Why would people be interested in the number 3203 right now?
June 1, 2018 11:11 AM   Subscribe

A friend has owned the domain 3203.com for many years. While he occasionally gets offers to buy the domain, the number of offers has risen sharply in the past few weeks. The amount of money being offered has also increased significantly. He has asked what people want the domain for without success. Does anybody know why "3203" would interest people right now?
posted by thinman to Society & Culture (11 answers total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
Best answer: My first thought was people associated with a movie set in that year (and maybe titled 3203). A google of "Set in 3203" shows that the original Flash Gordon series was set in that year. Maybe a reboot is on the way?
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 11:22 AM on June 1, 2018 [8 favorites]




Best answer: I understand that lots of Chinese sites opt for numeric URLs (unless I'm out of date, my source is from 2014). Sometimes these have homophonic relationships to Chinese words or phrases.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 11:39 AM on June 1, 2018 [2 favorites]


Best answer: Goroawase is the Japanese term for numeric homophone wordplay.

If I put it 3203 the goroawase generator I get "mini laser" (I think, based on Google Translate)
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 11:49 AM on June 1, 2018 [6 favorites]


Best answer: Drugs. There is an opioid pill called Watson 3203. That name is imprinted on it. It contains acetaminophen and hydrocodone. I imagine there are illicit online sales of it. Here's a NYTimes article published yesterday about the problem of mail-order opioids.
posted by beagle at 12:38 PM on June 1, 2018 [22 favorites]


In case it's a date, I checked for what happened on March 2, 2003. Only 2 results:

- America's Cup: Alinghi defeats Team New Zealand 5-0 to win in Auckland
- The first International Symposium on Taiwan Sign Language Linguistics is held at Chung Cheng University.

They don't seem to be particularly newsworthy (sorry, linguists!). Personally I hope it's for Flash Gordon.
posted by orrnyereg at 12:47 PM on June 1, 2018


Do you know if there are any commonalities in the offers? Like, if they're all coming from China, or Chinese-Americans, maybe it's a numerology thing. But if they're all coming from, say, Belgians, that's less likely. But you could then search for "3203 Belgium" to narrow down your results more, at least.

My first thought was an album title, like 5150, 8701, or 2112.
posted by kevinbelt at 1:02 PM on June 1, 2018


A google of "Set in 3203" shows that the original Flash Gordon series was set in that year. Maybe a reboot is on the way?

There's currently a Flash Gordon film in development (apparently a sequel and not a reboot). This article from last fall is the latest news I could quickly find on it. Maybe pre-production is ramping up.
posted by neckro23 at 1:13 PM on June 1, 2018 [2 favorites]


Response by poster: Do you know if there are any commonalities in the offers?

Offers appear to have come from the US, China, the Middle East, Europe. Both individuals and brokers have enquired.
posted by thinman at 1:26 PM on June 1, 2018


Has your friend "owned the domain 3203.com for many years" for any particular reason?
posted by mdrew at 4:13 PM on June 1, 2018 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: Has your friend "owned the domain 3203.com for many years" for any particular reason?

He bought it in the 90s to use as a personal email domain. At that time, all the short dictionary words were already taken, but he discovered that short numerical domains were still available. He’s a math guy, and picked 3203 because it was both a prime number and the street address of his college. He’s held onto it because, you know, that’s his email address, and because he’s given email addresses in the domain to family members.
posted by thinman at 7:30 PM on June 1, 2018


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