Counting

Counting refers to a channel on the "Columbia University" Discord server whose sole purpose is to count to 1,000 and beyond by sending numbers as successive messages. If the count is broken, meaning a message has been sent that violates the positive natural integer order, counting has to start over from 1. As of February 16th, 2023, the record is 921 reached on December 6th, 2022.

Rules

Rules were laid out by the server's admins at the channel's creation on March 28th, 2022. They are:

• Pictures, GIFs and other non-numeric messages like popular references may be used as part of the count as long as the number they depict can clearly be identified
• If a number is sent twice, the count is broken
• Sending a message that does not represent a number breaks the count
• One person may not send two messages in a row
• Deleting or editing messages to resolve a miscount is prohibited and will cause the count to start over

Members repeatedly breaking the count on purpose may be blocked from accessing the counting channel by the server's admins. Some members have even requested to be blocked voluntarily after breaking the count by accident and/or to avoid stress related to its progress.

Common practices (unwritten rules of counting)

• It is common practice to start every new chain with a GIF depicting the fictional "Doctor Strange" character played by Benedict Cumberbatch lifting his index finger to form a "one" with his hand. Low counts have even been restarted because they did not start with that GIF
• Discussions about counting should be held in the "off-topic-chat" channel
• If 1000 is reached by only a small number of participants rapidly sending messages in alternating order (a practice known as "boosting"), the count is considered illegitimate even if it does not violate the rules. On October 12th, 2022 the number 999 was reached through boosting, but was then intentionally broken to prevent it from getting to 1,000.
• Numbers considered amusing in meme culture, namely 69 and 420, are commonly referred to as "nice" and "blaze it" respectively