We Can Probably Live Without Twitter, Thanks
Twitter apologized and explained why it was down Thursday afternoon, and while the reason is perfectly acceptable, something about their apology unsettled us.
.Twitter apologized and explained why it was down Thursday afternoon, and while the reason is perfectly acceptable, something about their apology unsettled us.
Mazen Rawashdeh, Twitter's Vice President of Engineering, explained the problems on Thursday weren't "due to a hack or our new office or Euro 2012 or GIF avatars, as some have speculated," but because of something called a cascading bug, confirming what a Twitter rep told us this afternoon. "A "cascading bug” is a bug with an effect that isn’t confined to a particular software element, but rather its effect “cascades” into other elements as well," Rawashdeh writes.
Something about Rawashdeh's apology didn't sit well with us, though. "We know how critical Twitter has become for you — for many of us," Rawashdeh writes. "Every day, we bring people closer to their heroes, causes, political movements, and much more." Rawashdeh then embeds a Tweet that reads, "OMG..twitter was down....closest thing to living without oxygen for most of us...." Have we become so attached to Twitter that we can no longer live without it?
We get that Twitter has become an important way for people to follow the news. It lets us hear from our favorite comedians, or favorite celebrities. It serves a function, sure, and it makes life easier, but it's not a function we desperately need in our day-to-day lives. If Twitter went under tomorrow, our lives wouldn't change.
Don't get us wrong, we love Twitter. We use it obsessively. We love the perfect list of people we follow that talk about all the things we love. We follow people that talk or write about politics, sports, music, movies, and comics. Heck, we even follow a collection of entertaining professional wrestling writers. There's something on Twitter for everyone, that's what makes it great. And we like hearing from them every day, but that doesn't mean we couldn't live without them. Twitter is something we enjoy, not something we need.
"It’s imperative that we remain available around the world, and today we stumbled," Rawashdeh concludes. "For that we offer our most sincere apologies and hope you’ll be able to breathe easier now." We accept your apology, but we were breathing perfectly fine without you.