Yesterday, an eclipse was visible across the United States. This led to many people being very normal, with reactions ranging from witches casting spells to people thinking that a portal to Hell was being opened. Good to see we’ve regressed to medieval peasantry!


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Fortunately, most people responded the way we would all expect: by looking at the eclipse. Unfortunately, they didn’t wear the requisite eyewear while doing it, and now, everyone is complaining that their eyes hurt for some reason.



Looking at Google Trends, searches for “eye pain,” “eyes hurt” and “stared at eclipse” are going up. Additionally, casually browsing through X/Twitter, one can easily find many different people questioning why their eyes hurt, or admitting to staring directly into the sun — and wondering why their pupils are stinging afterwards.






In fairness, some claim that their eyes hurt after staring at the eclipse while wearing the required glasses — which could mean that they were either wearing them wrong or inadvertently bought one of the pairs of fake eclipse glasses that were flooding Amazon and other markets around the time of the event.



Some on X/Twitter have claimed that this trend of looking directly into the sun was the result of a MAGA conspiracy against science. In short, this is bullshit — going by Google search trends, this trend in idiocy appears to be pretty evenly spread across locations and political ideologies. That’s right: Everyone from your Fox News uncle to your MSNBC aunt was having their corneas burned out yesterday. Finally, something to unite us in this divided time!


If you were one of the fools who stared directly into the sun — first, ha ha ha ha ha. Second, you’re probably fine, at least according to USA Today. While you may experience some temporary discomfort, and you probably did some damage to your eyeballs, it likely wasn’t enough to cause any permanent issues.


In fact, across both the U.S. and Canada, only “about 100 documented cases of eye damage were reported after the 2017 total solar eclipse,” writes the paper you used to get outside of your hotel room, and “most people who visited emergency rooms with concerns of watery eyes or blurred vision were mainly fine.”


Let’s just hope you remember to buy glasses by the time the next eclipse rolls around in 2044.