comment: >
  
  As Night Shift worker I feel like 2am is middle of the day, lunch time
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  You would have to go to bed at 8 and wake up at 4am for midnight to be truly the middle >
  
  I work in a factory so you got the times perfect for me >
  
  All of society collapsing if factories had three shifts a day instead of two >
  
  Lots of factories have three shifts >
  
  11pm-7am, 7am-3pm, 3pm-11pm >
  
  hey that sounds like 7-Eleven. >
  
  It's actually called 7 Eleven cause it's open 7 hours a day, 11 days a week. >
  
  I know you're being facetious, but the real reason is that they were open from 7:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m., which was a big deal at one point. >
  
  Man, that's only 4 hours! Such a tight window to get there in time. >
  
  You should normally use doors to get in there though >
  
  And why, at 3AM, does it feel like I can stay up all night, but just before dawn I get extra tired? >
  
  I suffer from this, too! And at 33 i still haven’t learned to go to bed at a sensible time! >
  
  I literally can't do it. No matter what time I wake up in the morning (it's usually early), I'm never in bed before midnight. I've tried. I just can't get my body to go to sleep before a certain time. It's honestly debilitating. During the work week I'll only get 5-6 hours of sleep most nights because I just cannot fall asleep until it's later at night >
  
  Same here. Then I sleep in on weekends and my sleep schedule is fucked by Monday >
  
  I have found my people! >
  
  Night owls exist. 50% of the population is forced into this bullshit because the early risers hate us >
  
  It's so frustrating. I would be so much more productive and happy if workplaces would start accommodating night owls. It doesn't even have to be that late - just don't make everyone work at 7 or 8 am. >
  
  When people named 12 AM midnight, it was centuries before electricity was in use. Work days were daylight hours. People who could afford beeswax candles were generally wealthy and didn’t need to work at night; anyone who did often used tallow candles or rush lights. So you generally had a tea (dinner) at 4 PM and a light supper (snack, say bread and cheese) at 7 or 8 PM. You went to bed immediately after and began your day at 4 or 5 AM, when the rooster woke you or the “knock up man”, who would in turn wake up the bell-ringer and knock on townspeople’s windows in case you needed to be awoken. So historically, 12 was definitely “mid-night”. With the advent of electric power in the late 19th century, everything shifted, including our sleep and work schedules, by three or four hours, because darkness was no longer a hindrance. 
  The more you know… 🌈💫 >
  
  But who would wake up the knock up man? >
  
  Knock up rooster. >
  
  But who wakes up the knock up rooster? >
  
  Me. >
  
  I am the one who wakes. >
  
  I am the one who knocks up. >
  
  ...roosters. >
  
  Typically it’s the cock that does the knocking up. >
  
  Knock-Cock >
  
  Sleep researchers call this hour between 3 and 4 o'clock at night “wolf hour” or “hour of the wolf”.
  "The hour between night and dawn. The hour when most people die, when sleep is deepest, when nightmares are most real. It is the hour when the sleepless are haunted by their deepest fears, when ghost and demons are most powerful, the hour of the wolf is also the hour when most children are born." 
  -From Ingmar Bergman's Film HOUR OF THE WOLF >
  
  Your comment, and this entire post made me think of this:
  "Oh God, midnight’s not bad, you wake and go back to sleep, one or two’s not bad, you toss but sleep again. Five or six in the morning, there’s hope, for dawn’s just under the horizon. But three, now, Christ, three A.M.! Doctors say the body’s at low tide then. The soul is out. The blood moves slow. You’re the nearest to dead you’ll ever be save dying. Sleep is a patch of death, but three in the morn, full wide-eyed staring, is living death! You dream with your eyes open. God, if you had strength to rouse up, you’d slaughter your half-dreams with buckshot! But no, you lie pinned to a deep well-bottom that’s burned dry. The moon rolls by to look at you down there, with its idiot face. It’s a long way back to sunset, a far way on to dawn, so you summon all the fool things of your life, the stupid lovely things done with people known so very well who are now so very dead – And wasn’t it true, had he read somewhere, more people in hospitals die at 3 A.M. than at any other time."
  From Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes. >
  
  Hm. Reading this at 2:47am, I think I'll go to bed now. >
  
  4:01 here. Wondering if I'm going to be able to make the 3 hr drive to the dispensary at 8. >
  
  Bro I'm just sorry you live that far away from legal weed. >
  
  For me, 1-2 am is staying up late while 5-6 am is waking up early so 3-4 am is the dead of night for me as I rarely see it >
  
  I think this is a really good way of summarising it. 
  The options you mentioned are early/late but stomach-able. 
  Whereas no matter which way you look at it — staying up till 3-4am or getting up at 3-4am — both options suck. 
  Like majorly, majorly suck. >
  
  I had to get up at 4am for work every weekday for years and I never adjusted to it. Every time was a new, horrible experience somehow. I went to bed early, didn’t use screens for an hour before hand, and nothing helped. It’s just a miserable time to be awake. >
  
  I wake up at \~3:30am out of habit now.  I don't even need an alarm.  I still call it the dead of the night because I know no one is online between 3-5am.  But 12-2am?  Still plenty of people.  They start trickling back in starting around 6am.
  I'm east coast though, so it's not lost on me that 3-4am is after the west coasters hit the sack, and just before the east coasters are waking up. >
  
  That's because you perceive night as the time period over which you sleep. If you see it as the span from sun down to sun rise (which is what night actually is), say 6 to 6 then 12 feels quite midnighty. >
  
  It's really interesting hearing people's opinions on times and periods of days/nights in English. I googled it and times are debatable in the English language, but are very clearly set in my language, which is Dutch. 
  00:00 - 06:00 is called night time 
  06:00 - 12:00 is morning time 
  12:00 - 18:00 is afternoon 
  18:00 - 00:00 is evening
  So yes, 03:00 is the middle of the night. I wouldn't say 3 in the morning like English speakers do. I would say 3 at night as the Dutch do. (3 uur 's nachts). >
  
  That’s consistent with the US >
  
  You say "it's 3 in the night" or "it's 3 in the morning"? >
  
  I was up til 3 last night is how I’d say it. >
  
  Right, but if someone calls your at 03:00 and wakes you up and you're pissed off at them, do you say: are you nuts!? IT'S 3 AT NIGHT!  - this what the Dutch say in their language. 
  Or do you say: Are you nuts?! IT'S 3 IN THE MORNING! - this is what English speakers say in their language. >
  
  Yes. It’s more of a dead zone I feel. I’d rather kill someone at 3am out and about rather than midnight. >
  
  Weird how your mind went directly to murder. Lol >
  
  It would have been weird wherever it went I suppose. >
  
  Up north, we have long winter but short summer nights. 
  In the winter, the sun sets at 4pm and rises at 7am. 
  In the summer, the sun sets at 9pm and rises at 5am. >
  
  Wtf how North are you. Sunrise at 5am in the summer seems well late >
  
  I'm Toronto level and we get that in peak summer >
  
  Isn't Toronto like lower than northern US? >
  
  And for fellow Europeans, Toronto is roughly as north as Monaco. >
  
  Funny you say that. My husband leaves for work at 3am and if i'm awake we might discuss something I need to do and I will say "I'll do it tomorrow " and he will say "we are tomorrow " because it is his 'morning' already, technically, whereas I still will sleep then wake up to my actual 'morning '. >
  
  I’m to be 44 this year, with random insomnia that defies medicine.  3am feels like what sailors who thought the edge of the world was close must have felt like.  I know when I have to be up, and each hour reduces actual sleep, bringing me closer to the edge.  12 feels too soon. >
  
  When you wake up an hour before your alarm goes off - that is the middle of the night, prove me wrong. >
  
  Naw, as others have said, 3 am is the middle. Waking up an hour before the alarm is like the end of a good concert when the band comes back on stage for an encore. But waking up at 3 am is like the intermission of a terrible two act play. >
  
  That's cuz fast foods havnt opened up yet to start breakfast. Usually something is open until like 2am. Then there's nothing for 1 to 3 hours and the world is quiet. Even the 24/7 sheets is dead quiet. >
  
  It's 3:03 am here and I just logged in to doordash and started dashing lol
  I love dashing this early. No traffic. tips are great. Can make 150 or more before most people even wake up and start getting ready for work. Then I have the entire day to do whatever I want >
  
  What is open and accepts orders at 4am?
  Also username checks out I think >
  
  McDonald's >
  
  In my mind, it's not "the next day" until 4 AM at the earliest. >
  
  Can confirm it feels like the middle of the night
  Source: is 3am >
  
  it's also when the neighbors start singing and getting drunk and then they start fighting and sometimes a stray beer bottle makes it over the fence and smashes in your yard >
  
  Well that’s about when I get up. So it’s more like morning for me >
  
  4am is definitely night, and 5am is definitely morning, so what's 4:30? >
  
  Anxiety >
  
  If the night starts at 10 and ends at 6 then it is closer to the middle than 12. >
  
  Read this at 3:09am …having woken up “in the middle of the night”. But I went to bed around 10 and have to get up at 6. So for me, it’s closer to morning. Blah
  I think it’s all relative and 12 just got nicknames for it’s placement >
  
  I feel like night starts at 7 and ends at 7 the next morning, so 1 am is the middle of my night. Thanks for coming to my TED talk. >
  
  Hahaha, so 6 am is still night time? >
  
  Yeah, 6 am is the same as 3 am as far as I'm concerned. >
  
  Can’t argue with that >
  
  I feel like at 12 am some people could still awake, and if you have stayed up until 3am you would be 100% certain that everyone is asleep >
  
  Midnight is named weird because it isn't even the middle of the night all of the time. Night is the period between sunset and sunrise and those times change through the year. Midnight should be the mid point between sunset and sunrise. Sometimes midnight is 22:00 and sometimes it is closer to 02:00... >
  
  It's 338am and I'm awake feeding my infant. I agree with this post. >
  
  I've often tried to figure out when is exactly the latest part of the night. Like, 4am is definitely morning, but 3am is still night. 3:30 is clearly still night. 3:55 is approaching 4. As is 3:50. 3:40 is closer to 3:30, so I think the latest bit is somewhere between 3:40 and 3:50. 3:45 maybe is pointing to 4. As is 3:44. Maybe 3:43? Nah, feels morningish. 3:42. I think 3:42 might be the latest minute of the night. >
  
  The average American sleeps from 11:40 to 7:10, so "their midnight" would be 3:25. >
  
  3pm feels much more like the middle of the day than midday too! >
  
  Ive been waking up at 4am for work going in 3 years now, so I’d have to disagree. 3 am to me feels like the groaning “Oh god I have to get up soon, gotta fall back to sleep fast” zone. Midnight feels just about right, and I can hardly stay awake unless I’m out of the house. 
  Meanwhile when I used to get off work at 2am, I’d have almost agreed and felt like 4am was the middle of night, because it’s when the last of the drunks got away from the bars and remaining open Taco Bell and everything went still. Weird how things change like they. Going in to the pandemic I was driving home at 4am thinking “Damn that was a long day” couple months later Im driving the opposite direction at the exact same time on the same roads thinking “Damn it’s gonna be a long day.” Only thing that’s changed is my sleep schedule, yet it feels like the nights changed. >
  
  as a person who works 7pm to 7am. CAN CONFIRM 3am is the dead of night >
  
  this post definitely came from an autistic/ADHD brain because this is a common sentiment for many of us. 
  night good. >
  
  You don't say that when you're running up the street singing does yer maw drink wine does she drink it all the time at 3am >
  
  Brother most of us have to get up before 6 am for work. 3 am is not the middle of the night, it’s basically morning, also sunrise is 5am for me. >
  
  lol right you can tell a child wrote that >
  
  If people are allowed to sleep just whenever they want to, without any external forcing, 3-4 am is roughly the most common sleep midpoint >
  
  It's the "Witching Hour", which I take as the which hour that we either stay up or go back to sleep with lol >
  
  Sun down at 6, up at 7, midnight feels like the middle of the night >
  
  3am is usually the lowest in temp. People feel the difference. >
  
  Am typing this at 3:20 knowing damn well I'll never be able to sleep for the rest of the night, and I can confirm. >
  
  Is it though? People often say 4 in the morning so its the end of night by that standard. >
  
  I get up at 4:30am to teach ESL classes M-F; this is still true.  I am occasionally still awake at midnight. It's a bad day if I am still up at 3am. >
  
  Well, "Two minutes to three AM" wouldn't have made a very good song title. >
  
  I see what you did there! >
  
  Depends on your sleep cycle. For me, I get up by 4am if I'm working, so 3am is "close enough". >
  
  This just reminded me of an Argentine band's song called "Friday 3 am" (it's about a suicide). To me 3 am sounds like the loneliest time of the day. >
  
  Just like 12pm feels nothing like the middle of the day.
  You wake up at 8am, go to bed at 10pm. The middle of your awake day is about 3pm. >
  
  Yes. In Sweden we say "Ett på natten", 1 at night. Reading "1 in the morning" in American texts is like "Yeeeeah there's not really a lot of morning there, not even enough to scrape together and put on a cracker." >
  
  I get up between like 430 and 5.
  3 is closer to morning than night >
  
  If I look for time at nights and see something like before 3:00 am I'm like "Ohh it's not that late" >
  
  It is if you're counting "night" as lasting from midnight to sunrise. >
  
  For me midnight feels more like the begining of the night than the midle >
  
  Midnight isn't what it was back in the day. Some stores are still open at that time or at least til 11. There's TV shows on still even if they are reruns or west coast feed. It used to be after 11 everything went off the air >
  
  Yeah amd in the summer it IS the middle of the night since the sun doesnt go down till 9 anyway. >
  
  I don't know. I got to bed at 9:30 now to be up at 6 A.M. recently so 3 A.M. feels a lot closer to when I get up. A big change from my gamer life I was having. A weird compromise because I don't have kids yet so there is me still trying to stay up until 2 A.M. on weekends and utterly failing by 11 P.M. >
  
  I love cities because of this. 
  Go a few miles out your city and even 10pm feels like midnight. >
  
  English is not my native language and I remember being confused when I heard someone saying "1 am in the morning" for the first time. For me, the morning starts at 6 am. >
  
  Midnight is also a strange word choice when in practical terms its the end of the night/beginning of morning, rather than middle of the night. It is, perhaps, roughly the middle of the dark hours. >
  
  Tell me you are under 25 years old without telling me you are under 25 >
  
  That's why 'midnight' is the wrong term. 3am IS the middle of the night. Night is from 12 am to 6 am, 6pmto 12 am is evening. >
  
  Night by definition is the period of darkness between sunset and sunrise.
  Evening is a social word and has no set time, but usually is considered as either 6 to 9 or until you go to bed, which is usually at night. >
  
  3AM is like both the middle of the night and early morning to me. But yes I agree. >
  
  If you go to sleep at 11:00 and wake up at 7:00, 3:00 is exactly the middle of your night. >
  
  It is if you fall asleep at 11. 3am is when you've slept 4 hours. >
  
  10-6 am is an 8 hour night period
  12 is 2 hours from midnight, 3 is 1 hour from midnight >
  
  Becuase it literally is. Who the fuck is going to bed at 8 and waking up at 4? >
  
  I mean it technically is right? Isn’t the day divided into four quadrants?
  Night 0-6
  Morning 6-12
  Afternoon 12-18
  Evening 18-24 >
  
  Guess you don't live somewhere the sun starts rising at 4am or the birds start making noise prior to the sun rising. It feels like that if you don't start your night until midnight but it's not really... >
  
  To me, the middle of the night and midnight are not the same thing. >
  
  If you go to bed at 11pm and wake up at 8am then 3am is the middle of the night.
  12am is midnight because it’s the average half way point between sunset and sunrise >
  
  Made me think of what Reeves thinks of 4 A.M. >
  
  Since a typical sleep cycle goes from maybe 10 pm to 7 or 8 am, 3 am is pretty "middle of the night" (where night is fairly synonymous with "sleeping period"). >
  
  Indeed. Although staying up til after 3 AM (by accident) last night was an awful idea I got no sleep bc I had to get up super early for college (6:50) 😩😩 >
  
  Not when you are a middle age farmer that goes to sleep at sundown and needs to wake up at 4 >
  
  Based it when it gets dark and light again, not on when we sleep, I guess? >
  
  You also occasionally dabble in the Peruvian pre-workout? A little Bolivian bullion? >
  
  I've recently become a father again and 3am is the start of my day at the moment >
  
  I'm up at 3.30 am every morning to get ready for work (Mon-Fri). To  me it's the most peaceful time of night. >
  
  I’m awake and scrolling and can’t remember if I slept yet and woke up to scroll again or if I’ve been up this whole time. My phone is charged and my headphones under my pillow so I guess I slept a little. It’s a problem. >
  
  I thought that was what "midnight" mean't, it has "mid" in the name which made me thought it was short for "middle" but I guess not >
  
  Depends which time you wake up. I wake up 6am every morning so 3am feels pretty late in the night for me. >
  
  Wow how profound. Fascinating. Almost like the middle of the night depends on when you go to sleep and wake up >
  
  Not really. The middle of the night waits for nobody (other than the sun to rise). >
  
  Most people who don’t see this as a normal thing happen to not be Reddit users.
  It’s a pretty large portion of the population.