235) Tumblr Apocalypse

In what to some may have seemed like the longest day in awhile, Tumblr was down for about 24 hours yesterday. The popular microblogging platform sent the interwebs into a tizzy, as bloggers fretted over not being able to update or access their posts, and readers struggled to entertain themselves.

They flocked to Twitter to commiserate. Twitter mentions of "Tumblr" spiked.


(Image from Trendistics.)

News sites and clever tweeters deemed it the "Tumblr Apocalypse." Interestingly, one group was singled out as being particularly affected by the outage: the hipsters. Headlines such as, "Tumblr down! Hipster apocalypse nears second day," and, "Tumblr Down for Most of the Day, Hipster World Crushed by Despair," and, "Tumblr Down For Over An Hour, Hipsters Take To Twitter In A Panic," were retweeted ad nauseum.

msnbc's Technolog noted some of the blogs the hipsters had to cope without:

Following its 2007 launch, Tumblr quickly grew as the go-to point for single service blogs (often with NSFW titles) such as "Look at this F---ing Hipster," "STFU, Parents," "Animals with Casts," countless "F--- Yeah" Tumblogs, and a collection point for the latest celebrity photo memes including "Selleck Waterfall Sandwich," "Jumping Rob Pattinson," etc.

A hipster-centric problem or not, the down time clearly evoked a massive response, and gave us a small glimpse at how we'd respond to an even more serious web malfunction (ex. what if Gmail went down? Or god forbid, Facebook?). We trust and expect the Internet platforms we rely on to function properly, so when they don't, there is an overwhelming sense of helplessness. In that regard, "apocalypse" is a most fitting word.