213
xkcd #3184: Funny Numbers
(imgs.xkcd.com)
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/
all the older ones at least had some kind of meaning behind them, this new shit is actual brainrot.
Some kind of meaning behind them, huh?
Let me ask you something.
Can you count...
All the way...
To shfifty-five?
Shwam.
Doo.
Two and helf.
Scheven.
Schfourteen-teen.
Shwenty One.
Shwenty-Seven and Helf
27
37
WHAT YOU SAY?!!
But this isn't even a fair comparison because that's literally a whole ass song with an animation compared to a dumb kid in some viral video saying six or seven
What's the meaning of 42? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡° )
It’s the answer
But what is the question?
It was Jackie Robinson's number
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.
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
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 homocide. Kids just didn’t understand it and thought it referred to something else.
What
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.