It was real but the media made it into something else. End of the world 

 They’re doing it again with climate change. 

 Yep.  Upgrading OS's in power grids, banks etc. was no joke back then, but that's really all it boiled down to 

 I was in NY at the time, I remember watching it hit midnight in Europe and further east and nothing happened.  I promptly went back to partying. 

 Some systems needed a lot of work to keep them functioning as expected, but... Meh.  

 Yeah. The mainframes, in their own ice cold, air conditioned space, were on raised tiles with zillions of freakin’ ginormous cables underneath. 

 Computers were still new back then, more or less, so I feel the hysteria was a little understandable