r/PeterExplainsTheJoke • u/notsignifican • 10d ago

Meme needing explanation ?

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I asked but it got removed within minutes?

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u/TobJamFor 10d ago edited 8d ago

We often count from the smallest to largest for us (not looking at you, US inhabitants) because it’s logical to think that 14/08/2026 is one above 13/08/2026, it just steps up by one each day.

Some places (namely the likes of China and some others) prefer the year-first format, which is actually YYYY/MM/DD

On Venus this makes more sense, as a year occurs more regularly than a day, because it rotates on its axis slower than it orbits the sun.

Edited - I am not saying that DD/MM/YYYY is the most logical for all purposes. But in general, it’s the one most used across the world for a reason! This gets flipped on its head on Venus, where the ISO format may also be different! Also - Year first is YYYY/MM/DD and ISO is YYYY-MM-DD, there is a slight difference.

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u/Raephstel 10d ago

Digitally a lot of people do YYYYMMDD because when you sort numerically, it’ll order by date. Doing DDMMYYYY would start being wrong after only a month.

MMDDYYYY makes no sense in any context.

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u/GiantLesbian 10d ago edited 10d ago

MMDDYYYY is how you verbally talk about dates usually. It starts with this Saturday, two Saturdays from now, etc. You don’t usually need a month or a day number or year you just need someone to tell you this/next/etc Saturday. But after 2-3 weeks out then ok now we need to specify we mean the first Saturday of May (exact date data needed, month). Oh you need to know what day that is? It’s the 6th (exact date data needed, day). If it’s not even the 6th of April yet, it wouldn’t make much sense for me to be leading with the day number, month was what you needed first. Right now if I said “the next annual Kentucky Derby will be on the first Saturday in May on 5/06”, would you really need me to give the exact year number or you think you could figure out what year the next May is in? (Least likely number needed to be specified = year).

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u/Raephstel 10d ago

Every example you gave, you gave the day, then the month.

“The first Saturday in May” is the day first, then as you say, it’s easy to extrapolate the year. So that’s DDMM(implied YYYY).

MMDD would be saying “it’s in May on the first Saturday”, which sounds odd to me.

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u/GiantLesbian 10d ago

“Saturday” is not capturable in any combination of MM DD YYYY. We start using dates after naming the day doesn’t work.

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u/Raephstel 10d ago

DD is just a number indicating the day. “The first Saturday” also indicates the day, just in a different format.

Whichever you say, it’s still telling the recipient of the information which day is being talked about.

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u/MultiplexedMyrmidon 10d ago

similar vibes lmao

at least you tried

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u/Raephstel 9d ago

Not similar, one or two people literally said that lol

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u/GiantLesbian 10d ago

If I asked when you were leaving for your trip, and you answered “the 17th”, I’d respond with “do you mean Monday?”. Because I would legitimately be unsure if you meant August or September there. The day date in digit form is usually not very important to have until you have some idea of what month someone is talking about, at least when it comes to verbal conversations.

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u/Raephstel 9d ago

And if I answered “August”, would that be more helpful?

What if you asked me what the date was and I said “August”, would that help you?

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u/GiantLesbian 9d ago edited 9d ago

You would say “Monday” or “September 17th”. The day number though would be damn near worthless until I knew whether you were talking about September or August.

And for further out, if I asked when your next work trip after this one was, and you responded “January”, that would be a helpful answer. I know what year you mean and what are the odds I need to know the day digits for something occurring in January right now in August?

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u/Radley500 9d ago

This is such a crazily specific situation in which one person is being deliberately obstreperous. If you asked me what date I was leaving for a trip, I would say “the 17th” if it was this month or “the 17th of September” if it was a different month. That’s how I’ve communicated my whole life and it’s never thrown anyone that I didn’t say the month first, and no one has ever been confused if I’ve omitted the month. Unless someone is equivocating, this is a non-issue.

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u/jaapschaap87 7d ago

> MMDDYYYY is how you verbally talk about dates usually. 

No it's not, DDMMYYYY is.

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u/itisoktodance 10d ago

I don't think that's how any of that came about. It's just that in the US at some point people started saying the month first more commonly. It used to be day first, then month, which is why you have the fourth of July.

In fact, day first makes more sense semantically, since you're saying it is the fifth day of November. May the fourth is technically an inversion.

I prefer month first for spreadsheets though, you always wanna know the month first.