Permanent Links

Poll

What should be the topic for the next Impossibly Stupid poll?

A Town Square Poll Space

Tech Corner

See Also

[ICO]NameLast modifiedSizeDescription

[PARENTDIR]Parent Directory  -  
[   ]tags=diaf2023-08-06 21:04 0  
[   ]info.json2023-08-06 21:04 40  
[TXT]README.html2023-08-06 21:04 1.6K 

When did K become the new 0?

Remember Y2K? Not the year or the computer problem, but the abbreviation itself? It seemed pretty hip at the time to shorten 2000 to 2K, especially with all the deep irony that shortening years to two characters was the cause of all the fussing back then.

Afterwards, there was some use of K to substitute for 00 in subsequent years. It wasn't outlandish to see 2K5 somewhere instead of 2005. It didn't buy you much savings in length, and it wasn't particularly cool anymore. But you could wrap your head around it; it made some small amount of sense.

Just today I saw an ad for something that used 2K11, and my Impossibly Stupid senses started to tingle. Since I didn't see this happen at all for 2010, I did a quick trend check:

2K11, 2K10, 2K1K, 2K9, 2K09

To my surprise, it looks like 2K10 was actually a more popular usage than 2K9! I never saw it, though.

You could probably argue that K wasn't a substitute for 0 this year because, in writing 2K10, the last zero wasn't made into a K. But from 2011 to 2019, there is only the one zero that is being replaced by the K, so it hardly seems sensible to do so.

Anybody care to make a long-term prediction how marketers are going to try to make 2020 look . . . special? You know they're not going to let it just stand as a number. Be very, very afraid . . .