10am or 2pm

About

10am or 2pm refers to a viral debate about whether moving a midday meeting forward two hours means the meeting would occur at 10 a.m. or 2 p.m. The question went viral after it was asked by a TikToker in May 2022, with some answering 10 a.m. and some 2 p.m. depending on their perception of time and the word "forward."

Origin

On May 8th, 2022, TikToker^[1] @erica_mallett posted a video where she puts forward the question, "If I say we have a meeting at midday and then I say can we move it forward two hours, what time is that?" saying that you don't truly know someone until you know their answer (shown below). The video gained over 23.8 million views in three days and inspired over 63,000 comments, many debating the answer.

On the same day, @erica_mallett posted another video to TikTok^[2] elaborating on the answers people give to the questions, saying it comes down to how you view time. She claims that people who answer "2 p.m." see themselves as moving through time towards 2 p.m., while people who answer 10 a.m. see time as moving through them (shown below). The video gained over 1.6 million views in three days.

Spread

The video inspired debates on Twitter and TikTok in the following days. On May 9th, 2022, Twitter^[4] user @bilzyb shared the video, gaining over 1,200 quote tweets and 200 likes in two days. On May 10th, PopBuzz^[3] published an article about the debate. On the same date, TikToker^[5] @ieatclouds_ posted a video about how it feels to explain it's 10 a.m. not 2 p.m., gaining over 1,200 views in under 24 hours (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References