The Meteor Storm That Wasn't

I was sitting in the Sitting Room last night, monitoring my Twitter feed last night when the news came in from all over the country - a meteor storm!

To listen to Twitter there were meteors falling like snow all over the country!  I was so excited, Dear Readers, that I ran outside to witness this once-in-a-lifetime event. Archdruid Eileen muttered something about "John Wyndham", looked suspiciously at the Swiss-Cheese Plant, and then went back to her Bridge game.

Dear Readers, I saw not one. Disappointed, I went to bed and then read the news this morning. It would appear there was just the one, high-up, very large meteor - and maybe a few smaller ones. The hundreds of sightings had been just one, seen in many places, reported by many people. My once-in-a-lifetime event will have to be another day.

I am now pondering on the way the Internet changes our perceptions. Once a single meteor fireball, at 9.40 on a February night, would have been seen only by a few shepherds and maybe the odd drunk wandering home. They may have thought God was sending them a message, but after they told their friends about it, the excitement - such as it was - would have been a strictly local thing and after a year or two they would have been referred to as "Moongazer Michael" or somesuch, who reports seeing things falling out of the sky when nobody else does.

But now, a single meteor plus a few companions, by being reported at near-light-speed, gives the impression of showers of rocks falling from space. Only in the cold light of day can we discover that there was just the one. And by that time, some over-excitable members of the Beaker Folk had holed themselves up in the Doily Shed with a year's supply of baked beans and orange juice. Which made Eileen remark that, on the whole, she'd rather face the triffids.

The Martians vs HMS Thunderchild (War of the Worlds) from Wikimedia Commons

One of these days, Dear Readers, mass-rioting will be caused by a Twitter or Facebook rumour that somebody - somewhere - is hoarding all the tins of anchovies in the United Kingdom or something equally strange. Or worldwide reports of the Return of Our Lord will turn out to be someone catching a glimpse of an open-air production of Godspell from the top deck of a bus. We had better bring our sense of irony and cynicism to new levels - difficult, by the way, when you've a romantic, train-spotting personality like my own - and apply it to tweets from people we've never met, and have no way of verifying. In other words, we should give people we have never met the same amount of credence, until their stories are verified, as we do to politicians.