GREENSBORO, NC -- By now, you've heard "The Dress" color debate--white and gold or blue and black? The dress battle lit up the internet and social media, not to mention the national news and talk shows.
Who should you thank for wrapping the world up in "The Dress?" Buzzfeed writer Cates Holderness, who is from Greensboro!
Cates talked to NBC Charlotte's sister station in Greensboro Tuesday by FaceTime. She says the dress photo originated in Scotland and was posted by a woman on Tumblr. The woman wanted Buzzfeed to help settle the argument of what color the dress was.
Cates says she looked at the woman's picture and asked her co-workers what they saw and THAT is when the debate started. The story blew up, with over 28 million views in the first 24 hours!
HOW IT GOT STARTED & THE SCIENCE BEHIND IT
"So we started arguing about it in the office and after 10 minutes of yelling at each other, I said I'm going to go ahead and post it on our website and make a poll out of it and see what everyone else thinks."
Reporter: AT THE END OF THE POST WAS A COMMENT ABOUT WANTING A NASA SCIENTIST TO FIGURE IT OUT. TELL ME WHAT YOU THOUGHT ABOUT THAT."
"I loved it, because the thing that was so interesting to me was why in general. It's part of why it went so viral, people couldn't figure out why they were seeing an objective color differently than their friends and the fact we had amazing scientists weighing in on exactly why this is happening, that's what is beautiful about the internet."
Cates Holderness felt famous when....she was interviewed by WFMY News2! It is the station she grew up watching and as a little girl, wanted to be on TV on 2!
WHEN SHE FELT FAMOUS & HOW YOUR POST CAN BE NEXT"
"Honestly this is what Buzzfeed does all day, they make viral content that people want to share, so for me it was kinda all in a days work. I just didn't expect it to go this big. I broke a lot of Buzzfeed records , especially the number of visitors on the site at one time, we had over 670,000 people viewing the site at one moment !"
AND THAT WAS JUST THE START! AT WHAT MOMENT DID YOU FEEL FAMOUS?
"I grew up watching ya'll and when you reached out, and honestly I didn't feel famous until now!" HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE..YOU'VE BEEN KNOWN WORLDWIDE? "You know you never leave your hometown and I grew up watching you and I love you guys."
Cates says her 8-year-old self who grew up watching WFMY News 2 is gloating to her elementary friends right now! (She even tweeted that!) She says when she was eating grilled cheese sandwiches at Brown- Gardiner she never thought this kind of fame would happen to her.
DOES SHE LIKE THE DRESS?!?!
"The thing I've been reminding everyone is it came about because this person on Tumblr submitted it to Buzzfeed and Buzzfeed has reporters from around the world but we also have users from around the world. For me it was exciting working with Buzzfeed's community to know this huge insane thing was all because one of our users said, 'Hey Buzzfeed, will you settle this argument for us?' "
DO YOU HAVE THE DRESS, ARE THEY SENDING YOU THE DRESS?
"I don't have the dress. I'm going to be completely honest with you, I'm not a dress person." SHE DOESN'T EVEN LIKE THE DRESS?!? "I am a jeans and hoodie type of girl and it takes a lot to get me in the dress so I don't know that I would ever wear it."
While she loved this post got world-wide attention, she says what was really cool-- is she started hearing from people she went to elementary school with and hadn't heard from in a long time.
Cates is big time and a hometown girl at the same time.
