Back in the good old days, when it was only just starting up and no-one really saw the point, Twitter used to crash all the time. Scarcely a day went by without the poor unfortunate user base getting confronted by the “Fail Whale”, Twitter’s corporate error page mascot and terrifying avatar of an hour or two without internet inanity.
Nowadays, as the service scales up faster than a lizard on a stretched bungee rope, most people still don’t see the point and outages are a thing of the past. Or so we thought.
On the sixth of August 2009, Twitter was knocked offline for a several hours by a malicious denial-of-service attack which, depending on whom you believe, was either the idle whim of a bored teenager or a move by the Kremlin designed to silence a Georgian dissenter. Regardless of the cause, millions of internet users were left without a source of banal amusement.
And since neither the 15 year olds of 4chan nor the Russian state are going anywhere, the sensible tweeter needs to have a backup plan for when it all goes horribly wrong.
Here are a few suggestions...
This is probably the first idea that will come to mind, and one can’t deny the sheer, primal satisfaction of it. Rush to your message board or blog comment thread of choice and let rip! You’ll almost certainly find a good grouping of like-minded individuals who will join you in deriding the laziness of the website for not being up, and the stupidity of anyone involved.
Bitterness is fun, after all, and if we can allow ourselves to eat chocolate occasionally, we can certainly indulge in a spot of senseless venom on the internet. But remember not to overdo it. For there comes a time when you must stop, contemplate and ask yourself... am I becoming one of those 15 year olds on 4chan? And, since it’s quite probable they were responsible for taking down Twitter in the first place, have you not in essence become your own worst enemy?
Back in the mists of time, Twitter wasn’t the only game in town. Other networks existed, even if they didn’t have the up to the moment, real time updates element. And although it may seem like everyone in the universe has moved on to Twitter by now, in practice there’s usually a few people who haven’t bothered because they don’t see the point or, disturbingly, they think Facebook provides all their social networking needs.
So why not catch up with them? You’d be amazed how many quick messages to old friends you can dash off in the same number of key-presses as four or five tweets. And if, like me, you spend far too long thinking about the contents of your tweets, you’ll be able to put a good bit of thought into these messages too. If you don’t usually put much thought into the tweets, just send them a message saying “WAAAAASSUUPP”, and hope they appreciate the sentiment.
Who said you need “something to do” when Twitter goes down? Twitter doesn’t rule your life, after all. Why even bother thinking about it? Just stick a DVD on, eat some chips, go the pub, chuck a Frisbee around, talk to a human, shoot a reindeer, anything. The world is a limitless place, full of exciting possibilities and new experiences (unless you are that reindeer), who cares if you can’t send 140 character updates about it to an eager audience of dozens?
Anyway, this short period of time without up-to-the-minute information about the minutiae of your life will just make them want it more when it all comes back.
Why live without micro-blogging when you can easily produce the same sensations in the comfort of your own desktop? All you need is a regular source of odd and/or amusing links, such as Boing Boing, a regular list of short updates on people’s lives, such as your Facebook feed, and a small group of people who will pretend to take an interest in the details of your day-to-day life, such as the homeless chaps from the street outside.
Arrange all of the above in a row, and you’ll wonder why you ever needed Twitter in the first place. Until it comes back, when you can breathe a sigh of relief, catch up with your friends and finally kick those tramps back out into the street.
Or something like that. I don’t mean to pressurize you, but it’s as good an option as any.
Written on 8/21/2009 by Nick Bryan. Nick is the author of The Weekly Hat, a weekly lampooning of more or less anything, and also creates an accompanying webcomic.
5 Things To Do When Twitter Goes Down
In Fun, Technology
