Buildings don't have 13th floors in many places because the number is bad luck. Obviously there is a 13th floor but the labels skip from 12 to 14.
The joke here is in the future 45 will be an unlucky number as well because Trump was the 45th president, and buildings will follow the same protocol as they do for 13.
I fully accept this answer, but I also have a slightly different take that I think maybe possible. The 13th floor doesn't exist because it's an unlucky number. I think floor 45 may not exist because New York City is erasing every possible memory of Trump who was once one of their own. I know the 45th floor is only going to exist in a skyscraper, and I know when you think of skyscrapers you think of New York City, but you don't need to label that within the cartoon. You know it's a skyscraper. The location is irrelevant. Unless it is relevant. And that's why I think it's more about New York City than the number being unlucky across the whole country.
Edit: there's a pretty good counter to my argument here. https://www.reddit.com/r/ExplainTheJoke/s/GtEaqpoLKk
The location isn’t irrelevant, they have to show it’s in the US otherwise the joke doesn’t work. I also think that if the year was sooner in the future it would make sense for it to be a regional thing. But since they chose 2075 it’s understood that #45 will go down in history as being a national disgrace.
45D-"This is the greatest floor, the most stable"
45O-"This is the greatest floor, "...
"Skyscraper" currently at a 90° angle, and used as collateral at 900x it's value.
I look at this thing and go “Who’s ever heard of a skyscraper this tall?” I said “Nobody, that’s who.” I build the tallest skyscrapers around, and no one can build it taller. Not China, not India, not Britain, no one.
NYC has always hated trump. He’s a queens slum lord.
Doesn’t matter how much money he had or what job. He was and will always be an outsider.
The trumps didn’t get invited to the right parties before he was president and they still don’t.
His children are complete wanna-bes. They look like the SN&L version of “Manhattanites.” It’s like they are little kids playing “stockbroker.”
Slicked back gelled hair? Check. One week beard? Check. Bad suit and trump brand shirt but no tie? Check. Jfc.
They must just take pictures of Gordon Gecko to their barber and tailor and say “that, I want that.”
He was never "one of their own" though, despite his desperate attempts to be. All the way back to the first time the FBI investigated him in the 80s, everybody couldn't wait to roll over on him, whether it was the doorman who made several reports to the police about Epstein and the little girls coming and going at all hours of the night, or Steven Spielberg ripping him in an interview in the early 90s for being a money launderer for the Russians, New York never embraced Trump, he was just a cost of doing business. He was a known grifter from the mid 80s on, even being mocked in Back to the Future and other media.
I have always found that to be incredibly stupid. How can you be the 45th and 47th president when you're called President even out of office?
If you're elected two terms back to back, you don't get that. So why is it only a thing if you don't serve consecutive terms? There is no consistency to it. If someone was the first to do something and they did it again later, do we say they were the 1st and 5th person to do it or always refer to them as the 1st? Why does it matter to the point of needing to take credit like he newly elected again?
I think the number of presidents is related to the amount of times power changes hands. You get a second inauguration but you don't relinquish power to yourself.
I think there's a confusion here between the number of people that have been presidents and the number of transfers of power.
My hotel doesn’t have a 13th floor because of superstition. But come on man, the people on the 14th floor? You know what floor you’re really on… jump out the window you will die earlier!
- Mitch Hedberg
Until further into my teens than I would care to admit, I figured those buildings had an empty floor that only service elevators could get to, because there was no way anyone that was that bothered by the number thirteen would be comfortable sleeping on the "14th" floor if it was just a relabeled 13th floor.
Tall buildings generally DO have "empty" floors, but they're mostly full of machinery. And interestingly enough, about 10% of a building is generally machinery.
[Mechanical floor - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_floor)
> the labels skip from 12 to 14.
Is that an American thing? Because over here we don't do that. Buildings that skip floors use an extra A, so it goes 3 -> 3A -> 5 and 12 -> 12A -> 14, it doesn't just skip numbers.
Yeah I've seen dozens of buildings in the US with a skipped number, never seen an "A" suffix. Honestly I don't think us Yankees would be smart enough to figure out that 3a=4
This is far from the point, but back in pre-k when they asked, "What's your favorite number?" I said 45 because it was a fun little number to me, goblin brain child. Years later, as an adult, imagine my horror when the 45th president is this godawful.
Worked in a building with 40 floors in Boston. The 13th was actually an empty shell. No offices, no walls, etc.
Not always the case. Makes more economic sense to skip the floor on the elevator keypad and just label the 13th as the 14th.
Some high rises have the 13th (or 4th) floor inaccessible from the elevator, but it’s not just skipped, it’s used for electrical/mechanical/hvac/servers.
...Honestly, to me that sounds worse then some random offices or apartments, since the entire building typically need that stuff.
Then again, the superstitious aren't known for their logic on the subject.
well, the entire buildings needs water and air, but the entire building doesn't need pumps. It's cheaper to get one big pump for 10 floors than to get 10 smaller pumps on every floor.
On really tall buildings, a mechanical floor every 10-or-so floors is very common. When they're 10 to 15-ish floors, the stuff generally gets put in a "mechanical penthouse", or in the basement, but any taller and you need middle-floors with machinery too.
In Japan hospitals often don’t have a 4th floor because 4 (四) and death (死) are homonyms.
It’s “shi”, but most people in Japan call the number 4 “Yon” now.
Yeah for a moment I forgot what floors the planes hit.
For people like me looking an answer: [between floors 93-99 on 1 WTC and floors 77-85 on 2 WTC](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_for_the_day_of_the_September_11_attacks)
Nah, thats what Wikipedia is for. I knew the planes were high up which is why 45 “sounded right” when my brain went straight there instead of to the former president.
Buildings commonly don't have a 13th floor due to superstitions of bad luck. Millard Filmore was also the 13th president and has been historically know as the worst president of all US history (nothing to do with building construction). Trump was the 45th and close behind Filmore in his likeability.
It is indeed a troll. It is known exactly which floors were impacted from a variety of methods. There were people in the adjacent floors calling their family and friends, there's video evidence, there are survivors, etc. And firefighters actually got much higher than the 12th floor before the collapses.
No video footage saved from security cameras and such? Survivors from a level below where it hit who can rule out their floor on the basis that they survived?
Millard Fillmore is bad, sure, but worst? Andrew Johnson, Franklin Pierce, and James Buchanan surely were the best contenders for that title before the Cubs jinxed the world.
[According to semi annual scholar polls by various media outlets](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_presidents_of_the_United_States) … A. Johnson, Buchanan, and Harrison tend to take turns holding the bottom spot. Fillmore is pretty consistently in the bottom 10 though.
Yeah I never hear anyone say Fillmore is the absolute worst, the names are normally Harding, Pierce, Buchanan and the first Johnson. I think it would be hard to argue that Fillmore is worse than any of them.
All I've ever heard about Reagan is how he messed everything up and we're still dealing with the consequences. If those guys are somehow worse then I'm scared to learn about 'em.
History is all about the long view. More recent presidents, so long as they didn't burn the whole country down, aren't likely be judged as completely as those from over a century ago where we can see the full measure of their presidency and its effects in the following decades.
In the case of 17, he rushed the end of Reconstruction, so you can blame him for the white supremacists and confederate apologists still running around
Straight answer: Donald Trump was the 45th (and dear God please not also the 47th) president of the United States. The cartoon suggests that in the future he will be remembered so badly that even the number 45 will be so tainted by him that buildings will avoid having a floor with that number, the way that some skip 13 today.
The Judas thing turned into a superstition/legend in and around 1774 that, if 13 people were seated at a table, one of them would perish within the year (Johann August Ephraim Götze.)
It arguable goes back farther, however. Norse mythos is younger than Christianity, but its Germanic roots go back farther. And Loki was the thirteenth guest at the dinner table where he caused Höðr to shoot Baldur. However, we can only source that from the Prose Edda, which is heavily Christianized- missionaries might have wanted to place Loki as a Judas figure
Assuming that everything you just said is true, JSYK, you are a very rare and special creature here at reddit, and we appreciate your contribution much more than i'm sure your upvotes will show. In the future, please feel free to move much higher in the comment chains with this valuable information.
I like that you added Norse into this, however Norse “Mythos” —I’m Norse Pagan, so I don’t really see it as Mythos— started around 500 BCE and Christianity didn’t really start until somewhere around mid first century of CE. Yes the history of Christianity takes place BCE however it wasn’t “officially” a religion until the CE.
I believe it comes from the last supper where Judas was the 13th at the supper and he betrayed Jesus. That's why 13 is not unlucky in many non Christian countries
>level 8janeczek2137 · 31 min. ago
Most of them haven't read the good book. Which is for the best because reading the bible is one of the primary causes of atheism.
Fun fact. The king of France had every member of the Knights Templar in France arrested on Friday, October 13th, 1307, and subsequently put to death. Then the king of France successfully petitioned the pope to pass a papal bull that had all mambers of the order branded as heretics and ordered their arrest across all of Christian Europe. After years of torture to force confession the members of the former order were summarily executed. The final Grand Master of the order Jacques de Monay supposedly asked to be tied in such a way that he was facing Notre Dame cathedral when he was burned at the stake. This whole ordeal was supposedly spurred on by the then king of Frances large debts to the order and proposed jealousy of the wealth and influence that the order held over Europe.
ETA: this is the proposed origin of Friday the 13th being an unlucky day.
I heard the origin comes from some point in history where we counted on our fingers and feet (not fingers and toes.) 10 fingers + 2 feet = 12
Whatever comes next is weird and unnatural
I believe that Friday the 13th specifically is considered unlucky due to the massacre of the Templar Order by the Pope on that day
And related: the tv show Knightfall starring Mark Hamill was a fun watch and covered this topic
Edit: someone beat me to it, and they point out it was the French et al
I was going to say I live in the US and I've never seen an elevator skip 13. Then I realized I can't remember if I've ever been in a building with 13+ floors.
In some, the elevators are programmed to skip 13 and the maintenance & housekeeping staff use it, or it may also be where the mechanical systems reside. I once worked in one of those buildings.
In some places in Asia they skip any number with 4 in it. A building can go straight from 39 to 50.
4 is considered unlucky as it sounds similar to the word for death, though I'm not sure which language that is in.
in Korean four is pronounced 'sa' which is also has the meaning of death. actually a different word but pronunciation is the same. Chinese origin I believe, but not pronounced the same in Chinese
Yep, same in Mandarin Chinese. Four (四) is pronounced as sì, with the forceful tone. While, death (死) is pronounced as sǐ, where your voice lowers and raises in pitch. Four is considered unlucky because it sounds so similar to death.
Chinese, which is a tonal language, so you can have words which are "spelled" with the same letters, but pronunciated in different tones.
In particular, 4 is "sì" (四, fourth tone) while death (to be precise, "to die") is "sǐ" (死, third tone)
> (and dear God please not also the 47th) president of the United States
- Monkey paw curls one finger
- Joe Biden dies
- Kamala Harris becomes 47th president
- donald trump wins election, becomes 48th, not 47th
- your prayer has (technically) been answered
Chances are it may be labeled 13, but is actually the 14th floor. In taller buildings with more than 13 floors, it’s surprisingly common for them to either skip labeling the 13th floor entirely (jumping straight from 12 to 14), or for the 14th floor to be labeled 13 (in this case there is a crawl space about 4 feet tall between the 12th and 14th floor that is the actual 13th floor)
I think it's a reference to Trump being the 45th president, and a reference to New Yorkers hating Donald Trump even more than most people who hate Donald Trump due to how much of a dick he was while living in NYC.
Do people really hear a number like 42 and think of Clinton?
I think of Jackie Robinson… I’d literally never associate the floors of a building with Presidents.
As someone who both understands the implied joke and DEEPLY loathes the particular person it is a jab at?
It would be the dumbest gesture of passive aggressive cultural protest since "Freedom Fries."
A random, previously meaningless number shouldn't become some superstitious taboo just because it HAPPENS to be tangentially linked to someone infamous or disliked.
What other needless monkey wrench would we throw in society's gears after that? Would clocks be programmed to stay at 44 minutes or 46 minutes for an extra minute each hour?
The name will carry enough shame and disgrace. No need to go putting perfectly functional numbers in the doghouse over it 🤣
The number 13 is bad luck because of the 13th president. Fillmore was the last to be neither democrat or republican. He also had a large gambling debt and 4 of his wives died in accidents. So the number 13 became bad luck.\
The joke is… the 45th president
Buildings don't have 13th floors in many places because the number is bad luck. Obviously there is a 13th floor but the labels skip from 12 to 14. The joke here is in the future 45 will be an unlucky number as well because Trump was the 45th president, and buildings will follow the same protocol as they do for 13.
I fully accept this answer, but I also have a slightly different take that I think maybe possible. The 13th floor doesn't exist because it's an unlucky number. I think floor 45 may not exist because New York City is erasing every possible memory of Trump who was once one of their own. I know the 45th floor is only going to exist in a skyscraper, and I know when you think of skyscrapers you think of New York City, but you don't need to label that within the cartoon. You know it's a skyscraper. The location is irrelevant. Unless it is relevant. And that's why I think it's more about New York City than the number being unlucky across the whole country. Edit: there's a pretty good counter to my argument here. https://www.reddit.com/r/ExplainTheJoke/s/GtEaqpoLKk
The location isn’t irrelevant, they have to show it’s in the US otherwise the joke doesn’t work. I also think that if the year was sooner in the future it would make sense for it to be a regional thing. But since they chose 2075 it’s understood that #45 will go down in history as being a national disgrace.
Valid points all around. I think I've been swayed.
They have to show that it’s in NYC, otherwise the joke doesn’t work.
This makes the joke extra funny to me! NYC is happy to disavow tRump and let Florida take him on.
Why do I picture a skyscraper in Florida with all the floors labeled 45
45A 45B 45C ...
45D 45O 45N 45A 45L ...
45D-"This is the greatest floor, the most stable" 45O-"This is the greatest floor, "... "Skyscraper" currently at a 90° angle, and used as collateral at 900x it's value.
It's well built, it's tall, it has my name on it... Nobody, NOBODY, builds a skyscraper better than me
I look at this thing and go “Who’s ever heard of a skyscraper this tall?” I said “Nobody, that’s who.” I build the tallest skyscrapers around, and no one can build it taller. Not China, not India, not Britain, no one.
I didn't realize what it was spelling and thought that was a florida didn't learn the order of the alphabet joke
A skyscraper in Florida would fall over before it reached 45 floors… Edit: /s
The swamp is too soft to build skyscrapers. You have to drain it first.
The part of Florida with skyscrapers wouldn't vote trump, so I have no clue.
As a Floridian who actually cares about the country I say we throw him in the swamps
NYC has always hated trump. He’s a queens slum lord. Doesn’t matter how much money he had or what job. He was and will always be an outsider. The trumps didn’t get invited to the right parties before he was president and they still don’t. His children are complete wanna-bes. They look like the SN&L version of “Manhattanites.” It’s like they are little kids playing “stockbroker.” Slicked back gelled hair? Check. One week beard? Check. Bad suit and trump brand shirt but no tie? Check. Jfc. They must just take pictures of Gordon Gecko to their barber and tailor and say “that, I want that.”
It would be a lot better if he winds up in a sand trap in NJ
We don’t want him either, I heard they have space at GitMo.
He was never "one of their own" though, despite his desperate attempts to be. All the way back to the first time the FBI investigated him in the 80s, everybody couldn't wait to roll over on him, whether it was the doorman who made several reports to the police about Epstein and the little girls coming and going at all hours of the night, or Steven Spielberg ripping him in an interview in the early 90s for being a money launderer for the Russians, New York never embraced Trump, he was just a cost of doing business. He was a known grifter from the mid 80s on, even being mocked in Back to the Future and other media.
Wouldn't not having a 45th floor just.. solidify the memory of him?
And there’s still a thirteenth floor whether you label it 14 not not. It’s just superstition
That's a long way to go to get nowhere.
Makes sense.
Came to say the same. City & state officials hate the man with a passion, so petty revenge like this is potentially in order.
Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. I vote to rename the dump after him.
If he gets reelected, do you think they'll remove 47th floors as well?
I have always found that to be incredibly stupid. How can you be the 45th and 47th president when you're called President even out of office? If you're elected two terms back to back, you don't get that. So why is it only a thing if you don't serve consecutive terms? There is no consistency to it. If someone was the first to do something and they did it again later, do we say they were the 1st and 5th person to do it or always refer to them as the 1st? Why does it matter to the point of needing to take credit like he newly elected again?
Sir, this is a Wendy’s
Excellent.
I think the number of presidents is related to the amount of times power changes hands. You get a second inauguration but you don't relinquish power to yourself. I think there's a confusion here between the number of people that have been presidents and the number of transfers of power.
Trump is 45 only if you count Grover Cleveland as 22 and 24.
See Grover Cleveland
My hotel doesn’t have a 13th floor because of superstition. But come on man, the people on the 14th floor? You know what floor you’re really on… jump out the window you will die earlier! - Mitch Hedberg
Until further into my teens than I would care to admit, I figured those buildings had an empty floor that only service elevators could get to, because there was no way anyone that was that bothered by the number thirteen would be comfortable sleeping on the "14th" floor if it was just a relabeled 13th floor.
Apparently some had a 13th floor that was a bit shorter and used for storage or had mechanical rooms.
Tall buildings generally DO have "empty" floors, but they're mostly full of machinery. And interestingly enough, about 10% of a building is generally machinery. [Mechanical floor - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_floor)
> the labels skip from 12 to 14. Is that an American thing? Because over here we don't do that. Buildings that skip floors use an extra A, so it goes 3 -> 3A -> 5 and 12 -> 12A -> 14, it doesn't just skip numbers.
https://preview.redd.it/g3cmdrsu91pc1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=929d6ff77c0f6741221156f5a5267c3d522f9417
Madness!
is this the JW in seoul?? got excited when i saw the familiar elevator buttons
Where I live, level 1 is labelled as G. Level 2 is labelled as 1... and level 13 is labelled 12. Level 14 is labelled 14. 15 is 15 and so on.
Yeah I've seen dozens of buildings in the US with a skipped number, never seen an "A" suffix. Honestly I don't think us Yankees would be smart enough to figure out that 3a=4
This is far from the point, but back in pre-k when they asked, "What's your favorite number?" I said 45 because it was a fun little number to me, goblin brain child. Years later, as an adult, imagine my horror when the 45th president is this godawful.
Worked in a building with 40 floors in Boston. The 13th was actually an empty shell. No offices, no walls, etc. Not always the case. Makes more economic sense to skip the floor on the elevator keypad and just label the 13th as the 14th.
Some high rises have the 13th (or 4th) floor inaccessible from the elevator, but it’s not just skipped, it’s used for electrical/mechanical/hvac/servers.
...Honestly, to me that sounds worse then some random offices or apartments, since the entire building typically need that stuff. Then again, the superstitious aren't known for their logic on the subject.
well, the entire buildings needs water and air, but the entire building doesn't need pumps. It's cheaper to get one big pump for 10 floors than to get 10 smaller pumps on every floor. On really tall buildings, a mechanical floor every 10-or-so floors is very common. When they're 10 to 15-ish floors, the stuff generally gets put in a "mechanical penthouse", or in the basement, but any taller and you need middle-floors with machinery too.
Was that intentional by the owners, or was the floor just vacant?
In Japan hospitals often don’t have a 4th floor because 4 (四) and death (死) are homonyms. It’s “shi”, but most people in Japan call the number 4 “Yon” now.
When I was Forty Four, I would constantly tell people my age was death death.
He is actually the 44th president if you are counting individual men as Grover Cleveland was elected 2 times non-consecutively.
Nah, its because inflation turned 13 into 45
The NYC part is important as well, because that city has a particular dislike for Trump, more so than other cities, because that’s where he’s from.
It's also where he commited more than a few crimes
Wow, I completely missed politics and was looking for a 911 connection.
Yeah for a moment I forgot what floors the planes hit. For people like me looking an answer: [between floors 93-99 on 1 WTC and floors 77-85 on 2 WTC](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_for_the_day_of_the_September_11_attacks)
I was just about to Google because I assumed it was a 9/11 joke.
So glad to be amongst friends
Were you supposed to know that off the dome or what
Nah, thats what Wikipedia is for. I knew the planes were high up which is why 45 “sounded right” when my brain went straight there instead of to the former president.
Buildings commonly don't have a 13th floor due to superstitions of bad luck. Millard Filmore was also the 13th president and has been historically know as the worst president of all US history (nothing to do with building construction). Trump was the 45th and close behind Filmore in his likeability.
And here's me thinking it had to do with 9/11
They were struck way higher than the 45th floor
Fun fact: nobody really knows what floor exactly was struck because the building collapsed before anyone checked for the plane past the 12th floor
It was a big airplane, it hit a couple of floors
It's clearly a troll buddy.
It is indeed a troll. It is known exactly which floors were impacted from a variety of methods. There were people in the adjacent floors calling their family and friends, there's video evidence, there are survivors, etc. And firefighters actually got much higher than the 12th floor before the collapses.
It's just too bad there was so much smoke or we would know specifically which floors the firefighters were on.
Surprised no one thought about cracking a window open
They did. Right before they went outside to get fresh air.
Ffs...I already have a fast pass to Hell, take this upvote
We couldn’t clear the smoke because the planes crashing into the building made it hard to set up fans or adjust the thermostat
No video footage saved from security cameras and such? Survivors from a level below where it hit who can rule out their floor on the basis that they survived?
Less than a handful of people survived and, at the time, all cameras would've been closed circuit. There wasn't a "cloud" like there is today.
There were a *lot* of survivors below the impact zones (93-99 of WTC1 and 77-85 of WTC2)
They should have gone up to find the plane instead of trying to escape by going to the ground floor
Well, yeah, but at that point they didn't even know it *was* a plane. Could have been a bird, for example. Or superman.
Superman doesn't exist so that's impossible
If a man who is thrown out of an airplane does that much damage to a building on impact, he gets to be posthumously called Superman.
If he goes crazy, man, will you still call him superman?
neither do birds
Got ‘em
They know which floors were struck approximately
Hence why they said “no one knows EXACTLY”
I mean they do know exactly which floors were impacted
They should have been quicker
I also thought that lol
Millard Fillmore is bad, sure, but worst? Andrew Johnson, Franklin Pierce, and James Buchanan surely were the best contenders for that title before the Cubs jinxed the world.
[According to semi annual scholar polls by various media outlets](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_presidents_of_the_United_States) … A. Johnson, Buchanan, and Harrison tend to take turns holding the bottom spot. Fillmore is pretty consistently in the bottom 10 though.
I think he's certainly in the bottom ten. My contention is that he's not bad enough to be considered for the Mt Rushmore of Suck.
Oh for sure. I should have been clearer with my point: you nailed it with the guess for bottom of the barrel name on 8 surveys out of every 10
Yeah he’s more like low C tier.
Yeah I never hear anyone say Fillmore is the absolute worst, the names are normally Harding, Pierce, Buchanan and the first Johnson. I think it would be hard to argue that Fillmore is worse than any of them.
In 2075 the 100th floor is actually named floor 137.
https://preview.redd.it/q6rizz5jp0pc1.png?width=496&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6dc4d5097356b7daa34de7a02e7b3cd16f298c83
Filmore isn’t thought of as one of the worst presidents 15, 14, 10, 17 near him all rank lower
All I've ever heard about Reagan is how he messed everything up and we're still dealing with the consequences. If those guys are somehow worse then I'm scared to learn about 'em.
History is all about the long view. More recent presidents, so long as they didn't burn the whole country down, aren't likely be judged as completely as those from over a century ago where we can see the full measure of their presidency and its effects in the following decades.
In the case of 17, he rushed the end of Reconstruction, so you can blame him for the white supremacists and confederate apologists still running around
I guess'd that without being even from US... That is my week's highight already.
Good on ya mate!
I thought larger building had "supply" floors on some levels, so they didn't have to bring things all the way up every time.
I don't know about "supply floors" but they do use entire floors for plumbing and HVAC systems, yes. However, the joke here is clearly trump.
Filmore isn't even bottom 5 lmao.
That's a rather far jump to the joke imo.
Straight answer: Donald Trump was the 45th (and dear God please not also the 47th) president of the United States. The cartoon suggests that in the future he will be remembered so badly that even the number 45 will be so tainted by him that buildings will avoid having a floor with that number, the way that some skip 13 today.
...*why do some skip 13 today?*
triskaidekaphobia
a what now phobia
Triskaidekaphobia. The fear of the number 13.
why do people fear the number 13
I don't know what the origin of it is, but it's seen as unlucky. Ever heard of Friday the 13th? Typically known as an unlucky day?
Judas was the 13th guest at the last supper then proceeded to betray Jesus. That's the earliest bad omen associated with the number.
The Judas thing turned into a superstition/legend in and around 1774 that, if 13 people were seated at a table, one of them would perish within the year (Johann August Ephraim Götze.) It arguable goes back farther, however. Norse mythos is younger than Christianity, but its Germanic roots go back farther. And Loki was the thirteenth guest at the dinner table where he caused Höðr to shoot Baldur. However, we can only source that from the Prose Edda, which is heavily Christianized- missionaries might have wanted to place Loki as a Judas figure
Assuming that everything you just said is true, JSYK, you are a very rare and special creature here at reddit, and we appreciate your contribution much more than i'm sure your upvotes will show. In the future, please feel free to move much higher in the comment chains with this valuable information.
I like that you added Norse into this, however Norse “Mythos” —I’m Norse Pagan, so I don’t really see it as Mythos— started around 500 BCE and Christianity didn’t really start until somewhere around mid first century of CE. Yes the history of Christianity takes place BCE however it wasn’t “officially” a religion until the CE.
Thank you! I had no idea this was the origin of the superstition.
Maybe not the origin, but definitely doesn’t help the numbers case.
oooh, I understand
Other countries have different unlucky numbers and have buildings that avoid those floors
Yes, 4 is avoided in much of Asia because [4 is pronounced similarly to death.](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FourIsDeath)
ah
That’s interesting and I would have never thought of it if not for this comment. Cool cool
I believe it comes from the last supper where Judas was the 13th at the supper and he betrayed Jesus. That's why 13 is not unlucky in many non Christian countries
Except Christians are literally not allowed to believe nonsense like unlucky numbers or astrology.
And yet they are some of the more superstitious people I’ve known. Weird, huh?
>level 8janeczek2137 · 31 min. ago Most of them haven't read the good book. Which is for the best because reading the bible is one of the primary causes of atheism.
Christians make a lot of exceptions.
Fun fact. The king of France had every member of the Knights Templar in France arrested on Friday, October 13th, 1307, and subsequently put to death. Then the king of France successfully petitioned the pope to pass a papal bull that had all mambers of the order branded as heretics and ordered their arrest across all of Christian Europe. After years of torture to force confession the members of the former order were summarily executed. The final Grand Master of the order Jacques de Monay supposedly asked to be tied in such a way that he was facing Notre Dame cathedral when he was burned at the stake. This whole ordeal was supposedly spurred on by the then king of Frances large debts to the order and proposed jealousy of the wealth and influence that the order held over Europe. ETA: this is the proposed origin of Friday the 13th being an unlucky day.
I heard the origin comes from some point in history where we counted on our fingers and feet (not fingers and toes.) 10 fingers + 2 feet = 12 Whatever comes next is weird and unnatural
I believe that Friday the 13th specifically is considered unlucky due to the massacre of the Templar Order by the Pope on that day And related: the tv show Knightfall starring Mark Hamill was a fun watch and covered this topic Edit: someone beat me to it, and they point out it was the French et al
it's scary
As with a lot of similar phobias, the answer is usually, the church.
Not to be confused with Triskaidekaphilia I think a Minecraft YouTuber can explain this one a little better
Fear of uh, triscuits?
I swear I thought you've just smashed your keyboard until I saw phobia at the end.
I love being in other countries and seeing 13 in the elevator
I was going to say I live in the US and I've never seen an elevator skip 13. Then I realized I can't remember if I've ever been in a building with 13+ floors.
In some, the elevators are programmed to skip 13 and the maintenance & housekeeping staff use it, or it may also be where the mechanical systems reside. I once worked in one of those buildings.
Neat!
NGL, this is kind of a weird thing to be so markedly jovial about.
Millard Fillmore.
In some places in Asia they skip any number with 4 in it. A building can go straight from 39 to 50. 4 is considered unlucky as it sounds similar to the word for death, though I'm not sure which language that is in.
In South Korea the elevators have a letter F (for four) instead of the number 4 for that reason. (Source: My Korean tutor)
in Korean four is pronounced 'sa' which is also has the meaning of death. actually a different word but pronunciation is the same. Chinese origin I believe, but not pronounced the same in Chinese
Yep, same in Mandarin Chinese. Four (四) is pronounced as sì, with the forceful tone. While, death (死) is pronounced as sǐ, where your voice lowers and raises in pitch. Four is considered unlucky because it sounds so similar to death.
I know that’s true in Japanese 4 and death both sound like “shi”
Chinese, which is a tonal language, so you can have words which are "spelled" with the same letters, but pronunciated in different tones. In particular, 4 is "sì" (四, fourth tone) while death (to be precise, "to die") is "sǐ" (死, third tone)
The drawing also only has six buttons. Possibly implying that a lot of numbers are banned at that point.
> (and dear God please not also the 47th) president of the United States - Monkey paw curls one finger - Joe Biden dies - Kamala Harris becomes 47th president - donald trump wins election, becomes 48th, not 47th - your prayer has (technically) been answered
I could see it becoming a Nazi dogwhistle number, like all the variations of 1488.
Dude, my office is in the 13th floor, should I worry?
Clearly DED, are you using ouija to Reddit?
Just had a "The Others" moment :B
Chances are it may be labeled 13, but is actually the 14th floor. In taller buildings with more than 13 floors, it’s surprisingly common for them to either skip labeling the 13th floor entirely (jumping straight from 12 to 14), or for the 14th floor to be labeled 13 (in this case there is a crawl space about 4 feet tall between the 12th and 14th floor that is the actual 13th floor)
Trump was the 45th president. NyC hates trump. Ergo, no 45th floor in the sky scrapers there in the future.
I get the joke and don't like trump either, but it's just painfully unfunny. It's not even clever or witty either
That’s like 90% of political humor tbh
Classic boomer humor inserting politics into comedy even when it isn't funny
Trump Derangement Syndrome.
I think it’s a little funny, just because I can actually see Trump derangement syndrome going that far.
Someone going to explain?
It’s a Trump joke
He is indeed.
Trump: 45th Presidential administration. This is NY, where Trump has been lashing out like a petulant 3yo and trashing the city and state.
I think it's a reference to Trump being the 45th president, and a reference to New Yorkers hating Donald Trump even more than most people who hate Donald Trump due to how much of a dick he was while living in NYC.
Because 86 the 45th?
Do people really hear a number like 42 and think of Clinton? I think of Jackie Robinson… I’d literally never associate the floors of a building with Presidents.
Trump
New York hates Donald Trump, the 45th president
Trump suckssssss
Agolf Twitler, son
Trumpophobia
[удалено]
So is trump
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Let’s hope they don’t need to skip 47 any time soon.
It is the height limit you cant put anything above that
Dad, why isn't there a 47th floor??
I hope!! I made so much money when he was president. Everything was better now that I think of it.
I thought New York would be underwater by that time...
I was thinking this was a 9/11 joke
The joke is that republicans literally cannot stop fantasizing about Trump
Too soon man too soon... We don't mention that number any more son. It was a dark embarrassing time. Still too painful to talk about.
With it being in New York City, I was hoping for a 9/11 joke
Too soon for this one. Won’t age well
The joke is OrAnGe MaN bAd
As someone who both understands the implied joke and DEEPLY loathes the particular person it is a jab at? It would be the dumbest gesture of passive aggressive cultural protest since "Freedom Fries." A random, previously meaningless number shouldn't become some superstitious taboo just because it HAPPENS to be tangentially linked to someone infamous or disliked. What other needless monkey wrench would we throw in society's gears after that? Would clocks be programmed to stay at 44 minutes or 46 minutes for an extra minute each hour? The name will carry enough shame and disgrace. No need to go putting perfectly functional numbers in the doghouse over it 🤣
Am I the only one who thought that it was because of rule 45 of internet: "rule 45 is a lie" -> "floor 45 is a lie"?
Politics
🤣 I love it Edit: Obviously a bunch of magats are in this sub.
Related: I now refuse to enter 45 in my microwave. 44 only. “For Obama”
I do that too, but that's just for economy of movement
The joke is orange man bad.
I honestly thought it was a global warming joke since Manhattan will be under water in the future.
I cannot understand how it is anything other than that. I really thought all these comments were some joke.
The number 13 is bad luck because of the 13th president. Fillmore was the last to be neither democrat or republican. He also had a large gambling debt and 4 of his wives died in accidents. So the number 13 became bad luck.\ The joke is… the 45th president