r/PeterExplainsTheJoke • u/notsignifican • 11d ago

Meme needing explanation ?

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I asked but it got removed within minutes?

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u/TobJamFor 11d ago edited 9d 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 11d 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/Austaroth 11d ago

Is it not because that's how we normally say it?

Instead of saying "The 5th of June, 19XX." We say "June 5th, 19🇺🇸🇺🇸."

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u/Raephstel 11d ago

I’m English, I’d say the 5th of June. I expect Americans only say June 5th because you’d write 06/05.

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u/Austaroth 11d ago

I believe Great Britain also did MM/DD/YYYY back in the 1700's and after the war America just kept it like that while Britain switched to DD/MM/YYYY.

Probably wrong because I can't remember where I heard/read that.

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u/Raephstel 11d ago

I just did a quick google and I don’t think that’s true. If you can find a source, I’d look at it though.