By dusk, the viral claim had been dissected, its power shrinking under harsh light but never quite dying. Experts spoke in careful phrases, explaining artifacts and errors, but their certainty arrived too late to stop the global shudder. The damage was not in what had happened, but in how quickly everyone had believed it could. That belief exposed a deeper fracture: a world so saturated with crises that catastrophe now felt like the default setting.
In the days after, no official statement could fully rewind the panic. People noticed how easily their trust had been hijacked by a stranger’s upload and an algorithm’s hunger. Some deleted apps; others doubled down, chasing the next alarm. The lesson lingered in the quiet: the end of the world might not come from what is true, but from what spreads fastest.
