Twitpocalypse: How we survived The Great Twitter Outage of 2012

It was a dark day today. A very dark day.

Sometimes…at night…I can still hear the screams. #TwitterBug #ShutTwitterDown

— Fingers Malloy (@FingersMalloy) June 21, 2012

https://twitter.com/CuffyMeh/statuses/215856309441003521

WHY WAS TWITTER DOWN FOR AN HOUR IM STILL SHAKING I CAN'T EVEN

— CatsPolitics (@CatsPolitics) June 21, 2012

https://twitter.com/CuffyMeh/statuses/215857815649136640

Mellllllllllllltdooooooooooooooooooown!

Hold us!

For more than an hour, Twitter was unreachable, with not even a fail whale to comfort many of the tweet-less. At 12:33 p.m. EDT, a short post appeared on the Twitter status blog:

Users may be experiencing issues accessing Twitter. Our engineers are currently working to resolve the issue.

https://twitter.com/GayPatriot/statuses/215855765901148160

Twitter … dead? We refuse to believe such a thing is possible. Where’s the death certificate?!

Hey guys! Looks like http://t.co/e1ggCQkm and all Twitter clients are recovering. Sorry for the trouble! Let those Tweets take flight!

— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) June 21, 2012

So what went wrong? We demand answers!

https://twitter.com/BenHowe/statuses/215856486805536768

No official explanation from our Twitter overlords yet, but here’s one plausible suggestion.

Twitter is facing significant headwinds.

— jon gabriel (@exjon) June 21, 2012

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Grateful Calvin

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Pesky headwinds! For now, it’s back to work as we try to reclaim some semblance of our former lives.

https://twitter.com/jimmiebjr/statuses/215854849869365248

At your service! Here’s how some Twitter addicts spent The Great Twitter Outage of 2012.

https://twitter.com/BenHowe/statuses/215855369598156800

Something I found out while Twitter was down: MySpace is still around. #WhoKnewf

— Kevin Creighton (@ExurbanKevin) June 21, 2012

https://twitter.com/LachlanMarkay/statuses/215855401671999491

Twitter was done, so I wrote out pithy 140 character messages and snail-mailed them to my friends.

— Kevin Creighton (@ExurbanKevin) June 21, 2012

https://twitter.com/LachlanMarkay/statuses/215854404803366912

During this lengthy and painful twitter downtime, FB decided that #Hashtagging is now acceptable. #JustATweeter

— Teri Peters (@hipEchik) June 21, 2012

I WENT TO FACEBOOK DURING THE TWITTER OUTAGE IM SO ASHAMED THE HORROR THE HORROR

— CatsPolitics (@CatsPolitics) June 21, 2012

I like when Twitter goes down because it gives me time to ask my family what their names are again.

— Reverend Scott (@Reverend_Scott) June 21, 2012

But guys, take it easy on the Twitterocalypse‬ tweets, m’kay?

I'd laugh hysterically if the flood of "OMG TWITTER BROKE" tweets broke twitter again.

— Brittany (@bccover) June 21, 2012

We can’t go through this again. We just can’t.

***

Update:

Twitter has gone down again. How much longer must we be jerked around like this? This is a constitutional crisis, dammit!

Our buddy Ben Howe has exclusive footage of one man’s reaction to Twitter’s meltdown:

That man speaks for all of us.

Oh, the humanity!

***

Update:

It’s back. Or is it? MAKE UP YOUR MINDS, TWITTER GODS!

***

Update:

Annnnd it’s back down.

***

Update:

We give up on updates. Darn you and your temper tantrums, Twitter! *Shaking our fists*

Update:

We fibbed. We have one more update. A Twitter spokesman blamed the outages on a “cascading bug.”