We are living in a time of shortage. We have struggled with the amount of chicken, beer in Wetherspoon, sausage rolls in Greggs and petrol.
Like everything in life, it has also moved online. We have seen outages on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Snapchat.
I noticed WhatsApp first. I’d been enjoying a cup of tea without the phone annoying me and demanding my attention so I knew something must be wrong.
I looked online and saw that people were reporting the photograph-sharing platform Instagram was down. I was worried. Millennials could starve to death sat in front of a meal because they couldn’t post pictures of it.
I don’t really understand the obsession with letting the world know about your food.
In my generation, it would have required buying a roll of 35mm film, taking pictures of my dinner, finishing the rest of the roll of film by taking other needless photos, taking the film into town to be developed, waiting a few days and then finally I could show people what I was about to eat. It would be cold by then.
Did you notice how much better life was during the social media blackouts?
You didn’t have to worry how many of your friends were liking your posted photos out of politeness. You didn’t have your peace shattered by someone sending around the latest meme about Covid vaccines.
Facebook said the issue was down to a configuration change as it apologised to its billions of users. It did this via Twitter, which was funny in itself.
There is no need to apologise. If the downtime taught some of us that using these platforms even a little bit less could help you enjoy life more, we should thank them.
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