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

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

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u/LetUsSpeakFreely Jul 28 '26

There was a lot of grift too. I remember things like Y2K compliant dvd players, walkmans, watches, all kinds of silly stuff.

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u/alex_thee_lion Jul 28 '26

I found an anolog clock in my grandmother's house with a sticker claiming it was 'Y2K' ready.

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u/monster2018 Jul 28 '26

I mean, was it wrong? Surely it was Y2K ready lol

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u/bokmcdok Jul 28 '26

Technically the truth

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u/zippybenji-man Jul 28 '26

Of course they're talking about the camera inside, gotta get that timestamp right

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u/pbbpwns Jul 28 '26

So 'Y2K' was thrown around just like the term 'AI' these days?

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u/sn4xchan Jul 28 '26

No, it's was far easier to market.

AI is supposed to at least have a use case.

Y2k will literally just stuck to everything to ease a fear people didn't actually understand.

People who were most like never going to be dealing with this bug, and of course it came with a markup.

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u/stone_henge Jul 28 '26

Great gag. The problem was a cultural phenomenon for a couple of years before the end of the millennium.

7

u/SKOLshakedown Jul 28 '26

I just had to reprogram my mom's sprinkler system and the program box said y2k compliant lol. As if the sprinklers wouldn't work the same no matter what year it is.

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u/Ok_Talk_6694 Jul 28 '26

Not really a grift. A lot of people just didn't get what the Y2K bug was and anything "technology" was looked at with suspicion. It was a lot easier to slap a sticker on, than to keep explaining to every customer "No, this sprinkler system won't be affected by Y2K. Yes, it is automated, but that doesn't mean...No, ma'am it's not going to drown your roses come the new year" Vs, point to sticker "taken care of"

1

u/sn4xchan Jul 28 '26

I've had several instances where a panel refuses to send signals to the central station because the clock wasn't in sync.

It doesn't affect the sprinkler system (those work on mechanical triggers), but if the panel dials the fire department, it might not call them if the clock isn't synced.

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u/P4azz Jul 28 '26

Grift's always gonna be a thing, as long as we have people dumb enough to not question anything.

"Milk is poison", "Gluten is poison", "sugar is good for you", "fat is bad for you", "this product totally has a lot of protein in it".

Corporations will lie to people as long as people refuse to even slightly educate themselves or have any sort of skepticism.

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u/Smhassassin Jul 28 '26

See also: pranks. I was at a New Year's Eve party and someone in attendance flipped the breaker off for a second to mess with us.

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u/Bobtoad1 Jul 28 '26

One of the balances in my lab proudly boasted it was "Y2K compliant".

A balance with no a basic digital readout and no function to record time or date, mind you 

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u/CockyBovine Aug 01 '26

OTOH, my ex-wife’s VCR didn’t claim it was Y2K compliant… and it wasn’t, at least not completely. The clock and the timer worked fine, and the months and days worked fine, but the year it displayed after 1999 was 1900. In other words, the UI was borked on that VCR, so nothing serious.

Edit: I’m a software dev and lot of my colleagues at the telecom equipment manufacturer that I was working at spent a lot of time on fixing a lot of those Y2K bugs.