Ack, too many people I want to reply to at once…
@vwgreen: They did fake Nibiru however many weeks ago, and it was even mentioned in that thread as being an abysmally poor attempt but that 'a directed effort would be more successful' (or words to that affect). What they fail to realise is that being so painfully obvious as to decide upon 11:11 as a time would result in an equally poor showing, even if they had more people doing it.
@hycer15: I thoroughly, wholeheartedly, completely disagree. There is an entire scale of trolling. Ever pointed at a mates shirt, waited for them to look down then flick them in the nose? We'll call that the lighter side of the scale. The darker end of the scale is rather more blunt. This sits somewhere near the dark but nowhere near jet black, failure-y end of what is now at least a 3 dimensional scale. It's a quick bang for a quick reaction, doesn't have the legs to run.
@TheBlueOctopus: The minority shouldn't represent the majority. This is technically the same community that investigate and expose animal abusers, call for a free and open Internet in the face of all Government action, and even oppose the WBC, something it seems a good few people on this forum want others to do.
@bikenbeer2000: Bold your posts more often.
@EveryoneElseReadingThis: Read posts more often, especially stuff that's bolded.
As biken points out, assume it's straight out false from the start. You wouldn't hear of a celebrity death and immediately break down into tears, you'd go 'Bull. Really? Let me check.' So why break down into tears for doomsday claims? Why are you not going 'Bull. Really? Let me check.' to all of this nonsense as well?
If you are unable to remove emotional reactions from all of this, then get off the Internet for the next few days. If you find yourself watching the news on TV instead, and they happen to report something so utterly stupid as this without fact checking, then congratulations - you've found a TV network with no sense of journalistic integrity and accuracy, stick it on your list of 'things to avoid'. If you're on the Internet however, as anxietycat mentions, this won't be the only attempt to get a reaction on Friday. Either be weary of this, or be weary of people here getting a wee bit fed up with new posts…