Thursday afternoon the White House weighed in on the greatest debate of our time: Laurel vs. Yanny. The clip is obviously supposed to be light-hearted and fun, a distraction but a harmless one. Naturally, this inspired people on the left to new fits of outrage.
The clip opens with Ivanka Trump and includes cameo appearances by Kellyanne Conway, Sarah Sanders, Larry Kudlow, VP Mike Pence and President Trump himself (plus several more people I don’t recognize). Most of the White House staff, to my relief, hears “Laurel.” That’s obviously the right answer and I can’t believe there’s anyone on the other side of this debate, but I guess some people have poor hearing from years of head-banging at metal shows.
Lots of people seem to appreciate this in the spirit in which it was intended. Some thought it was funny as these things go. But within 10 minutes of it going up, comedian/headhunter Kathy Griffin was dumping on it:
It is actually a demonstration of how we can all hear different things, depending on bass/treble, shape of ears, size of ear canals, how much loud noise (music) we've damaged our ears with, etc.
Some audio nut cooked up the audio sample. And he scored his 15 minutes of fame.
Even Trump got in on the act. So they'll kill it now for sure.
I read that some girl looked up the word "laurel" on the Internet and asked the computer to pronounce it. It came out "yanny". Which started the research.
You are right. I read a Slashdot piece and it had an audiophile explaining it. The way it read made me think that he had composed the sound sample himself. The actual source of the audio is:
