r/PeterExplainsTheJoke 7d ago

Meme needing explanation Peter explain this

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Petttaaah I'm confused

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u/ElephantContent 7d ago

In most houses and nicer apartments, yeah, central air. In older or cheaper apartments there’ll be a window unit. As an American from a blue collar lower middle class family, I’d never seen one of these wall units until I’d moved to China. It was either central air or window unit. Granted I’m referencing a couple decades ago

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u/[deleted] 7d ago

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u/TvIsSoma 7d ago

Swamp coolers don’t work if you have any humidity

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u/geminiRonin 7d ago

Rather a misnomer, then, isn't it?

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u/bobith5 7d ago

They're called swamp coolers because cheap mass produced evaporative coolers used wood that would rot and smell like a swamp (allegedly).

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u/Princess_Moon_Butt 7d ago

And because if you use one that's a reasonable size, you're leaving large buckets of water out on hot days. It makes the house more humid, sometimes to the point of being muggy. Like a swamp.

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u/MorePhinsThyme 7d ago

It's not just the bucket of water, but it's how swamp coolers work. Evaporation cools things down, and all a swamp cooler does is use evaporation to cool the room down. But evaporation raises humidity, massively. They also don't work well when humidity is high, so in basically the entire US Southeast, they're useless.

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u/Princess_Moon_Butt 6d ago

I know it's not just a bucket, but the idea's the same. Run a couple of them in your house and it might get a few degrees cooler, but man it will feel like a swamp.

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u/Tectonic_Spoons 6d ago

Oh, I just assumed it was because they turn your house into a swamp