A couple of days ago I was browsing facebook as usual sharing funny images and looking at pictures of cute girls when I suddenly stumbled upon a rather curious meme...
The image in question featured one of the main characters from the Pixar animated movie Monsters Inc. with a pair of red eyes (probably modified by some teenage Photoshop enthusiast) which gave him a sinister aura.
The text accompanying that meme spawn says more or less as follows:
"My face on April 23, 2023."
After reading that, I felt a great curiosity, so I decided to type that date in the Facebook search engine...
The end of the world is near (again)
I had better not have done it, because the results yielded an overwhelming amount of posts from worried people, commenting on what is supposedly expected to happen on April 23, 2023.
Looking in much more detail I understood that it all seems to have started from a post shared in the form of a chain. Something like the messaging chains that were shared in the late 90's via email.
According to this information, scientists around the world were warning about an imminent solar storm, as powerful as any other that has ever taken place in history.
Goodbye Internet
The result of such an event they say would cause a serious technological delay for mankind, as all electronic devices would be rendered permanently unusable. In short, the event would mean a return to the cave age and the disappearance of the Internet FOREVER.
It is also mentioned that in the United States the purchase of bunkers, structures specially designed to withstand the onslaught of an atomic explosion, has skyrocketed.
Shortly after learning all of the above, a shiver ran down my spine, and I consequently had the impulse to run out to the nearest store with the intention of buying canned food by the truckload, stockpiling drinking water and even getting the necessary materials to build a Farady cage in my own room.
That's all I needed! Another Hoax...
However, my common sense led me to consult the oracle of Google, hoping to see how true the alarming information was.
When I typed in the keywords and clicked on search, the results were nothing more than a couple of portals in Spanish talking about the matter, but no official media in this same language (and even less in English) talked about it.
After an hour of searching all over the worldwide web, I understood then that it was all a bad joke. A fake news that most likely has arisen to promote some Facebook pages like the one called "Evento cataclismico 23 de abril de 2023", dedicated exclusively to the dissemination of memes.
And now that I think about it, I seem to remember a joke very similar to this one that emerged on reddit forums a long time ago, perhaps referring to the same date.
What do you think?
I think I'd better go watch a movie on Disney+.
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Bonus:
- Countdown to the cataclysmic event: https://www.facebook.com/ernesto.saldana.96995/videos/875633586663300/?app=fbl
- Analysis on the April 23, 2023 cataclysmic event rumor: https://www.facebook.com/ArchivosMiedoYoutube/videos/809491319736080/?app=fbl
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