Once upon a time, in a sleepy alpine village, a bored shepherd boy with a flock of sheep and far too much free time alone, cried “Wolf!” Villagers came racing uphill wielding sticks and spades only to find the sheep grazing and a laughing little boy.
They were not amused. “Don’t do that again,” they warned. “One day, there might be a real wolf.” He, being a little boy, ignored them and repeated his prank the next day.
We all know how the story ends – on the third day, a real wolf came. But this time the boy’s cries went unheeded, the sheep were eaten, and in some darker versions of the tale, so was he.
Fast forward to history’s own shepherd boy: Harold Camping, a Christian radio broadcaster who predicted the Rapture would occur on September 6, 1994. When nothing happened, he blamed a “mathematical error.”
He then declared May 21, 2011 as the true date. The message went global through Family Radio’s network, broadcast in over 30 countries and 150 stations. Thousands of followers spread the warning, some going so far as to gather on mountaintops waiting to be swept into heaven. Others quit jobs, spent their life savings, some even euthanized pets to spare them post-Rapture suffering.
Then May 21 came and went. Undeterred, Camping revised again: October 21, 2011, was the absolute, final, this-time-for-real end of the world.
Nothing happened.
After the third flop, his followers were devastated and he retired in disgrace.
But this tendency isn’t limited to doom-sayers. In business, CEOs announce, “In three years, we’ll have flying cars!” When the deadline hits and no cars fly, they announce, “We miscalculated. Three more years and more investment!”
Fool us once, right?
Today, Big Tech makes similarly bold promises. In 2016, Elon Musk announced SpaceX would launch a crewed Starship mission to Mars in 2024. The date passed silently. He shifted to 2026, and then to “a self-sustaining city [on Mars] in about 20 years, with a million-person colony “within our lifetimes.”
Similar grand claims swirl around AI and climate solutions too. But each time salvation or doom get postponed, people lose faith.
The currency of our promises isn’t measured in grandeur and boldness but in reliability. When deadlines shift and predictions fade, what remains is the gap between what was promised and what was delivered. And that gap has perfect memory. The most powerful voices aren’t the loudest or the most apocalyptic, but the ones who consistently deliver more than they claim. While some shout from the hilltops about wolves and flying cars, build something real in the valley below.
