Hate is too strong a word. I think it’s dumb, and I think it’s a DC convention to number your Earths more than it is a Marvel thing. I’m far from the only person to feel this way up here.

but as people use it more and more, it goes from being an obscure fact in the Marvel handbook to more generalized knowledge–and thus it gets used more. Which just makes teh whole proces continue to happen faster and faster.