Life without Instagram/Whatsapp/Facebook

The wheel kept turning and turning and turning and finally there came the final error: Instagram could not be refreshed. Facebook then? That medium didn't give a peep either. And finally, no messages came through via WhatsApp. For seven (!) long hours, the services that make our millennial life possible were down. God, what a pleasure it was. Did I say that out loud?

The world found the outage such a thing that various news sites decided to open a live blog. Well, then you know it's the proverbial shit hitting the fan. Meanwhile, it was panic in Silicon Valley, because even the access passes of the employees to the office no longer worked. I went out to dinner without sharing it on Instagram, which was new for me. And I didn't even have to check if there were any messages on my after-work walk, which I just posted online before the meltdown. In short, it was a quiet Monday evening.

There was also an interesting development. With Facebook and Instagram down, Twitter suddenly seemed to exist again. Even the biggest defectors who always shout that Twitter is the drain of our internet sought refuge to have something to do. While influencers were getting thumb injuries from refreshing, the wildest stories circulated. People with a penchant for conspiracy theories came up with the logical (?) explanation that it was all a premeditated plan. And otherwise, Bill Gates must have had something to do with it.

Let's immediately calculate when the first WhatsApp/Instagram/Facebook descendants in the world will arrive. That should be October 4 plus 9 months = early July 2022. If you suddenly notice a suspiciously large number of fresh babies around that time, at least you know what your family and friends did last night.

Mark Zuckerberg came up with the explanation that something was wrong with an internal update in the system. Mike Schroepfer, his partner, called it networking issues. I find that refreshing from a social network. Meanwhile, I suspect that Squid Game has now been completely binged and it was actually quite nice and quiet. An idea: let's just do this every month for an evening. But please with prior announcement, Mark.