Rainbows, Leprechauns & Unicorns

The other night I saw my first double rainbow. Ever. Given how unusual and vivid it was, I took a picture of it (that's it to the left) and posted it to Facebook. The response was astonishing. It was by far one of the more popular posts I've had. Here's a snippet of the conversation:

Beautiful!

Question: does the same leprechaun manage the pots of gold at the end of both rainbows, or are there 2 leprechauns?

What does it meeeean???

Totally saw a rainbow on my way home last night. tis the season.

It must be the season. The rainbow season. Just like the Christmas season. Do you think we'll get gifts for this one too?

I can only hope... although i think that these gifts might be better. as they don't come in physical form.

While the event itself was pretty breathtaking, I think I liked the response to it and the community it created even more.  There's even a guy who's enjoying his 15 minutes of fame because of the double rainbow he saw and the video he recorded of it.  I've noticed this phenomena on Twitter as well. I have a few friends who like to talk about things like leprechauns and unicorns. Ahem, Ef Rodriguez (@pugofwar) and Tery Cabeen (@tcabeeen). I'm talkin' to you. Every time they tweet about these kind of topics there are lots of enthusiastic responses. Then there's Twig the Fairy. I didn't even believe in fairies as a kid but here I was following one.  And so are nearly 3700 other people. (Turns out Twig is a performer at renaissance festivals). It got me to thinking. What was it about this event that was so enticing?

Have we gotten so jaded that we get excited about something that inducing child-like wonder like a rainbow?

Are rainbows so universal that everyone responds to them?

What else is as universal as a rainbow?

How can we create a buzz without invoking a rainbow?