Last week we all had a good gawk at the phenomenon of #RaptureTok, where the End of Days went briefly viral on social media, and people worldwide prepared themselves for the Second Coming.  People went hard on this prophecy – selling their cars, giving away their savings.  Of course, the Rapture did not arrive and the disappointed believers had a variety of reactions on that same social media.  It’s gone now, swept away by the Internet churn.  But it was a such a weird, viral moment, I think it requires more attention than a laugh and a shrug.

If you missed the spectacle, a street preacher in South Africa called Joseph Mhlakela went on YouTube in June, and prophesied that the Rapture would happen “on September 23 or 24.”  The show circulated online, got clipped on TikTok, and went massively viral as the prophesied dates drew closer.  Other Christian influencers got on board, “did their own research” on the dates and cited scriptures, and #RaptureTok was born.  People genuinely believed in this – or were swept up in a mass hysteria, depending on your viewpoint.  Maybe both.  If you believe their TikTok and X posts, people quit their jobs, sold their cars, prepared their houses to provide refuge and spiritual counsel for the terrified unbelievers Left Behind.  Laypeople began also reporting prophetic Rapture dreams, synchronicities, and visions.  One woman here in America actually surrendered her baby to Child Protective Services because she would no longer be here to care for him.

Secular people online mocked the meme just as hard.  Hard questions, tinfoil hats, derisive skits. And on September 25, when no trumps had sounded and we were all still here, a few RaptureTokkers shamefacedly released “apology” videos, for leading others astray with false prophecy.

Everybody else had a good laugh and moved on.  But I think people are really underestimating the gravity of the event. 

I get it, I really do.  The world is just awful, and I want to go somewhere else too.  But people are overlooking the fact that this crazy obsession overturned people’s lives ALL OVER THE WORLD in about a week.  Not by anyone’s intent, either, just virality and algorithms.  This was not a fringe movement or a fluke – it was a planetary flash-mob that organized itself through the blind mechanism of Internet clout. 

The Rapture is largely an American Evangelical belief, but Evangelicalism has proselytized heavily in the Global South, so there were people participating from North and South America, Europe, Africa, Australia.  Anyplace that has a sizable Protestant Christian population.  #RaptureTok had all the elements to make it a mass global phenomenon:  short, emotionally charged videos, spread widely.  The algorithm rewards extremity, so more and more vehement videos rise to the top.  Users begin participating – prophesying, having dreams, engaging in the “costly religious signaling” of selling their belongings and quitting their jobs, increasing the credibility of the phenomenon for others. No barrier but web access, no authority but personal experience.  No one in charge except the algorithm, rewarding engagement.  What results is a temporary, grass-roots, global religious cult.  

People laugh and shrug it off. We are really underestimating the power, speed and reach of TikTok.  Of worldwide instant streaming video.  I don’t think #RaptureTok could have happened even five years ago, before the pandemic.  Not enough people were online and chronically connected worldwide until we were forced into our houses. With smartphone technology, people in the poorest developing countries can access the same feeds and information as people in London and Tokyo and New York.  It’s a very leveling effect, and people don’t seem to notice.  It had white American soccer moms accepting as authoritative the prophesies of a black South African man.  Think about that.  Some of those soccer moms may never have seen Mhlakale’s original videos, but the meme reached them and captured them nonetheless. TikTok isn’t just a silly app anymore.  It’s the planetary nervous system now.  The noosphere.

I’m pretty freaked out at how effective a weapon this could be.  Asymmetrical information warfare.  Crossing borders, cultures, beliefs.  This wasn’t just a goofy Internet craze.  It was a proof of concept.  Prompt injection into the global human consciousness. The infrastructure is there for mass panic, political violence, and pervasive propaganda and disinformation.  

The older I get, the more I realize every single thing in life is a double-edged sword, equally able to protect and destroy, depending on the intent of its user.  Social media is no different.  The same mechanisms that spread global faith could just as easily spread hate and war.  We’ve created a technology that can move a billion minds in days.  And we just take it for granted.  We can talk to and see each other all over the world now.  We need to be talking about the effects that can have, and how to contain them when necessary.  Luckily a Rapture prediction has a hard end date, but the next TikTok storm might not.