Did Yahoo! Answers Predict the Coming of Sharknado?
Yahoo! Answers disproves that, "no such thing as a stupid question," thing teachers always say.
Yahoo Answers is where people go to get answers from people who know even less than they do. It’s main purpose is to provide fodder for the podcast My Brother, My Brother, and Me, but months ago someone asked what would happen if a shark was caught in a hurricane. Answer: Sharknado happens. Is Yahoo Answers predicting the future?
Let’s compare this question asked four months ago by Yahoo user “Mens”:
With this synopsis of Sharknado I just found on the IMDB:
When a freak hurricane swamps Los Angeles, nature’s deadliest killer rules sea, land, and air as thousands of sharks terrorize the waterlogged populace.
There are a few possible explanations:
- Yahoo Answers is an Internet crystal ball showing us the terrible nightmares that wait for us in the future.
- SyFy original movies are so bizarre that the overlap on a Venn diagram showing them and the insane ramblings of Yahoo Answers is basically just a circle.
- This was some kind of failed viral marketing campaign.
I’m not saying some SyFy executive saw this and kicked the whole thing into production. I know movies take a long time to develop, so Sharknado was well on its way four months ago, but it still seemed to come out of nowhere. No one was really talking about the movie until the trailer hit. I’m just saying that Yahoo User “Mens” is some kind of Sharknado wizard.
It amuses me to no end that this question — which in a world without Sharknado would be easily dismissed as one of the dumbest questions on a service full of dumb questions — is a pretty dead on correlation to the plot of a movie that a lot of people worked very hard on to make.
If it was an attempt to try to market the film virally it didn’t work. The question didn’t get much of a response. There’s only one answer, and it politely explains how stupid the question — and by extension Sharknado — really is. User Todd explains:
Hurricanes are actually atmospheric storms. Unless a shark is close enough to the surface to be affected by the storm surge, there really shouldn’t be a problem. As far as whirlpools, there would have to be a down draft associated with it, and usually these are fairly weak. There are only a handful of what could be termed “permanent” tidal whirlpools in the world that are very strong, so sharks generally aren’t affected. As far I can find, no specific research has been done on the consequences of a shark entering into a whirlpool.
I’ve decided to take a look at some of “Mens'” other questions. If his movie predicting skills are legit, we can expect to see a film portraying whether Russia or China would surrender first if there was ever a third World War, and a bunch of movies about specific details of Madden 2013.
(Yahoo Answers via My Brother, My Brother, and Me)
- Reruns of Sharknado are outperforming the premiere
- Don’t have cable? Sharknado is coming to theaters
- Did anyone predict Sharknado II? That’s a thing that’s happening
Have a tip we should know? tips@themarysue.com
