6 The End of the World in 2012

The end of the world on 21 December 2012 was one hyped-up cataclysmic apotheosis that triggered the whole of humanity. The belief started when the ending of dates in the Mayan Calendar was correlated with the end of the world. A lot of media hype led to the irrational fear of people, but the day passed just as any other day. 

The mass media attention was given to the rumor of the world ending in December of 2012. Across the world, people were blogging, praying, believing, and giving out predictions of the event. Various astronomical alignments and formulae were used to propose the date.

There were predictions that Earth would be colliding with a supermassive black hole. The Mayan Calendar that spans over 5,000 years reached the end of the cycle in 2012. Even though many believed it, NASA and other scientists dismissed the idea that a disaster is impending. (Source)

7 The Fyre Festival

The Fyre Festival is referred to as “The Greatest Party that Never Happened.” The Fyre Festival was a music festival that was to happen in April 2017. It was attended by 5,000 people who spent thousands of dollars for a luxury music fest on a tropical private island in the Bahamas. Instead of luxury villas, they were welcomed with tents, A-list musical performances were canceled at the last minute, and the festival led to lawsuits against the organizers. 

So Fyre Fest is a complete disaster. Mass chaos. No organization. No one knows where to go. There are no villas, just a disaster tent city. pic.twitter.com/1lSWtnk7cA

— William Needham Finley IV (@WNFIV) April 27, 2017

This luxury music festival was the idea of con artists Billy McFarland and Ja Rule. The intent was to promote the Fyre app. Influencers included Kendall Jenner, Emily Ratajkowski, and Bella Hadid. During the inaugural day, issues were raised regarding security, accommodation, medical services, and food. The festival was postponed and then eventually canceled. 

In 2018, McFarland pleaded guilty to fraud and convincing investors and ticket-buyers. They had to face eight lawsuits and more than $100 million for the damages. They were investigated under wire fraud, mail fraud, and securities fraud. He was sentenced to six years in prison and $26 million as a fine. (Source)

8 Microsoft Kinect

Kinect was a game peripheral that broke the Guinness record for the fastest-selling gaming accessory which helped in real-time gesture recognition. The gadget required space and there was gradual slowness in hand gesture sensing. Along with other reasons, it is now declared to be dead, and Microsoft stopped manufacturing it. 

An Israeli tech company helped Microsoft develop depth-sensing technology. This was adapted on Nintendo for a movement-control scheme. Kinect started being used by several other gaming companies also. This made Xbox more appealing to families. 

In 2015, Polygon announced Kinect as dead, and Microsoft told the consumers that they were focusing on producing products with fantastic value to customers.

For Xbox 360 sales, Kinect was a valuable add-on, but since the release of Kinect 2.0, they were faced with a general failure. The audience found the demo misleading and many promised features were not released and eventually led to discontinuing the device. (Source)

9 Google Plus

Google Plus was a highly hyped, invite-only social media platform that was to be a competitor of Facebook. When Google Plus incorporated the key features already available on Twitter, Facebook, and Skype, it failed to understand the customer needs as other platforms did. Bug and user-friendly issues followed. 

Google Plus did an outstanding job in optimizing and saving pictures. The quality remained excellent, unlike other platforms. They also failed to have a mobile experience like other social media platforms.

Overall, the company failed to understand user needs while tailoring the app and got the lowest engagement of fewer than five seconds in one user session. 

The company followed an asymmetric model where both parties did not have to agree to establish connections like in Facebook or LinkedIn. It followed the Twitter model, but there was a case of poor bidirectional communication.

Another one was the rank-based presentation system and the infinite scrolling. It made it hard to predict when the user will stop scrolling. Such rankings take the control away from the user, and this wasn’t acceptable to the users. (Source)

10 The Final Season of Game of Thrones

The much-hyped final season of Game of Thrones ended with divided opinions among the fans. Season 8 disappointed the fans with the pacing, plot, as well as writing. For most of the fans, the final season was a complete failure. 

Game of Thrones was one of the best movie adaptations of fiction, but the final season had the fans divided into those who loved it and those who were bitterly disappointed. The plot twists and the characters going mad towards the end did not match the audience’s expectations. 

The entire plot was against the White Walkers throughout the series, but in the last season, they were sidetracked and Cersei was given more importance. The way the White-Walker plot was thrown away was uncool on the writer’s part, and something the audience did not accept.

Building Daenerys as a Messiah for eight seasons and pushing her away in the last two episodes was also appealing to the fans. (Source)