GASP!
Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp are down — and that means social media is at an impasse.
How will we ever live without posting a heavily edited photo, insisting it’s “natural?”
But have no fear: Twitter was not affected by the outage and, of course, users on the platform have something to say about the horrific, disastrous event plaguing the globe.
The problems started around 11:45 a.m. ET, according to DownDetector. “We’re aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products,” Facebook representative Andy Stone acknowledged on — you guessed it — Twitter. “We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience.”
Since then, users rushed to unaffected social media apps including Twitter, TikTok and Snapchat to do what they do best — post memes about the current event. One user borrowed from the infamous “distracted boyfriend” meme to tweet about going to Linkedin since FB and IG were down.
Another tweeted out a meme showing a “SpongeBob SquarePants” character fleeing a building dotted with Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp logos, then heading toward the Twitter logo, writing, “Me after finding out WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook is down.”
One meme showed actor Grant Gustin from CW’s “The Flash” in a behind-the-scenes shot where he crouches down in front of a headstone with the affected apps’ logos. Gustin, with a Twitter bird slapped on his face, flashes the peace sign.
“Has anybody tried turning it off and back on again?” another user wrote. (The New York Times has since reported that employees have indeed been sent to Facebook’s California data center to attempt a “manual reset” of company servers.)
One person even used a “Twilight” movie reference, saying, “Twitter is acting up, instagram is down, facebook is down, but you know what’s up? twilight on netflix.”
Another joked that Twitter was “holding social media up.”
One user posted a scene from Nelly and Kelly Rowland’s 2002 hit “Dilemma” in which the former Destiny’s Child member hilariously was texting via Microsoft Excel on a Nokia phone.
“You know, Shakespeare wrote King Lear during the plague. what are you gonna produce while Instagram is down??” another person teased, in a nod to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, while one more chimed in, “How am I going to hear about and believe new vaccine conspiracies with Instagram & Facebook down?! #SocialMediaDown.”
“Instagram down for over 2 hours now. losing my mind. handing printed pictures of myself to people on the street asking if my ass looks fat,” one additional jokester wrote.
The official Twitter account also got in on the fun, tweeting, “hello literally everyone” at 1:27 p.m. as the calamity continued. One joker referenced the bloody Netflix hit series “Squid Game” — in which competitors fight to the death in a series of contests — and responded by tweeting the three apps’ logos sprawled “dead” on a playing field.
Meanwhile, the official McDonald’s account tweeted, “hi what can i get u,” with Twitter following up with a joke for the ages, asking for “59.6 million nuggets for my friends.”
