"Not now sweetie, Mummy's making CrowdStrike memes" — a compilation of the finest jokes the internet has created amongst crippling digital chaos

What you need to know

• A huge Microsoft outage today has caused chaos across airports, hospitals, banks and more and has been described as a "digital pandemic".
• The error, caused by a bug in CrowdStrike will cause widespread issues for days to come yet, as people sleep in airports and health services globally try to recover.
• Of course, people on the internet have still been able to make memes, many memes. 

If there's anything human beings do well in times of crisis, it's buy massive volumes of toilet paper and make memes about catastrophes. Today, the Crowdstrike outage led to a global meltdown as planes were grounded, 911 lines went down, health procedures were delayed, and the most crucial disaster, Starbucks mobile orders ceased to function.

The whole crisis has been referred to as a "digital pandemic" by many tabloids, and while it may not have resulted in people queuing at Costco for bulk orders of toilet paper, it has thrown out some of the best memes I've seen in a long time. Here's our round-up of the best that social media had to offer in these trying times:

Remember the millennium bug?

As the year 2000 approached, those of us old enough to remember will recall how the world held its breath for a digital meltdown... and absolutely nothing came of it. It looks like the millennium bug was just a little tardy.

What a first day

While it wasn't this guy's actual first day, his commitment to the meme throughout the day has been stellar. Vincent has since changed his bio to "Former Crowdstrike employee, fired for an unfair reason, only changed 1 line of code to optimize. Looking for a job as a Sysadmin."

ex-UK Prime Minister catching strays

Liz Truss, the ex-UK Prime Minister famed for lasting less time in power than a lettuce, has even caught some strays in the fray today. Already subject this week to a King's Speech decreeing that " the mistakes of Liz Truss's 'mini-budget' cannot be repeated"— a comment that has since been removed at her request—she's now been blamed for Microsoft's transgressions, too. What a resume. 

You know it's good when it gets Community noted

Ah the iconic Blue Screen of Death (BSOD), while airport screeen have genuinely been affected, the Vegas Sphere was just a great joke. So great too many people fell for it and its currently showing Community note suggestions including "Fake News. The photo is from 2023, and the Sphere is located in Las Vegas, not Los Angeles."

Never forget the Suez Canal

More blue screen of death

The comment "wait are these real?" is the funniest part of this tweet. Yes, the world really is completely melting down right now!

Special mentions

The self-own...

62 minutes could bring your business down say Crowdstrike on its own website, well one update today took less than that...

Crowdstrike is now fixed

Here's how to fix the Crowdstrike Blue Screen error on Windows 11 if you're still having issues. The disaster may now be over, but many services will be recovering for days to come. And, of course, the memes will live on.