Can someone explain this May 2011/ December 2012 Fluther phenomena to me please?

Perhaps it’s the proximity (time-wise) to the event. People don’t care about the world ending in 2012 but we like to talk about the end of the world that we survived today – the beginning of the end, anyway.

Christians are more fun to make fun of than Quetzacoatl worshippers?

shrugs

I’m sure there will be a ton of postings about 2012 as the date draws near and then passes without the end of the world happening. And look for Harold Camping to recalculate and publish a new book. After all, he made $72 million on the last prophecy, which he floated after his 1994 prophecy failed to be correct. His nest date won’t be 17 years in the future, though. He’s 89 years old, so he’s got to fleece the sheep quickly this time. Look for the “error” to be a short one, a year or two at most.

I’M FLAGGING THIS QUESTION BECAUSE IT’S ABOUTH BOTH 2012 AND RAPTURE!

:)

I believe some of those may actually be zombie apocalypse questions, not that those are necessarily any more useful or worthy. I got pretty tired of the rapture questions myself, enough already, but I tend to let fluther be fluther now; she can be moody and capricious and irrational but at some point I just decided that that’s the way she is and that was that. Only occasionally do I let it irritate me any more. My stupid questions get flagged other people’s stupid questions do not, I get modded, other people do not get modded, other people get modded but I don’t, I give an answer and get nothing, 5 comments down someone gives the same answer and gets 8 GAs. Who the hell knows how and why it all goes the way it does? There are ton of minor irritations here and if I didn’t make an effort, and sometimes it really is an effort, to let a lot of it just roll off my back I would have been out of here a long, long time ago. I just can’t let any lack of consistency bug me too much. I can’t explain and I don’t try anymore or let it bug me.

Edit: O.K. Hypocrisy alert. I just answered this question only to encounter yet another, another rapture question. I flagged it, yes, it was me that did it. Enough with the fucking rapture crap, excuse my language. Even I have my limits. Enough, enough, enough!

I think it usually had to do with which ones get flagged, or how long they keep up. The first day or two is OK, but week after week gets stopped.

@lillycoyote I think I’m just amazed how Fluther has changed in such a short amount of time. Not that it bothers me or I’m irritated by it. I know sites grow with the times. If you look back at previous questions about topics that bug you, 2012 was one of the main topics that bugged everyone. This was at least 6 months ago, if not longer. Users would bitch if someone asked a question about 2012 that was asked a week earlier, and make sure to link to the previous question. <wink, wink @YARNLADY>> <——joking!!!!—I lurve you! <3

Honestly, I’m more irritated that my cable is cutting out during SNL’s last show of the season. It’s Justin Timberlake, dammit!

Enjoy

@ETpro How insane is it to end up with a a hugely profitable career built on errors?

@jonsblond I think it’s because all the askers are new(er) users. The ones who tend to do the bitching are the ones that have been here for awhile, and also bitch about the dream questions and get all “old users rock, new users suck”. Obviously, not all the users that have been here for awhile do this. But the old users seem to have just given up, and don’t visit or answer/ask nearly as often. There seemed to be a couple months or so when a good amount of older users tried really hard to not have the site evolve and have new users and to say “no!”. And now they just lurk.

I think it’s also cuz it’s the weekend, so it’s slow, and people just want any damn question to answer.

@ladymia69 I never said the guy was insane, just wrong. Not even wrong in pulling the scam, just wrong in his prediction. That was beyond obvious from the Bible he claimed to base his prophecy on. And it shows that enough Christians to pork out $72 million dollars are completely clueless about what the book they claim to follow even says.

I’d follow in his footsteps except for the fact it would make me sick of myself. Mr. Camping must be blessed by Jesus with far more guile and greed than goodness of heart. “Thou shalt not lie, unless—of course—there’s good money in it.”

The main difference is that the majority of the 5/21 questions appeared just before, on, and after the day. Whereas the 2012 questions were appearing 2 years before the event. There’s a difference between a ton of 5/21 questions on the few days around the date, but imagine there were 2 years of constant questions about 2012…

@ETpro Walt Disney made $942 million the past year. Couldn’t you say Disney lovers are clueless to pork out that much money for roller coasters, movies and bed sheets?

It’s genius if you ask me.

@jonsblond Disney actually delivers value for value received. May not be your cup of tea, but Disney Corp isn’t deceiving people about what they will get at a theme park, or movie, or crusie.

@ETpro I’ve ridden some crappy rides at Disneyland and have seen some crappy Disney movies (that I paid for). You’ll never see me on a cruise ship. Disney has disappointed me, and I’m sure many others.

@jonsblond I know Disney has deceived me. Hunchback of Notre Dame? They said it was supposed to be good. That’s just a lie on every level.

I definitely think proximity is the main difference. It’s fun/interesting/etc. to talk a lot about an event that’s currently happening or not happening, as the case may be, but not so much about an event that’s years away. I expect that as 12/12 draws near, we’ll get a whole new rash of 2012 Qs, and a bunch of them won’t be pulled.

Also, I wasn’t on for much of the day, so I didn’t see all of the MANY rapture Qs as they were being asked. Probably a bunch of them should have been pulled for being duplicates. Mea culpa.

@jonsblond thanks for the @jonsblondie. I enjoyed!

@augustlan So we have much to look forward to in 2012, eh? Can’t wait! haha

@lillycoyote jonsblondie sounds like a fruity drink. As long as it doesn’t include coconut, I’m game.

People like to see reaction.

I simply don’t get why anyone would flag any question, or indeed any answer, unless it was blatant spam. If you don’t like the question, don’t answer it. If you don’t like an answer, grow a pair and deal with it, instead of running to matron…

@meiosis We were receiving literally dozens of questions about 2012 per week. A decision was made by the mod team to remove all future ones as duplicates.

@meiosis Flagging question we object to is also a way to let the moderators know how the collective feels about some subjects. It is up to us to try to keep the type of site we want. Personally, I have found that Fluther has moved away from the type of site I want with all the alphabet games and boyfriend/girlfriend questions so I have reduced my participation accordingly.

It’s not a happy choice to simply ignore the questions I don’t like, when they have become the majority of questions on here. I used to spend hour after hour on Fluther, but now it barely takes up one hour of my day.

I don’t know what the 2012 questions looked like, of course, but the Rapture questions are a diverse lot. Some are just for fun, some are about the (non-)event itself or the “reasoning” behind it, and others raise moral/legal questions using the Rapture claims as their point of entry.

Most of the 2012 Qs were actual duplicates… “Is the world really going to end in 2012?” with slightly different wording.

The 2012 questions didn’t have the lolz.