Facebook’s down. Bravely holding back a slowly rising surge of panic, people turn to Instagram. But Instagram’s down too. That’s not all. Thousands of netizens are looking at their phones in horror. Because — gasp — Tinder’s not working either. A world-wide emergency situation?
If you checked Twitter on Tuesday morning, you would certainly think so. As social-network addicts began to battle withdrawal symptoms, they banded together on Twitter for strength and, presumably, emotional support. Over the roughly 45 minutes that the two popular sites and dating app were down, Twitter got slammed with everything from ‘emergency cat pictures’ to a rash of conspiracy theories.
Wild accusations were thrown at terrorist forces, because, of course, there’s nothing more plausible than a terrorist hijacking your Valencia Instagram filter, condemning the world to a stream of terrifyingly un-tinted photographs. The most popular theory suggested that mysterious ‘Lizard Mafia’ was behind this dastardly act — preventing us from looking at Kardashian selfies, pugs in bow ties and random neighbours’ babies for almost an entire hour. The Lizard Mafia hacker group, which has a charming ‘Shall rule the earth’ cover picture on Twitter, posted a single status on the event: “Facebook, Instagram, Tinder, AIM, Hipchat #offline #LizardSquad.” Which raises the obvious question: what the heck is Hipchat? And will we ever be able to keep up with this gremlin-esque multiplication of social networking sites?
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Even as weary @SAPoliceNews posted “For the last time we are not investigating #facebookdown”, tweets poured in from people worldwide sharing their pain. One user said she deleted and reinstalled the Facebook app eight times in desperation. Smart marketing teams quickly used it to advertise their wares, saying “Now that Facebook is down, come to us,” in a sneaky attempt to redirect traffic. Fortunately, there were also users who had the foresight to be prepared for an emergency of this scale.
Like Brendan McLean: “@macleanbrendan: Luckily I keep a large photo album of random babies for just this occasion.”
Retro users of the sites had the nerve to breezily suggest “participating in actual life”, an idea that clearly didn’t go down well for the few brave souls who stumbled into the sunshine, only to recoil in horror at the real world. Like Rituparna Chatterjee: “@MasalaBai: I’m outside & I can’t figure what filter this is, but it’s not awesome. Trees look awful. Hope they didn’t pay a lot for this. #facebookdown.”
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Uninvolved passers by also suffered from the outage, judging by Simon te Brinke’s account of his morning: “@gramercypark: Facebook is down. I’m currently standing outside on the sidewalk offering pics of my breakfast & cat to anyone walking past.”
To commemorate the historic upheaval 9GAG suggested: “Take a selfie, remember where you were when #facebookdown happened. Remember it for your grandchildren.” This tweet, incidentally, was re-tweeted about 1,300 times in 20 minutes. Just to give you an idea of how desperate the situation was. Meanwhile, life was tough on planet Tinder too. Olly Wilton decided to deal with the problem in a practical manner: “@ollywilton: I’m going to Poke and Follow people for real on the commute home. Maybe give them a Swipe.” Brady Bauman, on the other hand, gave in to full blown despair. “@BradyStuff: #facebookdown also leads to #tinderdown. We may never reproduce again.”
People may actually begin to starve to death soon, not bothering to eat because they can't social media their meal. >#facebook>#Instagramdown
— Nida Qureshi (@q_nida) >January 27, 2015
Two minute silence for all the people stuck in bathroom stalls not knowing what to do. >#facebookdown
— Durjoy Datta (@durjoydatta) >January 27, 2015
I remember when all we had was Livejournal and Friendster you spoiled brats! >#facebookdown
— Zan (@ferozan) >January 27, 2015
>#BREAKING : Mass evacuations from offices & public transport around world. People wandering dazed/confused with nothing to do >#facebookdown
— Shannon Roccisano (@ShannonSagaidak) >January 27, 2015
"do you have pictures of your life now that I can sort of leaf through at 3 am to determine if you're happy" I email my ex >#facebookdown
— Alexandra Petri (@petridishes) >January 27, 2015
There will be a baby boom in 9 months. >#facebookdown>pic.twitter.com/SKtxoBwdZF
— Bipartisan Report (@Bipartisanism) >January 27, 2015