For a decent portion of this week, half of the Internet was convinced that we were all going to get swept up in the Rapture. While the Left Behind book series did not become more significant in our real lives, in opposition to its weird omnipresence on social media over the last week, that didn’t stop people from thinking about what would happen if suddenly the world’s population was a whole lot smaller in a short amount of time.
When we open up a piece of joking around about the 90’s weird revelation themed Bible based book series, you know we’re in for a strange one. Jesus had to come up at some point with that kind of material making the rounds. One social media video does a great job of illustrating just how far down a rabbit hole multiple viewers can go extremely quickly.
Screenwriter Todd Spence was as enraptured by an indie wrestler named Jesus as we were, when the viral video rolled across our feeds. In the clip, the wrestler, who we assume hails from Nazareth, hits a series of chokeslams without laying a hand on his opponent. It’s a hysterical gimmick, and a tad blasphemous for good measure, but the world of wrestling is filled with some strange pulls when it comes to gimmicks like this whole Jesus schtick.
After doing some light digging. I mean, We discovered that this indie wrestling Jesus made an appearance during a holiday themed show last year. Aptly, jesus was out there to save Santa Claus during a match. On TikTok, a user named Kenny Nicholson chronicled this electric entrance and some of the development of the offense on display this viral moment.
So, I’ll bite, why are we talking about The Rapture seriously?
TikTok teemed with people prophesying the end of the world last week. Sadly for the folks who sold their homes and Earthly possessions, we’re all still here, for better and worse! In so many cases, a lot of the people viewing these bizarre videos aren’t even wrapped up in the individual subcultures a lot of these content creators come from. So, there’s bound to be some confusion for a casual audience.
RaptureTok infiltrating so much of the other social media airspace is further evidence of how consolidating these platforms and companies continues to be the biggest issue that’s underdiscussed on the web. Why would a bunch of fringe posts from various TikTok users become a trending topic outside of the platform? Well, when there’s 6 big websites, you’re going to spawn a lot of random moments in the exact same way.
When one South African pastor can set the agenda for the other 5 big websites, we have a problem! Just a guess too. It’s not the Negro Solstice orthis current social media hysteria that Joshua Mhlakela promoted, the real story is a scattered information environment where despite some very real problems unfolding, (Soybean farmers can you hear me???), we’re making memes about getting raptured. At least the wrestling is decent I suppose?
Photo Credit: Todd Spence
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