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Rauber Hill Sunrise, by Mel Hunt

Facebook and Instagram down for most users today. How did it affect you?

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From Andrew Harris, 10/4/21

I spent the better part of my morning rebooting: my laptop, my hot spot, my brain. Facebook was simply unavailable and I needed to use it for building a new advertisement for the Wellsville Sun’s newest sponsor, Cyrco Construction. Being used to a typically bad internet connection was eliminated as my pea brain decided to stop hitting “refresh,” and tried another site. Clearly the issue was Facebook, who I would normally not feel bad about their bad day except I needed it for work.

Here is the very plain advertisement I made, without any pretty images or logos. Luckily the crew at Cyr are understanding and just wanted a basic advertisement anyway!!!

Surely I wasn’t alone in these exercises in futility, or the internal shame that emerges after the 40th time you hit refresh and try to shake the internet router into compliance. When common sense arrived, I checked the national news and sure enough:

The company’s week went from bad to worse after its Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp platforms were down on Monday

Still I didn’t stop trying though, desperate to just find that one image off a customers page, and of course check my messages and notifications. The dopamine that your brain receives when interacting on social media is real, just like a drag off a cigarette or maxing out a workout. Ironically this outage comes on the heels of international news that Facebook and other social media platforms are manipulating users like never before. Not that such news was a surprise. I regularly check my FB(and I don’t have a smartphone) on my laptop before I pour my coffee. We were all well aware, more so now.

The outage is still painful and disruptive, like when you can’t find a pack of smokes but keep looking in your coat anyway, just in case you missed it. The work didn’t get done, the shame still continues because I keep checking the site, and you can’t just run to the store to get some smokes.

How many of you actually tried to get back into Myspace?? Share your painful stories from the day if you please… WellsvilleSun@yahoo.com

NOTE: I don’t smoke tobacco anymore but I remember it well.

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