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Comment by jermaustin1 | Hacker News Reader

Steam thinks I was born Jan 1, 1970. Not that I needed to lie when I did my age verification back 15 years ago, I just randomly scrolled the year down and selected one.

As the years have marched on, though, that "birthdate" becomes significantly closer to my real birthday.

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Only when chatting in a large channel at work, did I realise nearly 1/3 of the people there also set theirs as 1/1/1970. Which I presume is the first date that phisers will try to enter to reset people's accounts.

I am fully aware that my standard fake birthday is now used by me in some many places, that I have started to have a fake fake birhday. I should really just randomise and store it in my password manager.

But obviously the context of this OP story ruins all that.

> As the years have marched on, though, that "birthdate" becomes significantly closer to my real birthday.

I understand there's a clever phrasing here but I didn't get it. English is only my second language.

When you're 10, a year is a long time, when you're 60 it is not. There's an implicit "relatively" here, which is unusual but not unknown in English. Almost poetic, I like it.

Thanks now I understand. I am "only" 26, but I remember being 20 like yesterday. I can't believe I'm on the second half of the way to 50. COVID lockdowns and responsibilities didn't help.

I feel time has gone faster since I got a job, if that makes sense. Every day yearning for it to be 5o clock so I can check out, every week yearning for the weekend, every month yearning for the last day to get paid. Doing this is just asking for time to be over sooner.

When a 10-year-old registers for an adult website, they pretend they're 100 years old. Their age is 90 years different from the stated birthday. Eighty years later, the birth date is just as far off—but the implied age is now only 10 years off.

Thanks this seems like the correct meaning rather than the other comment. But that is beautiful its own way, got me all philosophical.

I liked that interpretation too!

We're keeping the same date here. 80 years later, the site thinks they're 180 years old. So it's still 90 years off, but now it's only 2x off instead of 10x off.

Oh! Thanks

It becomes closer to their real birthday than their real birthday is to the present day.

That doesn't make any sense, your fake age increases every year just like your real age.

But it's closer to their real age in relation to the sum. And it makes up more of their life, ratio wise.

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