Twitter Tuesday: Cold Hard Crash.

I think it's safe to say that I tweet more than anyone I know on Twitter...more than most people know. I tweet in my sleep, in the shower (which is bad when you don't have insurance on your phone), and even during sex.



When I go more than an hour without tweeting, people start to panic and send out a search party. The minute I sit down at a computer to do ANYTHING, I go to Twitter and log in by default (even though I refuse to make Twitter by home page).

On Thursday morning, I was heading to the office and tried to log into Twitter via mobile web and it wouldn't work. The website wouldn't even load on my phone. I kept my cool...for all of 37 seconds.

I tried going to other websites: AOL mail, the local weather website, that other website that no one really cares about anymore...what's it called? Myplace? Emptyspace? eh...it's not important. I NEEDED MY TWITTER! All of the other websites worked just fine, so why wasn't Twitter loading? I closed the mobile web and opened it again...nothing!

Other passengers on the bus watched me as I took the battery out of my phone a few times and proceeded to try the Twitter website again....NOTHING!! I remained calm--oh who am I kidding? I tried restarting that phone and even called Verizon to find out what the hell was wrong until I got to work.

The first thing I did before even turning on the lights in my office was start up the computer and go to the Twitter website and got this message:


I didn't even have the soothing appearance of the fail whale to keep me calm.

I went to http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/ to get to the bottom of this, and sure enough...

Then downforeveryoneorjustme.com crashed! I think it was gagging from the loads of people going into a Twitter panic trying to find out if it was down for everyone...or just them.

Before I knew it, texts were coming to my cell phone from fellow twats wanting to know if Twitter was down. What am I? The Queen of Twitter? I know I wear a crown, but how much of a loser do you think I am??

The panic really set in when fellow twat JuniPerez texted me to say that the Twitter crash had made the news. The news? THE NEWS! Apparently there was some sort of DoS attack, and I think I even read something about the poor economy being at fault. Seems like we're blaming the economy for all of our issues, but that's another blog entry. It didn't matter WHY Twitter was down. I just needed it to be back up!

I felt like I was wearing a blind fold! How would I know what everyone had for breakfast?! I read that some other social networking sites were down too including Facebook and LiveJournal. It's funny how Myspace wasn't under attack. hmmm...this could only mean one thing: TOM WAS OBVIOUSLY BEHIND THIS ATTACK!!

Tom thinks he's so slick trying to get everyone to come back to his space. It actually worked a little bit because a few of us headed back over to Myspace, but it just wasn't the same.

At about 11:31am, I started to have cold sweats thinking about how it was almost lunch time and I wouldn't have anyone to give me suggestions on what sandwich to get from Subway.

How would I tweet about how NOT being able to tweet was affecting me!? I needed to know how it was affecting everyone else! Was this really happening? Was this real life?!

By noon my body was numb. I felt nauseous...oh wait, that could've been from that questionable danish with the green fur on it I ate from the bottom of my desk draw.

I found a website called When Twitter Is Down but it only pissed me off even more. Looking back at it now, the website is kinda-sorta funny, but at the time, I was losing my mind. Someone even suggested that I take this misfortune as a "Twitter separation training exercise". DA FUCK!?

I sat at my desk ferociously refreshing and refreshing and refreshing and refreshing to the point where my mouse unplugged itself, called me a loser and quit without notice.

Before long, I was under my desk in the fetal position shaking when I received a text: TWITTER IS BACK!!!!!!!

After composing myself, I wiped the vomit (brought on by convulsions on account of my withdrawal) off of my keyboard and I logged into Twitter.

Slowly, but surely there was a pulse. Our dear bird was groggy when it regained consciousness. It was extremely slow like molasses racing an elderly turtle in the dead of winter, but it was back!

The trending topics were flooded with things like When Twitter Was Down, What Twitter Did For Me, Twitter Fail, DoS Attack, etc. No more trending topics about AT&T, iPhones, Iran, or American Idol. Michael Jackson was most certainly old news and I'm shocked that his death wasn't what would bring down Twitter and life as we know it.

The most popular trending topic (When Twitter Was Down) featured every one's alternatives for Twitter which ranged from actually doing work at your 9 to 5 job to being a decent mother/father to your neglected children to finally taking that bath you had been putting off since you joined Twitter in February.

This troubled me. How could we survive in a world without Twitter? Would we so easily be able to go back to our old ways of living without narration? Would we randomly broadcast our every thought and action in "real life"?? Let's hope we never have to find out!!

p.s. If Twitter ended and was forgotten about this soon after it's birth 3 years ago, and new-found popularity within the past few months, I'm sure the owner of this leg would have a few regrets...