Instagram users baffled by woman’s gravity-defying rope swing fall: ‘How’s that possible?’

A woman on Instagram is going viral after sharing the “mind-blowing” optical illusion that occurred when she fell from a rope swing.

The clip, posted by user Myka Shae on May 18, begins at the top of a wooden platform. Shae, standing at the edge of the platform, grabs the swing and leaps out over the water.

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From there, things begin to get much more confusing. Shae ultimately loses her grip, falls from the rope swing, but instead of falling straight into the water, she appears to stop completely in mid-air.

Then, as if she’s crashed into some sort of invisible object, Shae flips upside down and drops into the water in a completely different direction.

Shae captioned her video with a joking remark about the fall, but it was her strange descent that seemed to draw most users’ attention.

“2020 hit me hard like…. Happy Monday, friends! I hope my sister makes y’all laugh as hard as I did watching this,” she wrote in the post, which has since been viewed more than 186,000 times.

Many commenters called the optical illusion “mind-blowing,” suggesting that, somehow, Shae had managed to defy the laws of physics.

“How is this possible,” one user remarked.

“An error in the Matrix,” another added.

“Explain that,” another user demanded.

Other users, however, were quick to point out what’s really going on in the clip. As many commenters noted, Shae actually does hit an “invisible” object — or rather, one that’s not easily captured on an iPhone camera.

Here’s what’s happening: The rope swing has a second, smaller rope draped underneath it, which can be seen at the beginning of the clip. Once Shae swings out over the water and falls, she slams into that rope, which has now been pulled tight.

Because the thinness of the rope and the darkness of the water, it’s almost impossible to see that second rope, causing many users to believe Shae hit something that wasn’t there.

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