The New York Times website and mobile apps were down for more than two hours Wednesday, causing widespread panic across the Internet. Not because everyone was afraid about missing breaking news, but everyone scrambled to tweet witty one-liners about the outage.
Of course, Twitter was no let down, quickly generating a storm of jokes about cyberattacks and finger-pointing toward Amazon CEO -- and new owner of The Washington Post -- Jeff Bezos.
Even the Times got in on the jokes about their own outage, because you can't sit out a trending topic when there is humor to be had.
Check out 20 of the best reactions below.
Apparently, all we do all day every day is read the http://t.co/qaSi6xCmrI— Gennady Kolker (@GENN4DY) August 14, 2013
In New York, A Broken Newspaper Website— Jeffrey Young (@JeffYoung) August 14, 2013
WHO'S REACHED THEIR ARTICLE LIMIT NOW, http://t.co/aZZmjkCvlM????????— Nick Greene (@NickGreene) August 14, 2013
.@nytimes: Have you tried turning it off and on again?— Xeni Jardin (@xeni) August 14, 2013
So the @nytimes website is down. Maybe they forgot to ask @fivethirtyeight for the password when he left.— Jonathan Cohn (@CitizenCohn) August 14, 2013
Either the New York Times website is down or their paywall just achieved sentience and is holding the IT staff hostage.— CC:Indecision (@indecision) August 14, 2013
BREAKING: @nytimes Receives Pulitzer For Coverage Of 'Http/1.1 Service Unavailable' Story— The Onion (@TheOnion) August 14, 2013
Readers, don't fret. If http://t.co/J1T79tODM5 remains down, we are ready to tweet op-eds and editorials in 140-character increments.— NYT Opinion (@nytopinion) August 14, 2013
.@nytimes Have you tried unplugging David Brooks, waiting 15 seconds, and plugging him back in?— delrayser (@delrayser) August 14, 2013
On the 10th anniversary of the blackout, http://t.co/WltcowCWVD is out! how much can this city take?— katie kaplan (@kappykate) August 14, 2013
My print edition of the @nytimes seems to be functioning normally. #JustSaying— Stanford Friedman (@StanfordF) August 14, 2013
When the New York Times comes back, it's going to be all GIFs and lists. You asked for this, America.— pourmecoffee (@pourmecoffee) August 14, 2013
If @nytimes is down, how will I ever find out about Williamsburg?— Evan McMurry (@evanmcmurry) August 14, 2013
What, you thought Jeff Bezos was going to buy the Post and play defense?— Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) August 14, 2013
RT @nytimes: As you are undoubtedly aware, we are experiencing a server issue. pic.twitter.com/GGvVxXWlet— pourmecoffee (@pourmecoffee) August 14, 2013
Was just at Starbucks and someone there was really smart and printed out http://t.co/F9xYFN0A55 ahead of time. Stacks of copies available.— delrayser (@delrayser) August 14, 2013
Jeff Bezos buys WaPo, NYT website goes down. #JustSaying— emptywheel (@emptywheel) August 14, 2013
I'll be honest: personally taking up all of the slack from the New York Times' web outage is REALLY stressing me out today.— Andy Ihnatko (@Ihnatko) August 14, 2013
Someone should drive around NYC with a t-shirt canon right now shooting copies of today's New York Times into office windows— samir mezrahi (@samir) August 14, 2013
NSA unveils new New York Times web design http://t.co/4PSCuWGs04— David Jackson (@davidvjackson) August 14, 2013