Travelers walk past a monitor displaying a blue error screen, also known as the “Blue Screen of Death” inside Terminal C in Newark International Airport, after United Airlines and other airlines grounded flights due to a worldwide tech outage caused by an update to Crowdstrike's "Falcon Sensor" software which crashed Microsoft Windows systems, in Newark, New Jersey, US, July 19, 2024.
Credit: Reuters Photo
When the world tried to log into their systems this morning, a large number of them were faced with Microsoft's booting error page, commonly known as the 'Blue Screen of Death'(BSOD). And the error persisted.
Microsoft announced an outage occurred in their Azure cloud server in the US and other parts of the world. And it has affected services around the world, none more so than the IT industry.
In typical fashion and what has now almost become tradition, the internet reacted with beautiful memes.
Here's a look at some of the reactions and memes that have been born out of this incident:
The Blue Sphere of Death?
The LA Sphere seems to have become the perfect green screen meme format on X these days, with users @tferris depicting the current situation perfectly on the giant spherical screen.
Back to the old days
One of the industries that was been affected to a large extent is the airline industry. With systems not working, apparently Indigo airlines has decided not to waste time and just write down the ticket details in the old-fashioned way, instead of printing them, as was seen in user @akothari's ticket.
Microsoft outage? Corporates Out-Of-Office!
When the corporate world realised that Microsoft was down, it became a cause for celebration. Why? Cause its Friday! A small wait, maybe a bit of convincing and surely they can take the day off, making for a long weekend!
Their happiness upon realising this was probably immeasurable, but user @HaramiPandey seems to have captured it well.
'We'd love to work, but can't!'
But how do you convince your boss? Well, user @HaramiPandey has an answer for that too! Maybe make the below expressions and let your boss know how much you wanted to work, but now can't because of Microsoft.
'Today was the day we were going to stop procrastinating!'
Another way you could get you leave, and even earn some brownie points with your boss is to let him know that you really, really wanted to finish your work.
But Microsoft (and God) decided to hinder you. You can't help it now. So maybe take the day off to mourn the fact that you can't complete your work?
Are we too dependent on Microsoft?
The outage effected a huge portion of the world, which makes us think, is the OS monopoly of Microsoft harmful for us? Are we too dependent on it?
User @Rebecasarai points out that maybe we are, bring up a old but gold meme showcasing how thin the ice is under the world wide web.
Maybe switch to Linux?
Well, there are other operating systems in the market, but they are a tad bit more difficult to use than Windows. Linux is one of them. Windows might be easier to use, but if you ask Linux, they'd say they are definitely the better OS, as this old meme that user @StateofMind_02 dug up shows.
Everybody needs a day off
User @blackcaptv decided to take the punny route on the Microsoft 365 name:
Microsoft might be down, but the memes on X are always up
Elon Musk was in a jovial mood that his fellow tech company wasn't having a good day, to put it mildly, which only meant that his platform will have an even better day.
'I want an outage too!!'
Not all systems faced the outage. In fact, the main victims have been companies that use CrowdStrike. Those that don't could only look on as the choas spread like fie among other places while they had to quietly sit and work. User @youwouldknow expressed the feelings in those moments on their behalf:
Maybe there are advantages to a dictatorship?
Windows is not very popular, or easily available in Russia, North Korea and China. So user @MyLordBebo decided to showcase what the reactions among the leaders of those nations would be:
TFW you miss school for one day and everything happens that day
All corporate offices with outages will likely see a rapid increase in requests for day offs. But what if you had taken the day off already? User @sagarcasm shows us how that group feels today:
Maybe the real profits were the friends we made along the way
User @guy_weirdness thanked the person/ people responsible for the outage on behalf of corporate: