Over the last several days, a new discussion has erupted on the Internet: Are there more doors or wheels in the world? Ryan Nixon of New Zealand was conversing with his mates on WhatsApp about whether the Earth had more doors or wheels. Ryan asked the people of Twitter what they thought after they couldn’t come to an agreement (probably after a savage debate), and the tweet went viral.
Nearly 54 percent said there are more wheels than doors in the poll, while 46 percent said there are more doors than wheels — a fairly equal split. The discussion became so heated that it spilled over into Reddit. Part of the debate revolved on what constitutes a wheel. Some people contended that Lego wheels should be counted since they are technically wheels, even if they are made of Lego.
The majority of the discussion focused on whether there are more doors (that you can walk through) than wheels used for transportation, while some breakaway groups argued suitcase wheels should be included as well. In the end, it appeared like the agreement was that if you simply consider the number of doors you can go through and the number of wheels you can use for transportation, doors were the obvious victor. However, if you accept smaller wheels, such as those seen on toys or at the bottom of office chairs, most people assumed our buddy the door was doomed.
“I’m solidly team wheels,” says the New Zealander who accidentally triggered an agonizing worldwide discussion about whether there are more doors or wheels in the globe. Ryan Nixon, 37, of Auckland, was watching sports at home two Saturday nights ago when a buddy asked the question in a group chat he had with a group of friends. He decided to establish a poll for his fewer than 1,500 Twitter followers since he couldn’t come to an agreement. “My friends and I are having the DUMBEST argument… And I’ll be there to see it,” he wrote. “Do you believe the world has more doors or wheels?”
Nixon, a rugby referees manager, is “quite excited” when he receives up to 100 votes in a Twitter poll on a typical day. He went to bed after posting the dilemma and seeing a few votes come in. After a round of golf on Sunday morning, he found the post had risen to 14,000 votes, and the poll “just erupted” when New Zealand entertainer Jemaine Clement retweeted it to his half-a-million followers. He had turned off his alerts on Monday because they were “getting out of hand.”
The poll had 223,347 votes, just under 2,500 comments, and more than 9,000 retweets by the time it closed, with 53.6 percent believing there were more wheels in the globe. The debate did not end there, with the poll spawning countless TikTok videos, social media posts, and ongoing media commentary as people went round and round trying to figure out the answer, only to find themselves standing in front of a hypothetical locked door – the question is ultimately unanswerable, or at the very least would require significant resources and time to come to any sort of reliable conclusion.
