Rant #3,305: Kind of a Drag

Yesterday, there was a short period--something like an hour or so--when many people could not access their Facebook accounts.

I found out about this when my wife asked me if I had trouble getting into Facebook. I wasn't on at the time she asked me, but I had been on several minutes earlier.

I was actually doing some editing for work, so while I was on the computer, I was not social networking when the outtage occurred.

When i did go onto the social networking site, I was asked for my Facebook password, and as I was ready to put it in, the screen dovetailed right into my account as it normally does, so I really didn't think twice about it.

But lots of people got absolutely hysterical about not being able to get into their accounts.

Based on some of the posts I read later on, you would think that the world had fallen off of its axis, and that not being able to get on Facebook was akin to treason, or something like it.

Facebook said it was some kind of technical.issue, and that it also impacted Instagram and Messenger.

The first thing people think of when they can't get onto their favorite Internet sites is some type of electronic terrorism is afoot, some type pf hacking, some type of nefarious behavior that is akin to a world where social networking is about the most important thing in the universe right now.

Again, I, personally, had no idea that anything was amiss because I was busy doing other things than social networking at the time.

The outage, or whatever you want to call it, lasted between an hour or maybe two hours tops, and some people simply could not handle it.

i saw many messages about the outage after the fact. One Facebooker wrote, and I paraphrase, "I have some very important information that I wanted to tell you, but I couldn't do it when Facebook was out.

"I wasn't going to try to get 7,000 phone numbers and call you all up and tell you what I wanted to say, but what I have to say is very important."

OK, I get it, but not having Facebook available for any period of time does get some people hysterical.

Maybe it would have gotten me hysterical, too, but we'll never know for sure how I would have reacted.

Maybe I would have reset my phone, or maybe I would just have put the phone down for a rest.

I get very tied into Facebook myself at times, and you know how it is--

When the Internet, as a whole, is working, it is the best thing going ...

But when it doesnt work, it is the most frustrating thing in the world.

The one glimmer of hope thst came out of this episode is that we all suffered as a society when Facebook went down

Facebook not working impacted everyone--people of all colors, all creeds, all religions and all backgrounds.

Even if we have differences, it brought us all together as ONE.

So we can, in fact, all agree on one thing:

When Facebook.goes out, it's a catastrophe--

No matter who we are.