Student Accidentally Deletes The Internet
When the disaster became clear
While trying to claim a free pizza online, Shaun Walkom, 20, accidentally deleted The Internet.
The entire planet – including the popular lolcats.com – was effectively offline for over two hours while The Internet was restored.
One of the most popular files that were missing during the disaster
From his parents’ basement in Toorak, Victoria, Walkom explained, “I was just trying to get a free barbeque meatlovers pizza delivered from Pizza Hut’s website when I hit the ‘delete’ key instead of the ‘return’ key. Next thing I know I’ve friggin’ erased The Internet, man.”
Walkom said he knew something was really wrong when “I pressed ctrl-Z but nothing happened. I was out of ideas after that. I was freaking.”
When asked what he did immediately after the glorious mishap, the Monash University Arts undergraduate seemed lost as to what action to take.
“Well, what can you do? I used TextEdit’s speech function to read out swear words for a while then looked in the fridge even though I wasn’t really hungry.
“I have no idea what my parents used to do for entertainment. I tried to Facebook chat to ask, but then I realised I had just removed the globe’s access to over a quadrillion pages of data.”
The shockwaves have been felt world wide (or WW), with Google faxing out a statement shortly after the mishap. “This is outrageous. After years of research, millions of dollars and hours of manpower spent tweaking our site to cut milliseconds off our search results, now there’s nothing to search.”
Luckily, the guy who looks after The Internet, had a recent backup, stored largely on an external hard drive, along with an aeroplane hangar full for 3½ inch floppy disks and 32MB flash drives from the web’s early days.
Walkom seemed apologetic, reflecting on his blunder by stating, “Next time I’ll definitely pay for my pizza, but I’ll be damned if I’m paying extra for chicken.”
August 8, 2011 - 12:25 pm
Oh no! All the receptionists who come to work on Monday will have their days ruined if facebook is off!
August 8, 2011 - 2:39 pm
I think I know this kid. He went to school with me. He likes hawaiian pizza. What a jerk.
August 21, 2011 - 8:53 pm
I reckon I did this once when I was playing Minesweeper online. Hahahahahah!