Actually, the Mayan calendar stated that 2012 is the start of a new epoch under their date system, it never said anything about the world ending. The claim that they predicted the world ending was based on nothing but "indigenous mysticism" by white people and Hollywood.
Given how the Mayans are usually portrayed as an ancient, vanished people, I was surprised to find out that if you want to know about Mayan beliefs you can just ask them. They're the guys stood outside the archeological sites selling t-shirts.
Actually, the Mayan calendar stated that 2012 is the start of a new epoch
The end of The Fifth Age and the beginning of the Sixth Age, the reawakening of the great dragons, and the start of goblinization, and the return of magic to the world.
Yeah but the world ending in 2012 had nothing to do with the Mayan calendar and everything to do with aliens destroying the moon and using it to end all life on Earth, just after scanning us all for re-creation in their matrix in the year 29000 AD
When the world was extra ridiculous over the past decade I would always tell my friends/family "the Mayans were right, the real world ended in 2012, and we have been living in a fucked up facsimile of it ever since purely for the amusement of the Mayan gods. They want to see how much they can turn up the "ridiculousness" dial on the simulation until the planet quite literally explodes
I still remember 1 Jan 2000. There did seem to be some sense of optimism about where things could go. At least for those of us lucky enough to live in stable, developed countries.
Cold war over, Russia and The West seemingly on the same side, China opening up, exciting new tech connecting us but no toxic social media yet...
But then... the dot com bust, 9/11, the GFC, toxic social media and the rise of "the algorithm", Xi in China, Putin in Russia, a global pandemic......
Didn't really go where we hoped, can we restore to a backup from 1999 and try again??