How To Scream Doomsday In the Internet Age

The whole Harold Camping / Family Radio / end-of-days thing is probably more fascinating than it should be, at least to me. I imagine that this doesn't have much saturation outside of the U.S., so here's a quick recap:

Harold Camping is a radio personality that believes that he's figured out some math in the Bible—math, that is, combining disparate, contradictory mathematical systems based on Bible stories originating at least in part within ancient oral traditions— that leads to the conclusion that the end of the world will begin six days from now, on May 21st: earthquake, zombies, rapture, chaos, misery, and, finally, the Earth's destruction next October. Take a listen:

How many people believe this dude and his prediction? Who the hell knows? That's the interesting thing. There are RVs driving through American cities painted up in hot end-times graphix and billboards and people handing out pamphlets; a former New York City Subway worker sunk his $140,000 life savings into plastering trains and buses with warnings about the end date.

The weird thing is that Camping is an anti-church Christian who teaches as such, and perhaps there's not a whole lot of indie Christians in the world willing buy into that kind of anti-flock. A ton of people seem to be following the saga, however, believers or not. And as a curiosity, it's spread has been rather meme-like.

I'm sitting in a coffee shop in Baltimore right now staring at one of Camping's billboards—what looks like the result of a late-'90s community education intro to graphic design class—and what strikes is less the stupidity/insanity of the "movement," rough around the edges even by cult standards, but how it's being spread in the least internet-fashion one could conceive of in the first-world in the year 2011. Family Radio has a website (just look) and even a Facebook page, but based on likes and friends, it's about one-third as popular as my local video store.

Yet Camping (above with his flock), Family Radio, and the May 21 judgment have the appearance of being much larger. And that's because it's being disseminated outside of the internet, I think. We see billboards and RVs and fliers and we assume something more. Because anybody can spread anything on the internet for no money whatsoever, when we see a message being spread otherwise, we assume heft. Not heft to the prediction, but heft to the movement. People believe this. When, really, no one might believe this. Spreading a message this way doesn't require crowd support, it just requires money. Not even that much money.

It's all sort of baffling. I think there's a slowly growing mistrust of crowd-based movements in the internet-world, their conviction. And that leaves an open channel for the brute authoritarianism of a message like Camping's, a message that doesn't risk being diffuse in the world of yesterday's media.

That's just my own end-times prediction.

The Way The World Ends: Goo Invasions, EMP Strikes, and Other Doomsday Scenarios

Truly the Best Doomsday Scenario: Time Just Stops

Reach this writer at michaelb@motherboard.tv.