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".
1337 h4x0r
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.
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.
What about Schfifty-Five?
Three fiddy?
Fourteen-teen
Shiggity Schwat
Girlfriend's age?
My IQ
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.
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.
Further cementing that there is an xkcd for everything.
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
I think it's more of a 0118 999 88199 9119 725 3
Oh, that's easy to remember!
231, twenty three is number one!
twennyone
You stoopid
8647
If you're gonna include 23 skidoo... You should include being at sixes and sevens:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_sixes_and_sevens
67... Is very very old British slang for wrecked/confused, at odds, or hysterical.
"I was all 6's and 7's"
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