Social media users around the world were in for a shock when the services of WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram were disrupted for around six hours late on Monday, October 4 – the longest such disruption since 2019. Many were scrambling to figure out whether the problem lay with their internet connections, uninstalling and reinstalling the apps in a bid to make them work. But what major event can happen in the world which is not marked by a meme fest on Twitter? Many creative minds were on Twitter, the popular microblogging site that was still up and running, sharing hilarious memes about the outage on Monday night.
During the outage, Twitter reported record numbers in terms of site traffic when Facebook and Facebook-owned platforms crashed on Monday night. On DownDetector, which tracks website outages, over 10.6 million problem reports with WhatsApp were reported from users across the globe. Over 12,738 people reported problems while opening Instagram, while over 4,229 people said they were having issues with accessing Facebook on Down Detector.
From preaching Twitter supremacy to stories of people cursing their internet providers before realising the servers were down, not spending time on WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook certainly tickled people’s creativity and meme-making abilities. Here’s a list of our favourite ones.
ppl coming to Twitter from whatsapp instagram and facebook to check if everyone is facing the same issue pic.twitter.com/oIanBwKl3E
— ۪ yen (@j4yotwo) October 4, 2021
Check in on your influencer friends today ♥️
— Harry Hill (@veryharryhill) October 4, 2021
What's happening in the world right now. #facebookoutage #Messengerdown #instagramdown #WhatsAppDown pic.twitter.com/ui6vMZzf5b
— forlorn (@solitarymsgs) October 4, 2021
Conspiracy theories abound after the recent drug bust in Mumbai:
Aryan ki chats kya leak hui, SRK ne server hi girwa diya
— Vanshika Poddar (@vanshikugh) October 4, 2021
Tumhare ye technical issue k liye maine mere internet service provider ko 5minute sunaya aur ab 1 ghante se sorry bol raha hoon
— Anuraag Kamble/अनुराग (@AnuragANK) October 4, 2021
#WhatsAppDown https://t.co/31RkGu5wtI
Without a host of social media options to choose from, people grew bored:
C'mon Zucky you can do it #instagramdown #facebookoutage #serverdown #InternetShutDown #outage #WhatsAppDown #WhatsApp pic.twitter.com/XuvToKfYmj
— Shaurya Khurana (@ShauryaKhurana5) October 4, 2021
Facebook Whatsapp and Instagram had gone down for many hours.#serverdown#WhatsAppDown
— Gibin Joy (@iamGibinJoy) October 5, 2021
Others Me pic.twitter.com/eFtH6PG17d
Squid Game fans didn’t miss an opportunity (Warning: Spoiler ahead!):
#instagramdown #facebookdown #whatsappdown #instagramdisabled #Trending
— Pr3sident Obama (@IsaacObama5) October 4, 2021
Facebook dead
Instagram dead
WhatsApp dead pic.twitter.com/u8HzRjVWuu
Meanwhile, Twitter said hello to all the people who were using it, and interestingly, WhatsApp and Instagram replied:
hello!
— WhatsApp (@WhatsApp) October 4, 2021
Hi and happy Monday
— Instagram (@instagram) October 4, 2021
During the outage, people who tried to open WhatsApp were greeted with a pop-up message, “Error 5xx”, which means that a problem is likely to have occurred with the platform’s server. Earlier this year, WhatsApp and Instagram had suffered a major outage as well. On March 20, Facebook and all its services were down for about 45 minutes, after which they resumed.