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Funny Numbers

|< < Prev #3184 (December 22, 2025)

Title text: In 1899, people were walking around shouting '23' at each other and laughing, and confused reporters were writing articles trying to figure out what it meant.

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Explanation

This comic refers to the recent brainrot meme "6 7", often accompanied by moving your hands up and down.

While many people think this is a novel activity of the latest generation of kids, the comic points out that there's a long history of young people finding ways to have fun with certain numbers.

The numbers listed are:

Number	Adopted?	Explanation
23 (skidoo!)	around 1899	The number relates to leaving quickly (a suggestion to go away), for indeterminate reasons. It was a death row prisoner's number in a then-new stage play based on A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. Soon after its coining, it was popularly combined with a term of similar use to become the phrase "23 skidoo".
42	1978	A number made popular by The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It is the undisputed answer to the "ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything". Exactly what that question is, however, remains unknown and probably unknowable.
69	1790s?	Refers to a sexual act. Described by the French as "soixante-neuf", i.e. "sixty-nine", at least as far back as the eighteenth century; though the concept itself is far older, and it would be very difficult to say when the mathematicians finally took note of 'young people' referencing it.
420	1971	This number (originally the time "4:20 pm", and later connected to April the 20th) has become slang for smoking marijuana.
1,337	1980s?	"Leet-speak" is a form of textual obfuscation using an alternative orthography (various character substitutions and phonetic shifts) to 'spell' words. "1337" is the usual way to represent the term "LEET" ("1" is commonly a lower-case "L", "3"s are often used as "E"s – see 58,008's calcuator-speak examples – and "7" closely resembles a "T"). This in turn, pronouncing "L" and "EET" separately, is the word "elite" (i.e. the self-description of the in-group who are using this system).
58,008	1970s?	The number "58008" spells "BOOBS" if you show it by seven-segment displays, like on many calculators, and turn the display upside down. This is not the only message you can say using calculators; for example, 0.7734 'spells' "hELL'O"/”hello". The inverted "3"/"E" relationship may have inspired the use of "1337" to represent "LEET".
6 7	2025	This meme originated from the song "Doot Doot" by Skrilla and quickly became an in-crowd joke, together with hand actions, among many young people. It was said to have been meaningless, though that hasn't stopped people from trying to assign a meaning to it.

The title text claims that the media reaction to "23-skiddoo" around the turn of the 20th century (one of the oldest terms, possibly the first noted by the mathematicians of that day) was very similar to the current media reaction to "6 7". This highlights a perennial historical cycle of the Young being confusing to the Old; with the Young growing up to become the Old and being confused by a new generation of Young.

Other cartoons featuring lists of symbolic numbers include 487: Numerical Sex Positions.

Transcript

[A banner is hanging from the ceiling with a large line of text above a smaller one:]

Mathematical society

2025 meeting

[Below the banner there are four people, three of them are standing close together to the left with Hairbun leftmost addressing Cueball and Megan who is looking at her. Ponytail is standing to the far right next to a whiteboard, and is using a marker to circle round the last of several items on the board.]

Hairbun: Any other new developments from the year to cover before we wrap?

Cueball: Oh, the teens picked a new funny number.

Megan: Aww, I'm glad to hear they're still doing that.

Ponytail: I'll add it to the list.

[The board generally contains two columns of numbers, the first row having text after its number, thus across both columns. The last pair of digits is the new 'number' circled round by Ponytail. From top, in reading order, they are:]

23 (skidoo!)

42    1,337

69    58,008

420   6 7

---

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