How was the Rapture for you?

The Rapture is so last week I know, but there’s something mildly exhilarating about sipping Veuve Clicquot — someone else was paying — making origami cranes and watching two aggressively heterosexual men commiserate loudly over a woman called Margo in a restaurant in Illovo. (It’s a longish story. Don’t ask.)

Naked people might not have floated off to heaven, leaving all their clothes behind for the mother of all jumble sales, but it was a major global event nonetheless. Twitter was abuzz with Rapture-themed hashtags, and across the world, people were sending out last-minute invitations for end-of-the-world parties. Every second person was tweeting that now tired joke, where you comfort a disappointed acolyte with the words “at least it’s not the end of the world”.

(Technically speaking, the end of the world is only scheduled to take place in October, after six months of hell on earth.)

Now comes the post non-Rapture schadenfreude. Take this story about the group who checked into a Joburg hotel to prepare for the end. I’m not sure I’d want to spend my last days at the Devonshire Hotel in Braamfontein but hey, each to his own.

Apparently Harold Camping, who started it all, was mystified at the failure of massive earthquakes to strike New Zealand at 6pm local time and then continue around the world in a sort of rolling ripple effect; one does have to wonder whether the contracts for the billboards his organisation, Family Radio, put up all over the planet (including SA) were scheduled to run into June.

Some of his employees were reportedly planning on coming to work after the Apocalypse announced its arrival and, encouragingly, his site has a “What’s new” button. Asked what he thought about the non-event, he said it had been a “tough weekend”.

What’s interesting is how the Rapture — at least as defined by the leader of what is really a relatively insignificant (but wealthy) organisation of nutcases — became a huge global pop cultural phenomenon, at least for a day or two. It even shoved Justin Bieber off the top of the trending topics pile, but he’s back there with Congrats Justin, so the world is as it should be. I’ve thought for some time (and I imagine that many others have too) that the ongoing popularity of Justin and his unrivalled dominance of social media is a compelling sign that the end of the world really is nigh, but the planet soldiers on nonetheless under a burden of vast and monumental shallowness, so perhaps I’m being pessimistic.

The notion of the Rapture has been floating around for centuries. It’s the subject of a best-selling series of novels, which in turn have given rise to several movies and a couple of PC games. There are various theories about when it will actually take place, and there are many who regard Camping’s teachings as heresies. (Good solid word that, heretic. Don’t see it nearly often enough now that burning at the stake has gone out of fashion.)

Of course, the idea that the end of the world could be diarised in Outlook was hilarious, and merely confirmed one of the world’s favourite stereotypes, that of the crazy American Christian fundamentalist. At the restaurant in Illovo, there were other signs: the Wi-Fi network called “Revelation”, the Jagermeister poster showing a clawed hand holding the bottle with the legend “Unleash the beast”. The sort of ad I’d expect to see in Billy the Bums or Cool Runnings, if I ever darkened the doors of either establishment. I might have indulged (against my better judgment) in that diabolical substance on the night of the World Cup final, but not this time. If you’re going to toast the arrival of the four horsemen, it might as well be Veuve.