and i think its a fun non offensive gag, good on ya!
January 22nd, 2008 at 2:21
If I had a credit card to buy online with, I’d buy it. I think it’s great! I mean, ok, it’s insensitive drivel, but I still get a kick out of feeling superior to my normal-sighted friends who think that colour blindness means I see grass as red and stop signs as some kind of greeny-purple (ok, this is what I tell them it looks like!). If I can think they are silly then I can laugh at a t-shirt they can read but I can’t. It’s just a pity that I probably couldn’t wear it on casual Fridays to work…
Heck. And for the record, my wife is a carrier and I’m red-green cb - which means (I think) our daughter has something like a 50/50 chance at being one of those rare cb women! I’m not sure of the exact genetics, but it is close. Just depends on whether she inherited my wife’s normal or recessive X chromosome.
March 5th, 2008 at 2:17
im a cb girl and i would so buy this shirt…my normal vision friends would get a kick out of that oh and if i look hard at it i can make out the letters a bit…pick better colors
March 11th, 2008 at 4:45
Even as a colorblind person, I think this is frigan hilarious. I only saw the preview, not knowing what it was, and my sister laughed and said that shirt is awesome. I was confused until I figured out there was a message hidden from us colorblinded. Ha, I like the idea though. Maybe I’ll wear it to school, as far as I know, its a T-shirt with a cool design.
June 5th, 2008 at 21:59
im colorblind (cant read it), and this shirt is freakin awesome. i hope someone buys it for me for my birthday comin up.. HAHAA
June 26th, 2008 at 20:36
I think it’s funny.
Guy:
You’re X’Y
Your wife is XX’
The possible combinations are: XX’, X’X', X’Y and XY.
This means you have a 25% chance of each child being the following:
A non-color-blind daughter who is a carrier, a colourblind daughter, a colourblind son, or a normal visoned son.
50% of your daughters will be colorblind
50% of your sons will be colorblind
This, of course, are mere probalities and may not work out true to life.
Hope this helps!
August 4th, 2008 at 12:47
A very interesting T-Shirt!