DOOMSDAY has been rescheduled. Once more. The fact that you’re reading this article is proof that the world didn’t end – at least not yesterday. The mystery planet Nibiru did not crash into the earth. And world governments were not involved in a mass conspiracy to keep the information from us (although there may be much else they're not letting on about).

That’s not to say David Meade, the chief source of the prediction that gripped the internet last week, had been proved to be completely wrong. Even before September 23 had arrived the Christian numerologist and author of Planet X – The 2017 Arrival was already declaring that people had misunderstood his prediction and that the date was only ever going to be a sign, auguring in a seven-year period of “tribulation”. He added that events like the recent Mexico City earthquake were the beginning of this.

This was not the first doomsday prediction in the history of humanity, although it is the one that has made biggest impact since the dawn of social media and the internet, and this is Nibiu's third time round. Originally the collision-day was predicted for 2003, then rescheduled to 2012, before being put back to his year. But in spite of this failures to collide, the Nibiru threat has still formed an internet obsession, and not just among conspiracy theorists and evangelical Christians – but also on news sites.

Newspapers featured articles dedicated not only to Meade, but also Gary Ray, a writer on the evangelical Christian website, Unsealed. Yet Ray, last week,also stated that the prediction had never been that the world would end on September 23, and that in fact it wouldn’t end for another 1000 years – although it's unlikely any of us will be around to test the veracity.

The Nibiru phenomenon demonstrates how, based on almost zero science, a theory can grip the world. NASA even felt compelled to dismiss the stories, saying, “Various people are ‘predicting’ that world will end on September 23 when another planet collides with Earth. The planet in question, Nibiru, doesn't exist, so there will be no collision. The story of Nibiru has been around for years (as has the 'days of darkness' tale) and is periodically recycled into new apocalyptic fables.”

Rob Brotherton, author of Suspicious Minds: Why We Believe Conspiracy Theories, attributes, the “stickiness” of these predictions to several aspects of our psychology. “There's our knack for ferreting out clues and signs and patterns that help explain what's happening in the world. There's our inclination to look for hidden meaning, to not just accept what we're told. And then there's the appeal of dramatic narratives. Put all this together and you get Bible codes and sinister conspiracies to cover up rogue planets heading our way.”

Brotherton believes that many of the people who spread these stories are not believers, though some do “entertain it as an interesting possibility without fully buying it”. However, he says, the vast majority of people “are just entertained by it, and by ripping it to pieces – which is why every time another one of these prophecies comes around there are so many articles about how ridiculous it all is, even though those articles are just giving the idea more exposure”.

“Whether you believe the world as we know it is coming to an end or not,” he observes, “the way our psychology works makes it tempting to entertain the idea, or at least be entertained by it. Which makes for good clickbait.”