Y2K Through the Keyhole

The year 2000 was called Y2K in the last decade of the 20th Century by people who had an unhealthy, shameless fascination with it as well as an unfounded and ridiculous fear of it. These were the hi-tech freaks who were so in love with their personal computers and the Internet that they couldn’t imagine a new millennium or a new century or a new decade or even a new year without them.

In the average person's earthbound mind, the year 2000 was mistaken for the first year of a new decade, new century and new millennium, not the last year of the last decade of the 20th Century. So, instead of just being the year 2000, it was magically transformed into the infamous Y2K, where everything in cyberland would suddenly break down because supposedly short-sighted 20th-Century computer programmers had not allowed for the advent of the year 2000 in their programs.

So, the catalyst for all the Y2K hype was the misconception that the year 2000 was not the last year of the 20th Century but the first year of the 21st Century. Most people had no clue that the year 2001 would fit that bill like a glove. It was the number "2" that mesmerized everybody. A year starting with a "2" instead of a "1" could not possibly be part of the 20th Century. 2000 just had to be the super-cool first year of the hi-tech, space-bound new millennium. Even though it wasn't. Turning a blind eye to the truth, they called it Y2K instead of 2000 and didn't look back. Y2K belonged to the 21st Century and there was nothing that anybody with a brain could do to change that.

The great World Wide Web, only five-years-old, would die a swift and sudden death at the stroke of midnight on December 31st, 1999, Greenwich Time, and there was nothing anybody could do about it. Hospital machines would stop dispensing medicine, computerized manufacturing would grind to a halt, governments would fail, missiles would fire and Armageddon would arrive as predicted. And all because of the Y2K “bug”.

But none of that stuff happened.

And any so-called stupid, redneck hillbilly from Appalachia could have told you that.