Well first to believe in it you have to have no background in science or astronomy. You flunked physics at high school and have never had an interest in astronomy or paid much attention to the night sky. Often they notice for the first time that the sun often lights up clouds on the other side of the sky from the sun, and that it rises in a different position on the horizon each day of the year and think these mean Nibiru is approaching. They don’t know how to find the pole star or what its significance is, because many of them believe that the Earth’s geographical poles have shifted, which would mean that Polaris would no longer be the pole star.
So - there are many people of course whose knowledge of science is at that level. It’s nothing to be ashamed of in my view. My knowledge of languages is at that level and of many other things. We can’t all be experts at everything :).
So then - that’s the ground for it. You have to be prone to believing in conspiracy theories, and that people in authority are likely to be lying, even a civilian space authority and the international astronomy union. Of course nowadays many people find all sorts of conspiracy theories believable so that’s not such a big barrier.
Also you can’t know how many people amateur and professional are involved in astronomy worldwide (tens of thousands of professional astronomers, hundreds of thousands of amateurs) because they generally believe that all astronomers are colluding together to hide this information and lying to them, at least to start with until they find out more. Again - well that ties in with the not knowing about astronomy bit. Most people just aren’t that interested in astronomy of course, just as I am not interested in train spotting, and don’t know such things.
Then - with that basis, the rest of it works rather like advertising. They see impressive seeming videos (if you don’t know any astronomy) with an authoritative sounding voice over by someone with a confident and firm voice. Stirring music. Dramatic images (as they seem to them anyway).
Then a lot of repetition. Try searching google for “Nibiru” to see how many sites there are presenting this stuff. May be the same people over and over, or a few people who are very prolific. Many are hoaxes and are financially driven. It’s become a whole small industry with people making money from selling bunkers to the super wealthy (who are just as gullible and easily conned of their money as everyone else), books, making numerous videos, and people who have found they can earn thousands of dollars a month per video channel from ad revenue by churning out similar videos or sometimes the identical video over and over with new dates saying Nibiru is about to hit Earth.
And there are lots of news sites that run this stuff. Especially the UK “red top tabloids” - and many other UK newspapers, even some that are quite respectable. They wouldn’t dream of running a fake obituary but just run this stuff based on nothing, even just a youtube video by an anonymous uploader, or in a recent example, three facebook comments were the basis for an entire story, the authors of the comments not identified, but they were quoted in the story. The bar of entry for a story about Nibiru is apalling.
And you find almost no debunking, and the articles that do are generally from 2012, though the Washington Post did recently do a Nibiru debunking article, kudos to them :).
So then - it’s like advertising, and propaganda and “brain washing” . Watch enough of this and you doubt your senses and come to believe the most extraordinary things for instance that we have two suns. Easily disproved on any sunny day by blocking out the sun with a finger and looking to left, right, above and below (be careful not to stare at the sun without blocking it out as it can damage your eyes and you don’t notice until much later).
This is one of the images shared that is meant to prove that we have two suns for the doubters (i.e. anyone with any common sense)
It’s an artist’s impression of the view from a planet orbiting a binary star. Artists are pretty good at photorealistic images and this is an example. Others include lens flares, offset lens reflections, and just light shining on clouds.
Also another reason they believe it is that they are given such simple instructions to “observe Nibiru”. They are told to take a photograph or look a the sky and see if you see anything bright apart from the Sun which you don’t understand. They are told, if you see that no matter where it is in the sky, north, south east, west, no matter what time of day - though usually sunrise or sunset - that it is “Nibiru”. So of course many people who have hardly paid any attention to the sky all their life start looking at it, and people who have never photographed the sun, start photographing it. And they get lens flares and offset lens reflections, see bright patches in the sky of clouds lit up by the sun, and they have never noticed anything like this before. So they get scared and think they have seen Nibiru and it is about to hit Earth. If they had been given the same instruction, but told that any bright object is Santa Claus, and were gullible enough to believe it, we’d get numerous “observations” of Santa.
Then remember a lot of those that are scared by it are very young. Often 14 upwards and sometimes much younger, 10, or even 5. So they just don’t know a lot about the world at that point, so much harder to assess a story like this or to assess its credibility especially if their parents or other adults are taking it seriously.
I’ve done a couple of petitions about it
Petition to Youtube to halt ads on Doomsday videos
Do look at some of the comments there also.
Do sign and share those petitions if you agree with them. Even though not many have signed them yet, I think everyone who does is helping - brings some attention to it, especially also if you share them.
I also do a blog debunking doomsday and write articles for Science20 from time to time to try to do my tiny bit to do something to help with all the fake Nibiru doomsday news that gets so much publicity in online UK tabloids and US TV channels like Coast to Coast - and yet the whole thing is just garbage, nonsense, BS, tosh, balderdash, whatever word you like to use.
And my online and kindle book: Doomsday Debunked which is doing its bit on amazon, get occasional sales. Hopefully sometimes someone might notice it while searching for a book about Nibiru on Amazon amongst all the books that say that it is real, and find out more. All sales go to international suicide prevention charities, at present Befriender’s international.
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