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Does changing your smartphone lock to 8376 bring good luck, as one Japanese book title suggests?

Master Blaster Jan 21, 2021
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We try to harness the magical power of a new passcode.

I’m always looking for new ways to improve my life, but at the same time I want to do it by using the minimum possible effort. So, when a Twitter user discovered a book with the title From the Moment You Change Your Smartphone PIN to 8376, Your Luck Will Change, my interest was immediately piqued.

https://twitter.com/beatdjam/status/1351115832458424321

I wasn’t alone either; the tweet got thousands of likes and comments such as:

“Notice how the title doesn’t say ‘change for the better.'”
“I just want you all to know I changed my PIN to 8376.”
“I feel bad for the people who had 8376 on their phones before this book came out.”
“Now I know what not to make my PIN.”
“The author is probably a hacker trying to make things a little easier for himself.”
“With leaky personal information like that, your luck will definitely change.”

Needless to say, there were a lot of skeptics out there. However, as a Certified Spiritual Scholar (CSS), which I achieved through an online course, I can say that this seems legit. Actually, when I enrolled at CSS school they just sent me an email saying my metaphysical prowess was so great they could feel it and I was immediately qualified for an e-diploma without taking a single lesson!

However, the US$5,000 enrollment fee left me with little spending money, and I really needed some luck to help recoup that investment. The tweet said that the book was on sale at a convenience store, so I checked around all my local stores. However, no one was selling it.

Normally, I wouldn’t dabble in the supernatural without doing the research first. But it seemed my luck was so bad, I couldn’t even find the book, so I went ahead and began the incantation process on my own.

I changed my passcode and input the new 8376, letting its glorious power wash over me. I then set out again, armed with my new karma, to find this book once and for all.

While on the street I decided to throw on some walking music. I pulled out my phone, but suddenly realized that I forgot the new PIN that I had just set. I knew the digits 8, 7, 3, and 4 were involved, but not the order. I tried 8347, 8743, 8437, 8347, and a few more before the phone locked me out for one minute.

I checked a nearby supermarket, but still found no book. I then decided to check Google Maps to find some other potential places, so I pulled out the phone and tapped in 8347 but…

A couple more stores and still no book, but it was a nice, sunny day and good for a walk anyway. Plus I began to learn things, such as FamilyMart having the best selection of fortune-telling and good-luck how-to books out of the biggest convenience store chains.

After a few minutes I tried once again to access my phone with a new combination, but even 8347 didn’t work.

I wasn’t feeling especially blessed at this point, and returned to the office to do what I probably should have done in the first place; Google the title of the book.

It turns out it’s actually quite old, having been published in 2015, and was written by a prominent TV personality named Shiuma who specializes in numerology and onomancy, which is a type of divination based on people’s names.

▼ He also recently started a popular YouTube channel dispensing his thoughts on luck

According to a blogger who read From the Moment You Change Your Smartphone PIN to 8376, Your Luck Will Change, the number 8376 specifically was not the key, rather it was the fact that each digit adds up to a “guardian number” that protects against bad luck. The guardian number is found by first finding your “fate number,” which is the sum of the last four digits in your phone number.

Inside the book is an index that tells you your guardian number based on your fate number. Your PIN should add up to that particular guardian number but can be any combination of any number of digits. So in the case of the title, the person’s guardian number would be 24, but their PIN doesn’t have to be 8376. It could be 6666 or even 544326 if they use a six-digit code…and therein lies the genius of this book’s title.

Anyone who just glances at it and thinks; “Ha! I don’t need to buy the book because you already told me the lucky number, sucker!” will go ahead and put the obvious choice of 8376. However, in doing so they will only take on all the security vulnerabilities mentioned in the comments above and probably none of the supposed numerological benefits because their guardian number isn’t 24.

So, that’s why the title only says “your luck will change” without mentioning for the better or for the worse. It all depends on whether you buy the book or not. That would also explain why my luck didn’t really improve, so I guess it’s back to good old 123456 for me.

Source: Twitter/@beatdjam, My Game News Flash, Dee Okinawa
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