Outrage as social media outage leaves Kenyans with no other way to waste time

A social media outage in some parts of Kenya last week left hundreds of thousands of social media addicts clueless on how to waste their employer’s time.

The outage which lasted the whole day, and part of the next, left many social media addicts experiencing severe withdrawal symptoms. The outage was a result of a scheduled interruption for maintenance purposes.

“It was just like the interruption of electricity supply, which the power company responsible for supplying blackouts is very well known for, except that this time there was no notice published in the newspapers,” explained a local IT expert.

 Online stalker

Consequently, young office workers who had never needed help with to steal their employer’s time given all the social media platforms available, had to seek the counsel of older employees on how office time was wasted before the advent of Facebook and Twitter.

“If the enthusiasm and energy I put into demonstrating to younger employees the forgotten art of playing solitaire on the old office desktop was how I dealt with customer queries and complaints, I would have been promoted long ago!” confessed a receptionist who has been stuck at the same desk for over twenty years now.

During the outage, local online stalkers had to seek other ways of keeping tabs on their objects of interest. “You can’t imagine how hard it is to ‘follow’ someone physically when you have grown fat and lethargic from doing it virtually,” one online stalker, who developed leg cramps after resorting to physical stalking, revealed.

Attention Deprivation Disorder

Socialites also had a hard time seeking attention and several severe cases of ADD (Attention Deprivation Disorder) were reported. Some had to be rushed to rehabilitation centres until the effects of the withdrawal symptoms wore off.

In most of the country’s hospitals, the outage also led to a sharp decline in the number of emergencies involving muscle pulls in the forelimbs, as a result of twiddling fingers and thumbs on touchscreen devices for hours. The most frustrating thing about the outage though, was that the affected users had nowhere to vent.

“Normally social media is the place to vent your anger and frustrations but where do you vent when the problem is social media and there’s no social media?! By the time you write a letter to the editor, the problem is gone!” groused one social media enthusiast.

But not all were affected negatively by the outage. Some employers for example, noticed an increase in productivity as employees took time off the Internet to put in some work. And in most face to face interactions that day, eye contact was reported.

For the first time in a long time, parents were reminded of what it’s like to have their teenage children roll their eyes while talking to them - a habit mobile devices had done away with since  children’s’ eyes were permanently fixed on gadgets.

Incriminating posts

The outage is also believed to have extended the life of several marriages and relationships, or perhaps postponed their demise by a few hours, because during that period there was no online flirting or incriminating posts, which might have led to suspicions of cheating and its attendant consequences.

Hate speech monitors at the National Cohesion and Integration Commission were also sent home early that day because there wasn’t any work to do.