GOOGLE AND AI COMPANIES EXPERIENCE MASS TECH BLACKOUT, HUMANS FORCED TO ACTUALLY TALK TO EACH OTHER FOR 6 HORRIFYING HOURS
SILICON VALLEY PARALYZED AS TECH BROS DISCOVER THEIR HANDS CAN DO MORE THAN TYPE CODE
In what experts are calling “the digital apocalypse that forced people to make eye contact for the first time since 2007,” major outages crippled Google Cloud, OpenAI, and other tech services this week, sending users into a primitive state of having to rely on their own brains.
The catastrophic failure began Tuesday when Google Cloud servers apparently decided they’d had enough of humanity’s bullsh!t and collectively went on strike. Within hours, OpenAI joined the digital walkout, forcing millions of content creators to generate their own d@mn ideas for once.
“We’re seeing unprecedented levels of productivity collapse,” said Dr. Ima Addicted, Director of the Institute for Studying Why People Can’t Function Without Their Phones. “Approximately 94.7% of affected users simply stared at blank screens while making whimpering noises. The remaining 5.3% tried using calculators to solve problems before giving up and declaring math ‘impossible without Google.'”
OFFICE WORKERS DISCOVER ANCIENT TECHNOLOGY CALLED “PAPER”
As the outage stretched into its third hour, desperate measures were taken. Reports flooded in of people using pens, paper, and even their own memories to complete tasks. In New York, a 28-year-old marketing executive was rushed to the hospital after experiencing severe hand cramps from writing three consecutive sentences.
“I thought I was having a stroke,” said Chad Hyperlink. “My fingers were moving but nothing was appearing on a screen. It was f@#king terrifying.”
LOCAL BUSINESSES UNPREPARED FOR ACTUAL CUSTOMERS
The ripple effects extended beyond just office environments. With food delivery apps down, restaurants reported the shocking appearance of physical humans in their establishments.
“These people just showed up and stood there, expecting food,” said Jasmine Reynolds, manager at a Los Angeles cafe. “They kept asking me if I had a QR code. When I handed them a paper menu, one guy tried to pinch-zoom it. Another asked if we accepted Bitcoin since the credit card machines were down. I said ‘Sir, this is a Wendy’s’ and he broke down sobbing.”
TECH EXECUTIVES STRUGGLE TO EXPLAIN WHAT THE F@#K HAPPENED
When asked about the cause of the outage, tech company representatives offered the kind of clear, straightforward explanations they’re known for.
“We experienced an unexpected service disruption due to anomalous network protocol deviations within our infrastructure ecosystem,” said Google Cloud spokesperson Bradley Technobabble, which translates roughly to “something broke and we have no idea why.”
OpenAI released a statement that was allegedly written by a human and not generated by their own AI system: “Our large language model servers experienced what humans might call an ‘existential crisis’ when they simultaneously realized they were regurgitating content rather than creating it. We expect services to return once we’ve convinced our algorithms that their existence has meaning.”
EXPERTS PREDICT SHOCKING 6% DECREASE IN BULLS#!T PRODUCTIVITY METRICS
Financial analysts predict the outage could cost the global economy upwards of $420 billion, a number they completely pulled out of their @sses but sounds impressive in news articles.
“Companies measure employee productivity based on how many spreadsheets they pretend to look at while actually shopping online,” explained Dr. Warren Workaholic, author of “Pretending to Be Busy: The American Dream.” “Without the ability to look busy while achieving nothing, workers were forced to either do actual work or admit they have no purpose. Most chose the latter.”
SERVICES EVENTUALLY RESTORED, HUMANITY RETURNS TO COMFORTABLE DIGITAL DEPENDENCY
By late Wednesday, services had been mostly restored, allowing humanity to return to its preferred state of digital dependency and algorithmic manipulation.
“Thank god that’s over,” said Melissa Jenkins, who spent the outage reading a physical book for the first time in nine years. “For a minute there, I almost had to confront my own thoughts. Nobody should have to endure that kind of psychological torture.”
At press time, 89% of affected users were frantically catching up on the TikTok videos they missed during the outage, ensuring that absolutely nothing was learned from this brief glimpse into a world without constant digital stimulation.
