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MARCH 14, 2019 | The Jewish Home
CERTIFIED
WhatsApp Outage Outrage
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WhatsApp outage last Monday wreaked havoc for several hours across the nation. Seventeen people contracted listeria and 1,200 people contracted E. coli after eating tainted lettuce because they didn’t get a WhatsApp message, “Forward: Warning: Not safe to eat Romaine Lettuce following E. coli outbreak.” Others had their money stolen because they were not warned about a scam in which people write, “Dear Sir or Madam, I’m stuck in New Guinea and left my wallet at home. Please wire me all of the money in your bank account.” Moe Brainfog was one of the victims. “How was I supposed to know it was a scam?” he said. “I got a text from my brother and he told me that he was stuck overseas and needed money.” He added indignantly, “I found it odd because we had just seen each other a few hours earlier, but I figured maybe he went straight for our meeting to Bangkok in a Concorde and simply forgot to tell me that he was going across the globe. But I didn’t want to take any chances so I sent him the money. Had WhatsApp been working I would have realized that this was a scam.” Some people also missed Min-
cha because they had no idea what time the local Mincha was. “I’ve been going to the Mincha minyan the Agudah at 12:45 every day for the past four years,” said one ferocious davener, “but when WhatsApp went down, I wasn’t able to find out what time Mincha was that day.” This ferocious davener explained that every day at around noon he blasts off a WhatsApp to around 760 people in his various groups asking, “Where is there a Mincha minyan?” He usually gets a few responses from some kindhearted souls who don’t have the heart to tell him that it’s the same time that it has been for the past 117 days. One woman reported that during the outage she saw strange creatures that looked like children encircling
woman. “The craziest thing is they were calling me, ‘Mommy!’ Thankfully I was able to take a video to
“My friend who usually spends his day mining and blasting out inspirational memes couldn’t send me anything.” her. “‘Can we go to the park? Can you help me with homework?’ they said. It was soooo scary!” said the
show my friends on WhatsApp when the app finally was restored.” One effect of the outage was that
some people experienced a complete lack of motivation. “I completely forgot that ‘yesterday is history, tomorrow is the future, today is the present,’ because my friend who usually spends his day mining and blasting out inspirational memes couldn’t send me anything,” said Tonny Robbinsfeld, as he walked barefoot over hot coals. Another effect of the outage was that hundreds of drivers got speeding tickets on Seagirt Boulevard because they were not notified about America’s top cop, who has been camping out at that location for the past five years and has written more tickets than the New York Lotto. One man, though, saw the silver lining in the WhatsApp outage. This individual told TJH that he was stuck in a WhatsApp chat group for the past eight months and had no way out until the outage wiped out all of his chat groups. “I never had the heart to tell my seventh grade classmates that I’ve made other friends since 1987 and have no interest in bantering with them for five hours a day about the time we put a piece of bubble gum on Mr. Goldberg’s chair,” said ~B. “But I had no way out of the group because I was too curious about what they would say about me after I left.” Thankfully, the outage didn’t come on Tuesday of parshas Ha’maan. Otherwise, we would all be in trouble.