The morning after doomsday
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If you're reading this, it should be fairly obvious to you that the world did not end yesterday as many permanently frowning people were hoping.
The Suan Dusit Poll was relieved to report that 92 per cent of the Thais it surveyed had laughed off the “Mayan calendar prediction” anyway. Many pointed out that the silly Mayans didn’t even mention the demon god Rahu devouring the sun.
So, while the rest of the world cowered yesterday, Thais threw themselves on the sacrificial fires of satire, which burned hottest, naturally, on the social media.
Well-known football blogger @fourfourtom offered a “Doomsday Football Chant” that went “Stand up if you’re still alive, stand up if you’re still alive!”
A Harry Potter fan called @_Snape_ tweeted to remind everyone that NASA had confirmed that the sky would become very dark late in the evening on December 21. “This is a phenomenon called ‘Night’,” he explained.
The Thai term for doomsday is wan sin loke, with “sin” pulling double duty as the word for “sarong”, so December 21 was also commemorated as World Sarong Day. Many Facebook users posted photos of themselves wearing sarongs, and the staff at movie studio GTH wore sarongs to work.
The chatty media were deluged with laments from young people who couldn’t abide by the world ending (not yet!) – because they still hadn’t found a boyfriend or girlfriend.
Stock investors have their own chat room on the popular community website Pantip.com (!) and they were in a tizzy trying to find out exactly what time the world was due end, and whether that was by Western or Eastern clocks. They probably had some devious plan.
Most frequent online comment, including on The Nation’s website: “It was great to know you all!”
Most frequent comment among people in debt: “I hope this is really going to happen!”
Most obvious question that only one person asked as far we could see (“mana9” at Pantip): “Is there a countdown party?”
And how was your anticlimax?
