On
the afternoon of April 8th, the unthinkable apocalypse began.
Facebook
went down.
And,
as you can imagine, that “unthinkable apocalypse” isn’t too far
off from reality, because millions of people apparently went bonkers.
What
did they do? They went to places like Twitter. To ask if it was
really down. To complain. To make fun of those complaining.
It
was glorious. But more to the point, it was immediate.
Let
me ask you a question. How long would it take you to address something
if I brought it to your attention? We could be talking about anything
from a brake light on your car to a broken step on the deck in
your yard. Maybe you’re sending me something by e-mail and have
the wrong address. Whatever… if I shined a light on an issue,
how long would it take to fix?
I
ask this because from what I saw, the Facebook outage was making
just as much news for being down as it was for the ridicule ramping
up on other platforms. But the outage does not appear to have
lasted all that long in the scheme of things.
I
happened to be online at the time it was happening. Had gone to
Facebook. Got an error message page. Said they were working on
it. My reaction wasn’t an impulse to get Twitter or wherever open
as quickly as possible and unleashing the kraken. I shrugged my
shoulders and checked back about fifteen minutes later. Everything
opened right up at that point.
There’s
a classic saying about patience being a virtue. I’m no-exceptions-convinced
that as a society, today patience is dead.
Facebook
is down. The page said the folks at Facebook knew it was down.
Action. Reaction. Should be a bit of closure if we bring patience
into play. Difficulty. Confirmation. And yet, countless numbers
of people raced to an alternative to ask if anyone else was having
troubles with Facebook.
I’m
probably stretching the idea here, but this entire event struck
me as a beautiful example of the current needs of immediacy and
validation that are swirling around society today.
You
flip the light switch. Light does not go on. I happen to be a
few feet away and see you.
(You flip switch.) “Light isn’t working.”
“I
know. Bulb is broken. I took the old bulb out. Terry is at the
store though, so I called and asked her to pick up some bulbs.
She’ll be home in ten minutes and I’ll replace it.”
(You
flip switch again. And again. And again. You look at me. Walk
over and see the empty socket. Back to the switch. You flip
it again.)
I
mean, seriously, if took Facebook less time to fix the problem
than it probably took several users to encounter the problem,
open Twitter and start complaining. But there we are, thrilled
to be identified as part of the collective whole, flipping the
damn light switch.
I
suppose we should be happy—figuratively—that there’s more than
one tree. (Make of that what you will. (And please like and share
when you do.))