I sometimes think internet memes are designed to separate the critical thinkers from the gullible.
We've all seen these crazy memes in which someone promotes some relatively common event, or coincidental observation, then says, "This won't happen again for 948 years," or some other outlandish claim.
The two most common reactions are to think "wow," then share it, or to say "hmm, that doesn't seem right" and debunk it.
I am the latter type of person.
The latest one I saw was someone noticed the next 10 days of 5/20/25, 5/21/25, 5/22/25, 5/23/25, 5/24/25, 5/25/25, 5/26/25, 5/27/25, 5/28/25 and 5/29/25, read the same backward as forward.
Kinda cool, right? But then came the claim: "This won't happen again for 40 years."
Hmmm, that doesn't seem right.
And it's not, of course. It's going to happen again next year in June and the following year in July etc.
Maybe he means it's not going to happen in May again for 40 years.
Also wrong. Forty years from now is 2065, so 5/20/65, 5/21/65, 5/22/65 etc. Nope, doesn't work. How about 5/60/65? The sequence works, but there is no such day.
It will work again in May in 100 years. And in 90 years with slightly different dates: 5/10/15, 5/11/15 etc.
The crazy thing about accepting these memes, is that if a person were to just think about it for a few seconds, they would never foolishly share it.
Of course, by the time I saw this, hundreds of thousands of people had done just that. I can only imagine the originator is sitting back and laughing at how gullible people are.
Another reaction to this kind of meme is to make fun of it.
My favourite recently was posted by a friend who put up a picture of the moon. On top, it said, "The moon will rise tonight." On the bottom it said, "This won't happen again for one day."
Now, that's funny.
