For what its worth, my reading of the text you're criticizing was not at all characterized by the level of distraction you describe; and this coming from somebody who is otherwise so distracted by typos that I will skip a comment (or blog post) that has more than a couple.

Perhaps a level of familiarity with the convention plays a role, as I have chanced upon the Long Now Foundation and some of its writings. Despite, that was a long time ago. There are competing conventions such as writing the year 2000 as 102000 so as to reflect a common estimate of the origin of our species, which I encountered via kurzgesagt.

I support the author’s rebuttal that if the slightly unusual year number prevents you from taking in the content and its points, you might just not be a member of the intended audience.

> you might just not be a member of the intended audience

There’s no relationship between people who would appreciate the history the author was trying to communicate, and people who aren’t distracted by prefixing a pointless zero before the date.

Unless you really meant that as a snide comment calling GP an idiot.

Either way, maybe the zero prefixing thing is just stupid and not the hill to die on you seem to think it is.