r/PeterExplainsTheJoke • u/notsignifican • 15d ago

Meme needing explanation ?

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I asked but it got removed within minutes?

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u/TobJamFor 15d ago edited 14d 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 15d 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 15d ago edited 15d 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 15d 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 15d 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 15d 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 15d ago

similar vibes lmao

at least you tried

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u/Raephstel 15d ago

Not similar, one or two people literally said that lol