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The Internet Was Down & Everyone Is Blaming Black Mirror, Of Course

Carolyn L. Todd
October 21, 2016, 4:15 PM
Photo: David Dettmann/Courtesy of Netflix.
Large swaths of the internet went down on Friday morning following a hack on a major DNS (domain name system) host named Dyn. Between 7 a.m. and 9:30 a.m., users on the East Coast were unable to access sites including Twitter, Netflix, Spotify, CNN, The New York Times and Reddit, according to the Times. Hours before the hack, the hotly-anticipated new season of Black Mirror hit Netflix. The show examines the unsettling consequences of technology on 21st century life. Things like, you know, the information fabric that holds our modern world together being torn asunder by a malevolent web hack affecting potentially millions of people. Coincidence? Twitter thinks not.
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People are tweeting — some only half-jokingly — that Black Mirror is to blame for these outages. Many are speculating that the whole thing was orchestrated by Netflix as a flashy marketing stunt. "Are we sure Twitter being down wasn't just viral marketing for Black Mirror? Okay, we get it, we're addicted to technology. Geez," one person wrote. Another tweeted, "pretty sure black mirror is responsible for today's big internet crash. i have zero proof but it just seems right." Even Netflix got in on the fun, posting to Black Mirror's Facebook page, "We understand you have been having some issues with Twitter today. The service is no longer available to users below a 5 star rating. We apologize for the inconvenience." (We assume the broken link is intended.)
The freaky incident elicited more than funny responses, though — it stirred up exactly the kind of techno-paranoia and unease about modern life that makes Black Mirror such a darkly addictive hit. So queue it up and join our Binge Club for all the recaps.
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