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xkcd #3184: Funny Numbers

https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/funny_numbers.png

xkcd #3184: Funny Numbers

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/

explainxkcd for #3184

hOrni @lemmy.world - 18hr

For millennials, like me: 1337 means "LEET" which is short for "Elite".

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Ludicrous0251 - 17hr

Sorry, what? I'm a millennial, this is common knowledge for anyone who played a videogame in the last quarter century.

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hoppolito @mander.xyz - 17hr

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.

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grue @lemmy.world - 17hr

What the h311 is wrong with you? Us millennials invented 1337!

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Log in | Sign up - 15hr

Nope. Source: am gen X.

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ByteJunk @lemmy.world - 15hr

Yep I think pops here has this one, us Millennials grew up with leet speak, it already was a thing in the 80s.

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Log in | Sign up - 15hr

That's the first time anyone called me pops! NOW I feel old!

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SanguinePar - 3hr

Sorry to hear that, gramps!

(Am also Gen X. Sigh...)

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veroxii - 12hr

Yeah it was common on BBSes late 80s at least. Also am gen X.

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chunes @lemmy.world - 9hr

People get confused because leet speak had a resurgence around 1997 or so.

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AndyMFK @lemmy.dbzer0.com - 16hr

I'm confused as to where you fit in the Millennial demographic for you to have not known this already

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hOrni @lemmy.world - 16hr

It seems, I'm on the older side.

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BeeegScaaawyCripple - 5hr

if you're in your 40s and don't know this i'm worried.

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affenlehrer @feddit.org - 18hr

1337 h4x0r

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qbus @lemmy.world - 16hr

Hack the planet

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tensorpudding @lemmy.world - 11hr

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

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davepleasebehave @lemmy.world - 10hr

back when the internet was not cool

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wavebeam @lemmy.world - 8hr

The internet used to be a place

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BeeegScaaawyCripple - 5hr

oh they had designers then

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gangdinesout @lemmy.world - 2hr

Yeah, I had my Facebook set to leetspeak back in the day when it was restricted to college students. Of course, Zuckerborg was still a POS and I got rid of my Facebook ages ago

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SaharaMaleikuhm @feddit.org - 17hr

Ragebait. Millenials are like 40 and have back pain.

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squirrel - 17hr

84CK P41N

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Sabata - 10hr

D0/\/'7 m4k3 f|_|/\/ 0f /\/\y 84(k

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KENNY_LOGIN_LILLIAN @lemmy.world - 15hr

i installed a kali linux vm and nmap, wireshark, tcpdump, and metasploit cuz i wanna be teh 1337 h4x0r i wanted to be when i was a 15 year old in 2001

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BeardedGingerWonder @feddit.uk - 12hr

Had a friend who wrote his french oral presentation out in 1337, he was allowed notes but not the word for word presentation. He showed the teacher beforehand, she said that's fine, looks like gibberish.

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poweruser @lemmy.sdf.org - 12hr

I did that too, but back then it was called Backtrack Linux. I bought a special Atheros chipset WiFi card for my laptop's PCMCIA slot. The built-in 802.11b WiFi card worked under Linux but only by using the Windows ME driver in NDISWrapper, which didn't support promiscuous mode.

The Atheros chipsets could be configured (by flashing the firmware with a blob I got from a BBS, if I recall) to capture the traffic from nearby wireless networks. In particular, I wanted to pick up the signal from when a device first connects. There was a bug in Windows XP that could cause the WiFi to drop briefly, then promptly reconnect. By triggering that bug over and over I could capture a lot of reconnect packets in a short time frame.

Then I'd save the data to a big file and pipe it to Aircrack and extract the Wired Equivalent Privacy password.

I was a 1337 H4XX0|2 B-)

::: spoiler Tap for spoiler Well, that's how the tutorial said it would work anyway. I actually never could get enough packets captured. The signal strength was too low :::

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ITGuyLevi @programming.dev - 9hr

Just to toss this in there, it totally wasn't a bug, you were sending a deauth packet to force them to reconnect then recapturing their auth sequence until you had enough packets to crack the WEP key. A pretty fun demo back then was to setup a wireless bridge between an open public network and a rogue AP (usually we'd just use a pcmcia WiFi card bridge to the internal WiFi adapter); then (due to pretty much no https anywhere), you could follow peoples browsing habits, log into their MySpace/LiveJournal/DeadJournal/GeoCities/etc (passwords were pretty commonly passed in plaintext), etc.

It was never done nefariously, but allowed us to learn a lot.

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four @lemmy.zip - 13hr

Same, but I was 15 like 15 years later lol

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ILikeBoobies @lemmy.ca - 6hr

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.

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MyNameIsRichard @lemmy.ml - 13hr

Also for geeky Gen X

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Valmond @lemmy.world - 13hr

Y35!

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wieson @feddit.org - 15hr

I feel like (6, 7) should definitely be a tuple

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Trev625 @sopuli.xyz - 18hr

What about Schfifty-Five?

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hOrni @lemmy.world - 18hr

Three fiddy?

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showmeyourkizinti @startrek.website - 14hr

Tree-fiddy came so close to making the list I think but it feels right that it didn’t.

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Yankee_Self_Loader @lemmy.world - 16hr

Shiggity Schwat

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TonyOstrich - 13hr

Girlfriend's age?

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Resonosity @lemmy.dbzer0.com - 12hr

My IQ

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wolfrasin @lemmy.today - 10hr

Fourteen-teen

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Vengefu1 Tuna - 12hr

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.

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[object Object] - 40min

23 also independently came to prominence with the 23 enigma, originating with William S. Burroughs and popularized by ‘The Illuminatus! Trilogy’ and ‘Principia Discordia’. It postulates that the number 23 appears to have significance suspiciously often.

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raspberriesareyummy @lemmy.world - 12hr

Missing "about three-fitty"

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the_trash_man @lemmy.world - 4hr

Tree fiddy

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raspberriesareyummy @lemmy.world - 3hr

true I misspelled that :/

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MagnyusG - 18hr

all the older ones at least had some kind of meaning behind them, this new shit is actual brainrot.

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recentSlinky - 18hr

What's the meaning of 42? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡° )

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WHARRGARBL @lemmy.world - 18hr

It’s the answer

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Thaurin @lemmy.world - 17hr

But what is the question?

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Appoxo @lemmy.dbzer0.com - 16hr

That is the real question!

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BeeegScaaawyCripple - 5hr

we've been over this what is six times nine

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LifeInMultipleChoice @lemmy.world - 18hr

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

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Thaurin @lemmy.world - 17hr

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.

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LifeInMultipleChoice @lemmy.world - 16hr

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

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Melmi - 16hr

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?"

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MyNameIsRichard @lemmy.ml - 12hr

Which works in base 13!

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atopi - 9hr

Im 93% sure that 6*9 doesnt equal 42 in base 6227020800

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BeeegScaaawyCripple - 5hr

which, when a mathemagician occasionally asked adams about it, he would respond along the lines of "oh fuck"

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hoppolito @mander.xyz - 17hr

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.

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Hazel - 13hr

I'd like to add that that's called a shibboleth :)

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Thaurin @lemmy.world - 17hr

I’ve heard it said that 420 referred to the time 4:20 pm, when a group would come together to smoke, but that sounds contrived.

420 can also refer to the birth date of Adolf Hitler, which makes 420 a bit darker than just “haha, smoke.”

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toynbee @lemmy.world - 16hr

23 was before my time, but it is 1/3 of 69, so there's that.

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bottleofchips - 16hr

Ni

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0x0 @lemmy.zip - 12hr

Ni's NaN though and they no longer say it.

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TrillianAstra - 10hr

Japanese would argue otherwise, 二 is certainly a number.

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boonhet @sopuli.xyz - 16hr

23 is from the movie of the guy escaping from the number 23 I think?

4
Log in | Sign up - 15hr

Thank you. I didn't know what 23 was about

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LifeInMultipleChoice @lemmy.world - 14hr

Oh shit I forgot that movie, that was a Jim Carrey movie wasn't it

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boonhet @sopuli.xyz - 11hr

I think so

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Hamartiogonic @sopuli.xyz - 17hr

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.

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Tower @lemmy.zip - 15hr

What's funnier than 24?

25

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tyler @programming.dev - 18hr

67 is the police code for a homicide. Kids just didn’t understand it and thought it referred to something else.

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felixwhynot @lemmy.world - 16hr

I thought that’s 187

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idiomaddict @lemmy.world - 15hr

In California it’s 187.

And now I gotta listen to sublime

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matti @sopuli.xyz - 7hr

187 is homicide, yes, but it says there 67 is homocide. You're welcome.

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tyler @programming.dev - 5hr

Thanks. Fucking ios keyboard gets worse every day.

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inb4_FoundTheVegan @lemmy.world - 8hr

Ok boomer

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LuigiMaoFrance @lemmy.ml - 8hr

It's the children who are wrong

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LifeInMultipleChoice @lemmy.world - 18hr

What

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Jankatarch @lemmy.world - 17hr

Teens in different countries have different funny numbers too funny enough. There is a thing influencing multiple civilizations to do this.

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w3dd1e - 6hr

Schfifty-five.

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ksigley @lemmy.world - 4hr

Shiggity shawh

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Guillermosaenz @lemmy.world - 9hr

67 sneaking onto the ‘funny numbers’ list is hilarious—teens are basically a standards committee now.

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yellow [she/her] - 4hr

Bot account? Comments seem like your average "short and humorous response" bot.

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Anas - 3hr

Definitely a bot, not sure what the point of them is on Lemmy.

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redwattlebird - 3hr

0118 999 881 999 119 725 3

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el_abuelo @programming.dev - 13min

I've had a bit of a tumble

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nek0d3r - 7min

Oh, that's easy to remember!

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kittenzrulz123 @lemmy.dbzer0.com - 6hr

42 is undeniably the funniest number

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Entertainmeonly - 26min

Sorry for the inconvenience.

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OhStopYellingAtMe - 10hr

Needs to add my favorite number: 8647

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BeeegScaaawyCripple - 5hr

and 1312

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Lightsong @lemmy.world - 6hr

Deaf people - 258 (very interesting) and 84 (there's no good direct translation for this)

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BartyDeCanter @lemmy.sdf.org - 3hr

Huh, I had never considered deaf slang before. Is there somewhere to read up on this?

3
Anas - 3hr

twennyone

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Techranger - 1hr

You stoopid

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OhStopYellingAtMe - 10hr

“Now, my story begins in nineteen dickety two. We had to say dickety 'cause the kaiser had stolen our word twenty….”

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jaschen306 @sh.itjust.works - 5hr

Women and men love it!

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flambonkscious @sh.itjust.works - 4hr

That took me so long to figure out, I'm embarrassed

2
Glitch @lemmy.dbzer0.com - 5hr

Tree fiddy

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VerilyFemme - 3hr

Where's 3.50?

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Entertainmeonly - 27min

Get outa here ya lock ness

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ksigley @lemmy.world - 4hr

There really is an xkcd for everything.

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frostysauce @lemmy.world - 3hr

They forgot 37.

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Finalsolo963 - 2hr

My girlfriend acquired 37 limes In a row?!!

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Cevilia (she/they/…) - 7hr

Strong Bad made seven fifty funny too :)

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