About 12/12/12 and fake milestones

I haven’t quite had the time I hoped so far today to piece together a more coherent blog post, so instead just a quick thought about the latest date to wow the nation: 12/12/12.

At a time when people are doubting the quality of journalism, it drives me crazy to see huge headlines on sites like AOL.com stating “BOY WILL TURN 12 AT 12/12/12… AT 12:12 PM!” All that’s missing is a string of faux Internetz excitement… !!1!!1!one!

I get it, it’s cute, but it’s not really news.  And other than that minor detail, it’s filled with quotes that no one cares about about a family that is only getting written about because of the timing of a birth. Oooook.

There’s much more fun stuff that’s equally fluffy (I’ll have that pulled together a bit later today), but this is beyond useless.  The Onion parodies this sort of thing so well, and I’m sure Fark will have some thoughts about this sort of thing too. I hate these fake milestones; it just creates opportunities for bad news judgement.

EDIT: As usual, Gawker’s on it, but they dug deep… to 100 years ago, when The New York Times had a fluff item about it in 1912.  Nice pull.

My friends at Hearst Connecticut Newspapers also did a write-up, but let a mathematician run wild instead. I guess that works if you don’t have a 12 year old handy.

SOURCE: Huff Post via AOL, Gawker, Connecticut Post

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