The world was supposed to end twice in the past two weeks.

April 18th was the first time. The rumors that the world would end came from a supposed phone call from the black box of Malaysian Flight 370. It was a rather crazy conspiracy with several different parts and pieces that followed the initial translation – texts in foreign languages, morse code, etc. It gave people quite a scare because the initial phone call came from nowhere. Then, strange messages came to the original poster about the situation. I’ve listened to a video about the whole thing, and it was pretty creepy. I won’t deny that I had a bit of anxiety that day because of it, despite knowing rationally that it was probably nothing. There still hasn’t been any word about whether it was a hoax or not, so we’ll have to wait and see.

The second apocalypse was April 23rd. A rogue planet, Nibiru, was going to come from space. What it was going to do wasn’t quite clear – some say that it was going to be close enough to start apocalyptic events by interfering with the sun or moon, and others said it would crash into the planet altogether. Some thought the planet’s arrival would trigger the Rapture (the second coming of Christ in the Christian faith). This interpretation was based on loose symbolism in a passage of Revelations. Arguably, I was not too nervous about this apocalypse because of the science of it. It is nearly impossible for a planet to come from nowhere without some kind of sign or warning that would be visible to everyone.

As I’ve grown up, I would estimate that I’ve ‘survived’ the end of the world over 40 times. For those that are older than me, I’m sure that number is much higher. It’s become laughable at this point because my generation doesn’t care anymore. We’ve heard this same story so many times and faced the anxiety of the end, so much so that we aren’t bothered. The world could actually end and we’d be calling it a coincidence because we’ve seen this process so many times already. Just this week, someone was challenging the world to end itself out of spite.

It’s often argued that my generation (the Millenials) and those that follow us are desensitized because of the terrible things we’ve seen on television. The games we play are creating a culture of violence. Our sense of humor is gruesome, explicit, and concerning. We don’t care that the world might end today, because we’ve seen bad things happen before. This would just be another bad thing that happens during our lifetimes.

The world didn’t end in the past two weeks, but it opened my eyes to how desensitized my generation is.