A miracle happened over the skies of London. A bright light appeared from behind the clouds and shone down on the capital city. All the thousands of witnesses to the light stared deep into it and felt a calming sense of well-being.

There were only about 2,000 witnesses to the light, but word spread like wildfire. It featured in all of the news channels. Jonathan Ross joked about it on his chat show. “#the light” became the third most popular trending topic on Twitter. People began to believe in The Light, and hoped that it would appear again.

The Daily Mail compared these acts of worship to heroin addiction. The Times got Ben Goldacre to write articles trying to explain how the light was just the sun refracting through the Earth’s atmosphere. Christians were also annoyed as people were worshipping The Light- which they saw as a false idol.

Eventually, all the 2,000 witnesses of The Light were shunned, ignored and mocked on XKCD. Two months later, everybody forgot about it.

Shame, really.