Please try to not give up on humanity as a whole when you find out that yes, people were calling 911 to report that Facebook was not working.
On Friday, Facebook went down for a hot, miserable minute, preventing innocent people from arguing with casual acquaintances of distant relatives about Libertarianism. Of course people called 911 when that happened. Of course they did. If you are shocked by this, then congratulations on your first day on the Internet. Needless to say, the police were not thrilled, according to the Los Angeles Times.
“#Facebook is not a Law Enforcement issue, please don’t call us about it being down, we don’t know when FB will be back up!” Sheriff’s Sgt. Burton Brink of the Crescenta Valley station wrote on Twitter. In a later tweet, he said an unknown number of people called 911 about the outage.
I understand. It’s hard to not know immediately how many people “liked” that funny post you made about your neighbor parking too close to your mailbox. I get that some people might be confused, desperately trying to post “FACEBOOK IS DOWN OMG” on Facebook and then discovering that AHHHH NO it is not possible to post on Facebook because it is down! Obviously, the police need to be informed, right? Except no. No, this is not a thing that needs to happen.
Here is a list of some of the things you should absolutely call 911 for if you witness them:
- Murders
- Robberies
- Car accidents
- Fires
- Zombies roaming the streets
- Religious apocalypses
Here is whatyou should definitely not ever, ever call 911 to “report.”
- Social media or any of your favorite Internet sites not working properly
For those of you who may have trouble remembering this, may I suggest that you print this list out and perhaps carry it with you in a wallet or your pocketbook? Calling 911 is not how to react to Facebook going down.
This, on the other hand, absolutely is:
Image via Shutterstock.