EC This Time Is Different!

Experts Agree: It Is Not 2008

If someone were to ask us what year it was, we would probably politely answer that it was 2016, curious to find out whether the inquirer was a) very confused, b) had only recently awoken from a coma and was still unsure of his when-abouts, or c) was a time traveler who got temporarily lost.

In the unlikely case that we should find ourselves unable to remember the year with sufficient precision to ensure a reliable answer, we’d probably consult a calendar. We recently found out that a great many people actually seem to be uncertain about what year it is. Or at least many mainstream media appear to think so, as they have launched an intense awareness campaign.

Specifically, numerous people seem to think it is still 2008. Wish that it were so – we’d be eight years younger. It all started on 24 August 2015, when two publications apparently discovered independently of each other that is was no longer 2008 and decided that this information should be urgently imparted to the rest of humanity. It all started with marketplace.org admonishing its readers to engage in mnemonic exercises so as not to forget:

If you repeat it often enough, remembering it will eventually become second nature…

Photo via marketplace.org

On the very same day, NPR noted that a number of economists agreed: it was indeed no longer 2008. Incidentally, this was actually a correct estimate, as it was clearly 2015 at the time. It was presumably good though that some reassurance on the point was provided by experts – that is apparently helpful with averting panic attacks:

Lay your calendar-related phobias to rest pilgrims!

However, these efforts were evidently insufficient: general confusion about the precise year we are in must have promptly resurfaced in early 2016. In the interest of keeping the general population in the date-loop, USA Today had the following information on its January 8 front page: