13 milliseconds are hardly enough to fully understand the pics from the r/hmmm subreddit. You might need to do some double or triple takes to fully get the meaning and notice what's really going on there. But people like that kind of stuff on the internet: the r/hmmm subreddit has over two million followers (or internet aesthetes, as they call themselves).

If you're unsure what qualifies for a "hmmm" image, the subreddit has some guidelines. They claim that hmmms are supposed to be textless and rely on the visual only. A good hmmm, according to the subreddit, will "make you think about the context, do a double take, invoke a deeper meaning, or just leave you thinking about how or why they exist."

On the weird side of the internet, ripe with communities like r/lowrescrops, r/internet funeral, and r/mildlyinteresting, the r/hmmm subreddit stands out for its dedication to aesthetics. "hmmms should be aesthetic and meaningful, avoid anything that is merely r/mildlyinteresting," the subreddit's bio states.

It's no surprise, then, that the community has "internet as an art" in its description. Thus is the art of the internet: random, nonsensical, sometimes confusing, self-referential, and doused in sarcasm. So what if it takes us a few moments to understand what's happening in a picture? We've got nothing but time to procrastinate when we're online, right?

If we were to treat these confusing images as art, then there's no shame in having to look at them just a bit longer than usual. Yet that's not to say that people tend to look at paintings for very long. One survey, for example, found that people look at a painting for an average of 17 seconds. 

The Louvre claims that most visitors look at the Mona Lisa for about 15, and a survey from the MET found that people look at an artwork for about 32.5 seconds. Do those 17 or 32.5 seconds allow us to fully understand a work of art? Depends on the person, of course, but the same goes for confusing internet images.

Our brains might be able to categorize the objects in a photograph in milliseconds, yet we're not quite able to understand its full meaning that fast. Just like we need to look at a painting for longer than 30 seconds, we might need longer for that meme or confusing pic in order for our brains to be able to decipher it. 

The way we see and interpret images is quite fascinating in general. The amount of things that happen all around us and bombard our visual senses is enormous. Our eyes also don't see a stable image all the time: we walk, move our heads and eyes, and even blink, so, the visual input changes constantly. Yet why is the image of the world around us always so stable?

In 2022, researchers were able to somewhat answer that question. Our brain doesn't analyze every single visual snapshot. Instead, it has a stabilization mechanism. Our brains perceive the average of what our eyes have seen in the last 15 seconds. It's sort of like living in the past: the brain consolidates all the visual input it receives into one impression every 15 seconds.

Trying to interpret every single visual stimulus that happens around us all the time would simply make us go mad. "If our brains were always updating in real time, the world would feel like a chaotic place with constant fluctuations in light, shadow and movement," the study's authors wrote. "We would feel like we were hallucinating all the time."

That's one of the reasons why we don't notice subtle visual changes, say, a person aging. The researchers claim that this visual smoothing by the brain is also responsible for us not recognizing stunt doubles in movies sometimes. "The brain sticks to the past because the past is a good predictor of the present," they claim.

But the past probably won't help you interpret the images from this list. Still, let us know which ones you liked the best by upvoting them, and don't forget to comment which ones confused the most! Also, if you'd like to see more contextless pics from the r/hmmm subreddit, head over here, here, or here!