Instagram Faces a Major Outage Forcing Users to Vent Their Frustration Elsewhere

Instagram users were left fuming again on Thursday after a major outage left most without access to the photo service owned by Facebook. Many were once again forced to other social media platforms to vent while the folks behind Instagram scrambled to get it working once again.

As Variety reports, it is the third major outage since the beginning of June. The outlet adds that the outage was first reported around 5:30 p.m. ET, with DownDetector registering more than 50,000 outages within a few minutes.

While the outage was widespread, the level that users were affected was different depending on the user. Some couldn’t access the platform at all and others just found that they couldn’t do searches.

Facebook didn’t respond to requests for comment by Instagram’s official Twitter account did address the outage.

“We’re aware that some people are having trouble accessing their Instagram accounts. We’re working quickly to fix the issue.” Instagram included the hashtag [Instagram Down] with their tweet, joining on with the trending topic that quickly sprouted up on social media shortly after the outage began.

As with most times that Instagram or any social media platform goes down, people revealed how they felt and what they were doing to waste their time instead of scrolling through their feed to like their friends and followers photos.

The results are a lot of people who apparently are either mentally ill or just really enjoy procrastinating online.

“Imagine if Instagram and social media closed every day at 6pm like a shop,” one person added on Twitter. “We would all be forced to meet up and speak to each other in real life, to be present with our families, to work out, to go outside, to read, to make art, music… eurghhh, nevermind.”

Some people took it in another direction and blamed Taylor Swift for crashing the entire platform after her album announcement earlier in the day. She actually responded to one user, making it clear that she did not play a part.

“I would very much like to be excluded from this narrative,” Swift wrote before adding a hashtag. “I DID NOT BREAK THE INSTAGRAM, YALL BROKE THE INSTAGRAM.”

One thing a social media outage shows is that the people who heavily use the internet have no creativity with their memes or responses to said outage. Eight people post the same gifs, video clips, and responses to the outages every time they happen. Maybe next time will be different?