The Entire Internet Freaked Out When YouTube Temporarily Went Down

This may surprise you, but the Internet is not perfect. It’s an amalgam of servers and wires connected all over the world owned by millions of different entities. Things go wrong. Stuff breaks. Shadowy figures lurk around the deepest portions of the web, invisible hands impacting everything you see.

That might be a bit maudlin, but the point is that nothing lasts forever on there. Outages are bound to happen, especially on user-heavy sites that attract millions of people. Twitter and Facebook outages are not all that uncommon, though they are rarer these days. But when YouTube goes down, well, that’s a very different thing entirely. The Google-owned video platform has rarely suffered major outages, but it had one on Tuesday night.

YouTube, YouTube Music and YouTube TV all experienced outages, which meant anyone trying to keep up with their favorite vlogger, or watch TV or listen to streaming music had to find another outlet for all of those things. To say people freaked the hell out would be an understatement.

https://twitter.com/BlackSquidward/status/1052388680290246657

https://twitter.com/_Spotteh_/status/1052388888940109825

For some, not absentmindedly typing in “youtube dot com” during the outage was a tough habit to break.

https://twitter.com/AlexCreed_/status/1052390096459128832

Hopefully no one actually called the police, but you never know.

A few people claimed to have the answer, though I wouldn’t trust them.

https://twitter.com/_chuu_/status/1052389454105718784

Some creators on YouTube had a tougher time than others.

By Tuesday night, however, the site was working for most people, which was quite a relief.

https://twitter.com/buterasraindrop/status/1052389927844028417

https://twitter.com/_knistern/status/1052388308758609920

Hopefully Netflix enjoyed that spike in viewership while people couldn’t check on their vlogs, though.