Happy Birthday To All!
All the people in the world are of the same age this year! For many, the year 2020 has been anything but nice. In an unprecedented global happening, the entire world has been caught fighting a pandemic, which has resulted in thousands losing their lives.
In the spirit of passionately advocating ways to tackle the pandemic lockdown and Covid-19, it is important to put a smile back on our faces.
Happy Birthday to all! ... “All people are the same age" this year, this is a calculation involving a numerical oddity that only occurs once every thousand years ...Your age + Your year of birth, every person is = 2020!”
On the surface, it works; It seems impressive; as by the twelfth month of the year, the majority of people have already had a birthday. But iterations of the “birth year + age equals the current year” only happening every thousand years circulated in earlier years as well, also fleshing out that no one could explain the calculations.
It is simple mathematics, rather than a mysterious once-a-millennium event. Numerology is a common source of online misinformation and unreliable memes. The belief that certain numbers or numerical patterns hold mystical powers has been involved in conspiracy theories about terrorist attacks, hurricanes and World War leaders.
Equally, internet users often spread much more trivial and less sinister claims about hidden numerical patterns and coincidences.
In logical terms, the reason this meme sometimes tricks people into believing they have witnessed something incredible or meaningful is that it expresses your age and your birth year as two separate facts, rather than explaining (as we all actually know) that your age is a function of your birth year.
You are the age you are because your age is the number of full years that have passed since you were born. The “age + birth year” canard is an old one.
A tacit sense of urgency or claims that something interesting is inexplicable drives interest and sharing or clicking. On its own, the claim looks interesting to people who haven’t thought it through. Coupling that initial lack of understanding with mystical sounding elements essentially ensures the meme’s enduring virality. Finally, everyone has a birthday, giving the claim a much wider appeal.
A simple explanation exists for both the math itself, and even the meme’s cyclical spread, your birth year plus your age (if your birthday has already occurred) will always equal the current year, for every single year in existence.
Trivia for thought!