The whole idea behind my little piece of the blogosphere is that I think about things very deeply. That’s true. But also, many of the things I end up contemplating are completely random. And I don’t often know what got me started thinking about it. Case in point, the other day I was out running errands and I started thinking about that movie “Alive” from the 90s that was based on the true story of Uruguay’s rugby team whose airplane crashed in the Andes mountains. That movie traumatized me as a kid. (Remember, my parents didn’t censor anything I watched). It got me wondering how accurate it was. Did they really resort to cannibalism to survive? That led me down a Google rabbit hole and I don’t know what made me remember it at that exact moment driving down the road. By the way, yes, 100% accurate.
With that said, on another drive around town doing mundane things, I got to thinking about Y2K. This would be something that my secretary knows nothing about. I, on the other hand, very vividly remember the hysteria surrounding the turning of the new millennium. The absolute terror at the thought of computers and everything that depended on them shutting down irreparably once the clock struck midnight. Technology would apparently crash and we would all revert back to the year 1900. Better get cash out of the ATMs while you can!
The whole idea that the world was going to end at the stroke of midnight was kind of funny to me. I was not afraid one bit. For one simple reason…time zones. The apocalypse was not going to happen in one hour intervals. If it did, being on the east coast of the United States meant that we’d have several hours to prepare before it hit us. It was almost comical to think that people were so afraid of time advancing to the year 2000. It’s kind of ironic though because fast forward several years and that whole Mayan calendar thing in 2012 actually did frighten me.
But now, here’s my take on Y2K and the thing that I was thinking about. Whose idea was it??? There had to be one guy (or gal) who came up with it. And I think I know how the very first conversation about it went.
I believe in my deepest heart of hearts that it was an IT guy, maybe just starting out in the field in his early 20s. He was young and he was stoned. I think he and his friends were sitting around in a basement on a Saturday night. They were passing a joint around, probably several, and through the cloud of smoke, they were talking. Now, when I was in college, I did a lot of drinking and I did a lot of smoking a substance that is still illegal in my state. I know the difference in how you think and feel when you are drunk vs. high. That’s why I’m convinced he was high.
And as he passed that joint around, he and his buddies were talking about how trippy the idea of the new millennium was. And that train of thought went like this, “Dude! We have these computers at work. What’s gonna happen when the date changes? Are they, like, gonna know what to do? What if? Listen, for real, what if midnight comes and they don’t know what to do?! What if, like, they just…shut down and stop working? And then, when they shut down, everything that runs on a computer, like, shuts down too?! Dude! The world is gonna totally crash!“ And all of his buddies were nodding in agreement and saying, “yeah! It’s gonna be like Oregon Trail times yo! There’s not gonna be anymore technology anywhere!”
I really think that’s how it went. For whatever reason, that guy went to work on Monday and remembered that conversation because the idea kind of freaked him out and so he told his boss about it. His boss had never thought of what would happen to the date on the computer when it hit 2000. And then the whole telephone game began and we ended up with people stockpiling canned goods and burying money in their backyard. If TikTok existed back then, my sister would be nodding along to conspiracy theory videos related to Y2K (read Social Media When You’re Not Afraid of Being Fired to see what I mean about my sister).
I also think we don’t know who that IT stoner in the basement was because when midnight came and nothing happened, I think he was the first to put his hands up, back up, and say “It wasn’t me! I knew nothing was going to happen!”
Regardless of whose idea it really was, I’m just glad it didn’t come true. I was only 17 at the time, so I don’t think I would have been as directly affected. People did make money off of the hype though. Walmart, for example, cashed in on it by selling snow globes to commemorate the hysteria. I had already started my snow globe collection by that point so of course I had to buy one. It was good quality too. Hasn’t lost any water in the 25 years I’ve had it. It still sits on a bookshelf in my craft room with the other trinkets I love to collect, second only to the snow globe my husband gave me on our first anniversary. Which makes me even more glad that nothing happened to technology that New Year’s Eve night, considering I met my husband online only 6 months later. And around and around my thoughts go…
Leave a Reply