Well, there goes the weekend: If you believe viral TikTok trends, today — Sept. 23 — may in fact be the last day on Earth. A new doomsday-predicting conspiracy theory circulating on social media notes that Sept. 23 is the date of numerous calamities in movies and TV.
In the sitcom The Big Bang and films like Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, Deep Impact and Asteroid City, an asteroid strikes the Earth on either Sept. 22 or Sept. 23.
Sept. 23 is also the day the rapture arrives in This Is the End, the day the Earth is destroyed by a solar flare in Knowing, the day the pandemic hits in Pandemic and the day hell arrives in The Number 23. As for Sept. 22 (which was yesterday at the writing of this story so that bodes well for the world surviving past today), that is the day of the biblical flood in Evan Almighty and the day of the fateful plane crash in Lost.
Other movies mentioned in the theory include Little Shop of Horrors, Tomorrowland, Ghostbusters, Labyrinth, and Don’t Worry Darling, which premiered on Sept. 23. Numbers included in Taco Bell and Guinness commercials and a Black Eyed Peas music video are also cited as support.
While it seems unlikely that the world will actually end today, that doesn’t mean that nothing will happen. Sept. 23 is the autumnal equinox in the northern hemisphere, so even if it’s not the end of the world, it is officially the end of summer.
If you’re in New Jersey, it also happens to be Bruce Springsteen Day as well in honor of The Boss’s 74th birthday.