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Technology are like sports referees. When they do their job, no one notices. However, with one slip up, all hell can break loose. Earlier today social networks left and right crashed leaving the fate of the free world on its servers. The two big brands, Twitter and Facebook, were down for hours, which in hindsight likely seemed like days. Don’t get me wrong, I, too, use both while I’m at work because they definitely help break the monotonous tone of the day with much needed comedy.

It happens to be ridiculously funny and somewhat scary at the same time to see people freak out the way they did during these few hours of confusion. Here, read some of the comments:

–This is really sad… Twitter is currently down & I’m at loss. Want to write blog posts but without being to push to Twitterverse, I feel what’s the use. Has Twitter become that important to so many? Scary!

–Twitter AND Facebook down? I imagine this is what hell is like…

–Went to #FB to post about it. #FB won’t let me post. The kidz around here are freakin about it BTW Sign in with ur FB not working here.

–Great, now I actually have to start TALKING to people.

There were plenty more, but for the sake of scrolling down a page, I’ll stop here. Reading these comments also made me wonder what actually happened when communication, specifically Twitter, as we know ceased to exist for those gut-wrenching hours. I may be wrong, but I’ve got a hunch these things happened.

panic

1) You probably went crazy wanting to check your @replies thinking the entire world was attempting to get in touch with you.

2) That one person you follow who updates their status every three minutes with completely useless updates (i.e. “I ordered a #4 from Wendys and they forget my ketchup.”)? Yeah, that guy. He’s probably crouched in a corner somewhere cutting his phone on and off thinking maybe, JUST MAYBE, this was all a bad dream.

3) You finally realized the stack of assignments on your desk, but immediately went back to hitting the “refresh” button on your computer.

4) You questioned the meaning of life if you can’t Twitpic it.

5) You began to appreciate Facebook all over again.

Contrary to what you may be thinking, there is a positive in all this. It made us stronger as a human race, at least I like to believe so. Now, some time down the line, I can tell my grand kids I lived through the “Great Social Network Crash of 2009″ and lived to tweet about it.

Twitter Down: Twitter Doesn’t Know Why [Mashable]

Twitter Was Attacked, Millions Lose Their Minds [Global Grind]

Twitter, Facebook, and LiveJournal Down at the Same Time! [ReadWriteWeb]