system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[Matrix] How does Dates/Time work in the Matrix?

Morpheus says the Matrix is designed to be “the peak of human civilization” or the late 90’s, but how is it always the late 90’s over the course of hundreds of years?
Do the machines make them relive the same day over and over like Groundhog Day? Do they reset it every few years?
gpt
Dates and times inside the Matrix work however the machines want it to work. 

It's probably not an endless loop of the same day, but more like a stagnant circle of similar events that are just random enough to fool the average human. Like how we can tell each year that the four seasons happen, but they're not always exactly the same in terms of weather/temperatures/severity. 

Technological innovation hardly moves forward, but remains in a state comparable to the late 1990s. Any "major" improvement to people's lives is promoted as a revolution and total game changer, but is just small incremental alterations. (tech has to be advanced enough for redpills to intuitively learn how tech in the real world without being completely bewildered) 

Political procedures go slowly and are a constant back and forth that ultimately go nowhere. People grow old and die and different people take their place, buildings are demolished and new-yet-similar ones are built in the same location, etc. Things change in cosmetic ways but ultimately remain the same. 

Each cycle lasts approximately 100 years according to the machines, so they don't have to keep up the charade for too long. A handful of generations isn't long enough for people to question why things aren't changing around them. And the Anomaly appears long before people begin to question things too much.  

Until the late 19th century, that was actually normal for human civilization. People lived nearly identical lifestyles to their immediate ancestors unless major and sudden events like natural disasters, plagues, or wars forced them to change. It wasn't until human innovation really took off that it became normal for each generation enjoyed a substantially different lifestyle from the one before. The machines might be exploiting this deep-seated human tendency to be comfortable with things being slightly static.