Humor ran amok on Friday as an IT outage caused havoc across networks globally with wits the world over calling it “International Blue Screen Day.”
The outage was caused by US cyber security firm CrowdStrike, previously known as the Fort Knox of the cybersecurity world. This Friday, however, the company was caught not just napping but in full sloth-like somnolence.
IT departments were driven out of their usual Friday torpor into a frenzy of activity causing a number of geeks to post on X: “Did anyone try turning it off and on again?”
Amid the endless jokes, one X user, calling himself Steven Flibustier (really?), claimed he’d accidentally broken the Internet. Mr Flibustier posted an AI generated picture of himself standing outside the CrowdStrike offices with a caption: “First day at CrowdStrike, pushed a little update and taking the afternoon off.”
Meanwhile, over at Threads one user posted: “So excited by new internship at Microsoft. I tripped on a couple of cables this morning but I think I put them back right.”
And so the joke continued…
Elsewhere, millions of employees decided Friday was the new Saturday and headed home for an early weekend.
Others were not so fortunate, however. One X user complained: “Actively furious that the global Microsoft outage doesn’t seem to have affected my workplace.”
And not all Microsoft programs were affected. Wrote Max Pollard on X, “Microsoft outage but Teams and Outlook are both fine is the adult version of snow that doesn’t settle enough for a school closure.”
Finally, spare a thought for the hapless billionaire boss of CrowdStrike, George Kurtz, who had to explain to everyone that it was his fault and he was very very sorry. As a result of the outage he stands to lose £300 million.
As with his namesake in the classic Vietnam movie Apocalypse Now (or Heart of Darkness), Kurtz could be heard muttering: “The horror. The horror,” in his boardroom last Friday.
But I’m sure he managed to regain his composure when he realised he still has another $1bn to fall back on in case of emergencies.
