Disturbing theory that the world ended in 2012 is going viral

A strange theory has an unsettling take on the 2012 apocalypse conspiracy.

If you've read the news or looked out of the window lately, then you might have noticed that things don't seem to be going particularly well on planet Earth right now.

There's the wars, ongoing economic crises, and let's not forget the climate crisis as well, of course.

Combine all of this together and you have a pretty bleak outlook for the future, and that can quite understandably leave one feeling more than a little deflated.

But there's one very odd theory about all this, and when I say odd, I do mean out of this world.

Let's go back to when everything felt like it was just starting to unravel.

Did the world end in 2012? (Getty Stock)

No, not 2016, it had already unravelled by then, but 2012.

Yes, we had Obama going into his second term, but disappointment and disillusionment were starting to set in, while in the UK we were in the throes of the coalition government, with austerity starting to bite.

You may recall a popular theory in 2012 that the world would end that year because of a Mayan calendar.

Well, now a new theory has suggested that on 21 December 2012, something happened to change the fabric of the universe, and we are now living in a 'post-glitch' universe.

And this 'glitch' is why things have suddenly started to go so very badly wrong since then - think Eleven opening the door to the Upside Down in Stranger Things.

No, the world didn't end in 2012 (Yana Iskayeva/Getty)

It claims that there have been technology failures, global shifts, and even the climate crisis as a result of this 'shift', though we are very much to blame for that last one if we're being honest.

Unfortunately, the theory of the Mayan Calendar predicting the 'end of the world' was not itself actually true, as it was based on a misreading of the calendar.

In 2011, the BBC reported that a newer reading of the calendar suggested that this was the end of a period on the calendar rather than the end of the world itself.

So think less apocalypse and more daylight savings.

Out of some 15,000 registered Mayan texts, just two mention the date 2012, and none of them predict the end of the world.

Speaking to Reuters in 2011, Erik Velasquez, an etchings specialist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, said: "There is no prophecy for 2012. It is a marketing fallacy."