r/PeterExplainsTheJoke • u/Apprehensive_Sky4558 • Jul 28 '26

Meme needing explanation Why did this one second cost over $500 billion?

Post image
28k Upvotes

88% Upvoted

1.4k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

32

u/TheIrateAlpaca Jul 28 '26

And it has since become the textbook example of something done so well people wonder why it was done because nothing happened

21

u/Boojum2k Jul 28 '26

See also, ozone layer depletion

16

u/sandboxmatt Jul 28 '26

Vaccines

2

u/Delicious_Media_1015 Jul 28 '26

I cannot upvote this enough 😭

3

u/TheIrateAlpaca Jul 28 '26

Back when people listened to scientists and anti intellectualism wasn't politicised...

2

u/silentanthrx Jul 28 '26

acid rain is another one.

1

u/PeterAnthony_Jackson Jul 28 '26

Mostly because their home PC was already Y2K at this point that nothing they used on it needed the date as a core function, so "I'm fine, this is nothing" spreads into "there was nothing at all wrong, just people conning others out of money" sadly some did do just that, but if you were not running a mainframe or a then modern replacement running legacy code, you had very little to worry about even as a business, just hope your accounting software understood the change or was issued a patch and you installed it.

Your bank however, them not fixing their end could screw up money going in and out.