A Meme Is Blowing People's Minds But It Really Shouldn't

It's probably fair to say that people are easily manipulated by the internet. It's become expected. However, sometimes people take the right, royal piss.

One thing that Joe Public always seem to fall for, but are also exceptionally impressed by, is "magic tricks", either filmed, or just in meme format. It might be one of those "think of a number, add it to how many terrordactyls are in your garden right now, then divide it by a Ford Cortina and boil an egg. Is your number 217?" :O :O :O!!!

via GIPHY

The tricks always follow the same formula, designed to melt the mind of even the cleverest of eight-year-old, but one such ruse in a really simple form is getting the better of people on Facebook.

In a disease-ridden meme format that died in 2012, a post says: "2017 is a unique year! *try this* Your age + The year you were born = 2017."

Well, of course it fucking does.

For those who are still flummoxed by it, which I really hope you're not, the rule is applicable to every year. Your age is the amount of years that have passed since your birth. If you still don't get it there's a load of eyes currently rolling to the back of heads.

Though it's worth pointing out that if someone's got their birthday in the remaining months of the year then this won't work for them. So, really, to fool everyone on Facebook it'll have to be posted on 31 December.

As you'd expect, the comment section under the post was riddled with people shocked by the wizardry and presumably showing their friends.

To go with the comments, there are thousands of shares, with people like Sandra from Derby and Zach from St Helens sharing it saying 'onest 2 god this works am not messin wiv ya haha mad'.

It's obviously harmless fun, but it's one of those things that, if it's shared by someone, you really want to comment and explain it. However, you realise you haven't spoken to the offender in about two years and they're only a friend of a friend. You refrain from putting that comment that'll come across as patronising, so instead you screenshot it and send it to your group chat, just so at least a few people know your frustrations.

There's another thing, though, that seems to be going straight over people's heads...

Gotcha.

Topics: Funny, Facebook

Mark McGowan

Mark is a journalist at LADbible, who joined in 2015 after a year as a freelance writer. In the past he blogged for independent football fan channel Redmen TV, after graduating from Staffordshire University with degrees in journalism and English literature. He has worked on campaigns such as UOKM8? and IIOC.