I admit I didn’t come to this site because I was frightened. I actually ended up here by accident. I was looking up information about the Mayan 2012 thing because a few members of my family approached me about it and were wondering if there were anything to it. At that point, I hadn’t really heard much about it, other than it was a Mayan calendar and that a cycle ended in 2012. To be honest, I couldn’t quite grasp why a calendar rolling over or ending was so scary. I mean, I didn’t freak out every time my FarSide Calendar ended. But, as usual when trying to deal with something I’m not well versed in, I did the research.
What I found was a lot of woo woo pseudoscience cloaked in half-truths and lies by charlatans determined to make a buck by preying on people’s fears. I was shocked by some of these theories about Nibiru, Wormwood, etc… and I was at a real loss as to where to start debunking all this for these individuals I was dealing with. I had actually started collating information to basically present to them like I would information in a court of law.
Then I happened to see a link for 2012hoax.org and was curious. To be honest, I was expecting another woo site…so imagine my happy surprised when I found out it was a skeptic site dedicated to debunking all this crap.
After reading through everything here very carefully, I actually just sent those members of my family the link and told them to read the whole bloody site. It worked. The information here is compact and down to the point and made easy for those without a science background to understand. I do want to say, that these are well educated and very smart people who were briefly taken in by the 2012 mythos, so it can really happen to anyone.
Now, they actively send people to the site to help calm fears and spread the word of what a big hoax the whole 2012 BS is.
After speaking with the maintainer of the site via twitter, I decided to join to help where I can. Which is not a lot since I’m a full time grad student and my schedule is from the darkest pits of oblivion…so, free time is pretty rare. But I do stop by and read and comment when I can. Hopefully as the semester wears on I will get enough time to myself to actually help with the debunking or information mining the site needs.
ETA: fixed an error - 2012hoax.org not .com
"Does it trouble your mind / the way you trouble mine?"