Another Reason the Internet Is Making Us Stupid
My father called me all excited the other day. Apparently it’s a meme floating around in FWDs, but I got it the old fashioned way. Through my cell phone.
“Got a pen and paper?” he said.
“I have a pen, but I’m walking–”
“That’s all. I don’t care if you write it on your hand. Take the year you were born, ’82, and then add your next age on your next birthday, 29.”
“Dad, my birth year is ’80, and I’ll be 31 next year.”
“It’s 111. It all adds up to 111. Isn’t that insane? Like ‘The Da Vinci Code’ or something. And anybody born this century they’ll get the number 11. And anybody over 100 will get 211.”
Apparently, this was told to me father by an old man at work. Other than that, he didn’t know where the formula came from. (I had no clue that it was a meme, nor did I know anything about the halfhearted prophecies rounding the internet, derived from some idea that this meme’s 111 signifies a date.) My father’s no dummy, but he was puzzled and so was I. Later, I showed my boyfriend. He was puzzled, too, that I was puzzled.
“It’s like this,” my boyfriend said, trying to explain it. Unsuccessfully. I could kind of grasp that the meme has something to do with hundreds and tens, I just didn’t know what. I did figure out that there was more to meet the eye here. Since the figures of everybody I know born in the 20th Century can be plugged into any year and the sum will resemble that year (i.e., one year ago I was still born in 1980 and that year I turned 30. 80 + 30 = 110.) I did suspect that inverting the formula might hold the clue.
“Babe, if we forget your mother’s birthday again we can just subtract her birth date from the year.”
Oh my good God, I’m retarded. This, people, is why the internet is making us dumb. If you find the difference between a person’s birth year and now, you’ll discover their age? No. Fucking. Shit. This right here is the curtain, and we’re about to pull it back.
In order to recover my sense of self-worth, I determined to figure this business out. To solve an internet riddle, I went to the internet. This time, the internet would work for me, not against me. So I found this website, Maths Questions, where people far smarter than I am thoroughly work the problem out.
A hint is in using the trick for a 21st Century kid’s figures. My nephew was born in 2003, and in August he’ll be 8. 03 + 8 = 11. 11, because it’s 2011. This is so simple, it only appears difficult. We get 3 from the year 2003 and 8 because in 2011 my nephew will be 8 years old. Add to that the 3 from 2003, we get 11.
Am I explaining this well? Let me put it this way. This 111 trick works just like last year the 110 trick worked and the year before that the 109 trick worked, and in 1990 everybody’s sums equaled 90 (for me, ’80 + 10 y/o = 90) and so on and so on. Next year, there will be an internet meme about 112 and psychics will predict that either January 12th or December 1st will be one hell of a day for all of us.
From the above mentioned website: We can illustrate this meme by working backwards to find somebody’s age. x = the last two digits of the year they were born; and we’ll start with 111 not because of the meme but because that’s 100 years from the century we were born plus these last 11.
AGE = 111 – x
For example, I was born in 1980 and in 2011 I’ll be 31. Get it? Don’t worry if you don’t. It’ll dawn on you, like most magic tricks. This illusion seems more complicated than it is because it asks the audience to work backwards with two seemingly unrelated figures.
Now I just have to decide if I should tell my father about it. Didn’t he let me believe in Santa Claus as long as I needed to?
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Puzzled Daily 