, Columnist
As 2012 Ends, China Tweets Doomsday
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On the morning of Dec. 1, “Mayans” entered the trending-keyword list on Sina Weibo, China’s leading Twitter-like microblog. This was not exactly surprising: For years, China’s netizens have been obsessed with Mayan prophecies supposedly suggesting the world will end on Dec. 21, 2012. (Or, perhaps, Dec. 22 in China, if time zones are accounted for.)
By the morning of Dec. 3, “the end of the world” had become the No. 2 topic of conversation on Sina Weibo, with an endless stream of Mayan-related tweets that, at their peak, were coming several per second.