For some, the world might feel like it’s in the toilet right now. Sure, it’s nearly Christmas and the moon is going to look pretty cool tonight, but the Presidential election and Brexit aftermath is really getting everybody’s spirits down. So much so that a Facebook bug decided to tell everyone that very-much alive people were dead this weekend.
We arguably use the concept of death colloquially too often. Things that make us laugh kill us, things that embarrass us kill us, but Facebook… really? You’re going to tell our distant Aunties and secondary school rivals that we’ve passed on?! Dick move.
Facebook thinks I'm dead, which is about as accurate as its ability to share factual news pic.twitter.com/bXIoNTwWX8
— Jarett Wieselman (@JarettSays) November 11, 2016
So this Facebook bug, like every bug, probably wasn’t planned. Users found over the weekend that they had a notification that urged their loved ones to turn their profiles into memorials.
But before you start spiralling off into a wild conspiracy theory about how Facebook is a way for the government to catalogue gullible members of society to cross-reference with the off-the-grid heretics planning to overthrow the tyrannical powers while selling our information to corporations… think about this.
Even Mark ‘The Nark’ Zuckerberg was supposedly hit by the bug…
RIP: An unusual bug on Facebook briefly labelled many people as dead – including CEO Mark Zuckerberg https://t.co/CVWwFQaBi9 pic.twitter.com/frChP2E4AG
— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) November 12, 2016
The fun thing to come from this strangely dark turn of events is that everyone turned to Twitter to crack even darker jokes about their digital deaths.
If you needed an excuse to quit Facebook, maybe the site telling you that you died this weekend is a sign that it’s time to bite the bullet and live your non-digital life.
Anyway, here are some tweets.
Happy to report that Facebook didn’t kill me, but I am still dead inside
— Pete Blackburn (@PeteBlackburn) November 11, 2016
Facebook telling everyone they are dead is just typical 2016.
— Nicola Rosenberg (@DanielKelly84) November 11, 2016
Mark Zuckerberg: What should we do after Facebook Live?
Facebook Exec: Facebook Dead?
Mark Zuckerberg: Bingo.
— Samir Mezrahi (@samir) November 11, 2016
The hashtag #FacebookDead led to a lot of speculation about how the last week’s events are pulling the strings of social media. Could Trump be targeting people already? Is it just a ‘bug’?
Stay tuned for some crazy conspiracy theories from those friends-of-friends that are just too woke for their own good.