Actual Idiots Need to Be Told Not to Call 911 About Facebook Outage

Last night, the internet suffered a devastating blow when both Facebook and Instagram went down for a short period of time during my nap. While I wasn’t personally affected, apparently lots of other people were. And they were so worried that they’d miss someone’s meal that they began calling 911 to demand Facebook be restored and/or report the outage as an emergency.

You may think that this makes some sense considering the blizzard that happened/didn’t happen (based on what you’re reading) in New York, but these people were calling from California’s Bay Area! We didn’t have snow last night! We didn’t even have a light drizzle.

Look, I’ve put together a list of when it’s appropriate to call 911. It’s illustrative but not exhaustive, so feel free to add your own and give out to your more dramatic friends.

Here are some reasons to call 911:

-There really was a serial killer when you checked behind the shower curtain and, unfortunately, you hadn’t thought of what you would do once you discovered them.

-You are being robbed by people whom you may or may not know up to and including your children who think that moving out means taking the TV.

-Your roommate is drunk and forgot that normal people don’t wander around the house in the middle of the night wearing only a jockstrap and holding a butter knife.

-You receive an IP relay call which is just a reading of The Raven followed by the threat of someone coming to get you. (This is a thing that happened to me and I still called the non-emergency number.)

Here are some reasons not to call 911:

-Your waffle isn’t cooked to your liking.

-Facebook is down.

It’s just really hard for me to understand why exactly Facebook being down warrants an kind of call to a government entity in place to keep you safe, but apparently for some people it’s just way too much not to be able to beg your friends for Candy Crush lives on a near-constant basis. Have you people forgotten that talking to the people in your life and porn still exist? Get to know yourself and the others around you. Have a sexy party! Do whatever. Just please for the love of god stop tying up emergency networks with your bullshit when people are getting shot out there and shit. I need to be able to call 911 when I think there’s a prowler, okay?