Title text:
In 1899, people were walking around shouting '23' at each other and laughing, and confused reporters were writing articles trying to figure out what it meant.
Transcript:
Transcript will show once it’s been added to explainxkcd.com
Source: https://xkcd.com/3184/
For millennials, like me: 1337 means "LEET" which is short for "Elite".
Sorry, what? I'm a millennial, this is common knowledge for anyone who played a videogame in the last quarter century.
I was going to say, I think the perpetuation of leetspeak and most of its use falls squarely into the millennial generation's early 90s into the early 2000s.
What the h311 is wrong with you? Us millennials invented 1337!
Nope. Source: am gen X.
Yep I think pops here has this one, us Millennials grew up with leet speak, it already was a thing in the 80s.
I'm confused as to where you fit in the Millennial demographic for you to have not known this already
1337 h4x0r
Hack the planet
Millenials pwnd the n00bs with the best of the genX back in the day, but I think leetspeak was a lot more niche than say 67 is, it was very gamercoded/nerdcoded when that wasn't cool.
Source: am millenial who had a leetspeak AIM handle back then
Ragebait. Millenials are like 40 and have back pain.
84CK P41N
D0/\/'7 m4k3 f|_|/\/ 0f /\/\y 84(k
I know it just means you aren’t familiar with it but it’s funny you picked the millennial one as the one you had to explain to millennials.
I feel like (6, 7) should definitely be a tuple
What about Schfifty-Five?
Three fiddy?
Tree-fiddy came so close to making the list I think but it feels right that it didn’t.
I was reading Wikipedia about the origins of 23 and came across this neat tidbit:
On the RMS Titanic there was a watertight door on E Deck numbered 23 which was informally called the "skidoo door" according to the testimony of the Chief Baker Charles John Joughin.
0118 999 881 999 119 725 3
Oh, that's easy to remember!
I think it's more of a 0118 999 88199 9119 725 3
Teens in different countries have different funny numbers too funny enough. There is a thing influencing multiple civilizations to do this.
31 is funny in Turkey.
all the older ones at least had some kind of meaning behind them, this new shit is actual brainrot.
What's the meaning of 42? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡° )
It’s the answer
But what is the question?
That is the real question!
What did 23 mean? I thought the post was pointing out it meant nothing? 69 is a position, 420 smoke weed, boobs, 42 was a nonsense joke that meant nothing as well. They just defined it as the meaning of life for no reason from what I know.. so 23, and 67 seem about the same, running closely behind 42
42 is from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. They built an enormous computer called Deep Thought that was the most powerful ever built to calculate the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything. The computer, after 75 million years of processing, came up with 42. The confused crowd that gathered to hear the answer did not understand. Turns out, 42 is the correct answer, but what is the question?
So after that, they decide to build another computer, which is planet Earth, to figure out the question.
It was still calculating when it was destroyed by the Vogons to make space for a hyperspace bypass.
Yeah I remember that, saying 42 is the answer to everything was what I called nonsense, as I could just as easily say 42 meaning everything is is the product you get from, 6 7 (meaning nothing). Poof, now everything is a multiple of nothing, and at the end of the day none of it made any sense or had any meaning
Funny enough, there's a point in a later book in the series where they suggest the "ultimate question'" that 42 is an answer to could be "What do you get if you multiply six by nine?"
Additionally, while technically imbued with 'meaning', even the number 420 itself is somewhat meaningless and was originally used to delineate those who knew from those who don't. It's just that it got famous enough that we now almost all know.
In that sense I would argue it filled more or less the same function as 67.
67 is the police code for a homicide. Kids just didn’t understand it and thought it referred to something else.
That number is just an example of a specific category of absurd humor. It’s rare to see that sort of thing applied to numbers though. In other situations, we’ve all seen it. Just repeat any dumb thing a hundred times and suddenly it becomes funny. You could look at pretty much any TV comedy. Pick any decade, like 60’s, 70’s, 90’s or whatever. The rule is very simple: Just repeat it and it becomes funny at some point.
You could also say that the seeds of brain rot are older than we dare to admit. The 2020s just distilled it to its purest form yet.
twennyone
You stoopid
67 sneaking onto the ‘funny numbers’ list is hilarious—teens are basically a standards committee now.
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