Ever wonder why almost every house in America uses that same specific, slightly “fancy” font for its address? In this fascinating deep dive from Dime Store Adventures, we learn that the “House Number Font” isn’t actually a 1920s Art Deco artifact or a secret tribute to Chinese aesthetics, as the internet often claims. Instead, its ubiquity might just be the result of century-old neighborhood peer pressure.

As the video perfectly puts it: “Decades pass and people eventually start to forget that this style was even supposed to be fancy in the first place.”

It turns out we’re all just living in the legacy of early 20th-century homeowners who were so desperate to outshine their neighbors’ “pedestrian” government-issued numbers that they bought the most expensive “antique” option available—only for that “luxury” choice to become the most basic, plastic standard in every hardware store today.

Watch the full mystery unfold here: