A FAMILIAR MEME. A NEW CONTEXT.
Way of writing the year 2017 with the zero replaced by the letter K, short for kilo. The style was borrowed from 2K Sports game titles that carried the year's digits, and it spread as a playful stylization.
Add your captionThe editor opens with this picture. You can download the finished meme as a PNG.
2K17 is a way of writing the year 2017 that is common online, in which the digit zero is replaced with the letter K. The letter comes from the Latin "kilo," meaning a thousand, so the construction reads as "two thousand seventeen" with an unusual emphasis on how it's written.
The spelling was used on both the English-language and Russian-language internet. It worked as a short marker of time that was easily recognized in captions, usernames, and headlines.
Similar substitutions of digits with letters appeared in other online date notations as well, so the spelling "2K17" can be seen as one specific case of a broader tradition of visual wordplay with numbers in internet culture.
The spelling arose as an imitation of the titles of sports simulators from the company 2K Sports. The NBA 2K series came out annually, and its installments carried the year's digits in the title: for example, NBA 2K17 was released in 2016 and was developed by the studio Visual Concepts. The "2K17" notation emerged from these titles.
The trend, as the catalog notes, was borrowed specifically from the titles of computer games. The search confirmed the release of NBA 2K17 and the existence of games in the series with years in their titles, but did not yield a source documenting the first appearance of the spelling online.
Games from 2K Sports and its series, such as NBA 2K and WWE 2K, came out with the year's digits, so the construction "2K17" was perceived as a recognizable marker. Users could associate it with a specific product, but often simply used it as the year.
Over time, the spelling moved beyond the specific game. It began to be used in a joking context, where the letter K had nothing to do with games and served merely as a playful device.
Given that the 2K series released games almost every year, this way of denoting the year could also have been perceived by users as a reference to the very regularity of new installments coming out, rather than to one specific product alone.
The spelling appeared in captions, usernames, hashtags, and headlines, especially at the end of 2016 and through 2017. It was often used as a marker of time, and sometimes as a joke about the spelling of the year itself.
Such constructions are typical of internet culture, where short and visually unusual signs quickly take on a life of their own. That is why "2K17" is often found outside the original context of games.
The illustration attached to the article is the text "2K17" in purple on a black background. The image matches the catalog entry and requires no caveats. No game logo is shown in it, so the connection to 2K Sports is apparent only from the article's text.
The exact date of the first use of this spelling has not been established. The search confirmed only the release of the NBA 2K17 installment and the fact that 2K Sports released games with the year's digits in their titles.
A flash mob in which users posted photos from 2009 next to their current pictures. The name quickly became a formula of “then — now,” and it was carried over to any comparison of p
Read the story
The text emoticon “:3” forms a simple cat face: the colon looks like eyes, and the number three is a small mouth. It can give a message a soft, playful, or pretendedly cute tone; i
Read the story
The Floss is a dance in which a person alternately sways their hips and swings their arms in front of and behind the body. The dance is associated with American teenager Russell Ho
Read the story
Leekspin (Loituma Girl, “Yak Tsup Tsop”) is a looping Flash animation in which Orihime Inoue from the anime Bleach twirls a spring onion in her hand to the scat singing from the so
Read the story
A cropped image of American rapper 6ix9ine running down a road in his underwear while holding a weapon, a fragment of a short clip that spread through meme remixes. The clip's orig
Read the story
The GameCube intro is a short sound intro of the Nintendo GameCube console (2001), in which a rolling purple cube assembles the logo. Since 2009 it has been reworked in video remix
Read the story
Howard the Alien is an animation of a metallic alien with long limbs who dances to a bass-boosted version of Lil Uzi Vert’s track “Money Longer.” The clip appeared in late 2017 and
Read the story
Crab Rave is a music video for a track by Irish producer Noisestorm, published on the Monstercat Instinct YouTube channel on April 1, 2018. The scene of animated crabs raving on a
Read the story
Twitter flash mob in which participants promise to share as many facts on a topic as they get likes. The format quickly became an object of irony, and its parodies grew into a genr
Read the story
Overview of one of the most enduring layers of Russian-language internet humor: photozhabas, jokes and caricatures featuring Vladimir Putin that began spreading with blogs in the 2
Read the story
Meme parodying a common social media trick in which the author promises to do something if the post gets a certain number of likes. It appeared on Reddit in September 2017 and was
Read the story