Power outages, in addition to leaving over two million people without power, forced many to consider the question, “Is life worth living if I can’t post anything to Instagram?” The storms that ripped through the Eastern half of the United States on Friday wiped out service for the popular photo-sharing app, where individuals gather in virtual droves to share everything from their eating habits to the daily antics of their four-legged friends. Oh, and feet. You can’t forget the countless photos of people and their shoes. Without the ability to post these images for all to see, many were left to contend with social media withdrawal.
Also hit by these storms were Pinterest and Netflix, the latter of which went down during one of the few times I actually decided to sit down and watch something in my queue. Since I almost never use the service anymore — if it weren’t for the wife, my subscription would be a phenomenal waste of money — this particularly outage was frustrating for me. I guess this is what many would consider “first world problems”. Seeing as how my electricity and air conditioning are still alive and well as of this writing, I suppose I should count my blessings.
In an effort to communicate with their legions of disconnected users, all three companies took to Twitter and/or Facebook to keep folks abreast of their respective statuses. Pinterest and Netflix both had their services restored by Saturday afternoon. Instagram, meanwhile, continued to face problems throughout the day. My wife, an avid photog on the popular app, was concerned that many of her pictures would not be restored. Alas, service was up and running smooth Sunday morning, allowing addicts to share their eating habits with the world at-large.
Netflix, Pinterest and Instagram all use Amazon’s web service division, which provides “cloud computing” functionality to a number of different companies. It was this service that was effectively knocked offline by Friday’s deadly storms.
How were people around the world coping with the absence of these three technological wonders? You can sample some Twitter reactions to their endless jonesing below. Thankfully, Twitter stood strong during the outages, otherwise there’s no telling what folks would have done with their free time. By the way — your waffles look delicious this morning.
My Instagram is down, what am I supposed to do with my food? Eat it?
Now that pinterest, instagram and netflix are down, I think I’m just going to spend the weekend learning the names of my children.
It must have been horrible when Instagram went down and sunsets had to be photographed in their disgusting unfiltered reality.
instagram is down AGAIN?! what is everyone eating?! how are your pets? anyone on an airplane and got a seat next to the wing???? text me!!
Im Glad instagram is Down .. then some of you mothafuckas will stop posting photos in your bathroom