Originally Posted by
JLord
I don't think we will see much hysteria at all about this date. Nothing compared to y2k. All the prominent gurus in this area have been hedging against anything happening on Dec 21 for years now. And the most gullible people are gullible because they listen to these gurus, not because they ignore them and do their own research. I don't know of a single prominent person who claims that any dramatic and detectible event will occur on Dec 21.
Actually, I think the only reason they're backpedalling is because it's probably the most debunked thing ever.
With Y2K nobody could tell you for sure that there aren't computers left in some streetlights who'll stop working... even though they have no need for the date in what they're doing. On the contrary, every single marketing and PR shyster, scammer, con-man and snake-oil peddler was going into overdrive to keep the population scared witless that even their power-cables and headphones need to be replaced or civilization will fall back into the stone-age. Everyone was bombarded with labels even on PC speakers that said "Y2K compatible", which told them that there are some which aren't, and paid-for PR masquerading as news pieces telling them that all is doom and gloom if they don't reach for their checkbooks and make some scammers rich.
For all Joe Average could tell, people smarter than him agreed that Y2K is the end of civilization as we know it.
But for 2012, pretty much everyone sane just went "no, it ain't, there's no prophecy, and it's not even the end of the piktun fer fork's sake."
And they didn't even have any major religious group on their side, to offset that. You can reel people in by pushing the rapture buttons and whatnot, that their religion put in them. But for some heathen Mayan "prophecy"? I don't think anyone got raised to await the return of Quetzalcoatl any more.