Callum Jones
After Facebook and Instagram went down today (5 March), people were left feeling like Netflix's Leave The World Behind was becoming a reality.
Many users were left puzzled after finding out they had been logged out of their Facebook and Instagram accounts, and were unable to log back in.
In fact, many began to worry they'd been hacked - but that was certainly not the case.
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Social media users subsequently took to X - formerly known as Twitter - to see if fellow users experienced the same problems.
Many posted amusing gifs and images of enormous crowds or marathons as people swarmed the platform for updates.
One person tweeted: "When you realise both Facebook and Instagram are down and everybody rushing towards X."
Another wrote: "Not me changing my passwords on FB three times in five minutes thinking I got hacked only to find out that Facebook/IG are down for everyone."
A third wrote: "I thought somebody hacked my Facebook."
Another posted: "So like everyone’s in X to verify if they the only one who got logged out in Facebook Messenger and Insta (Same)."
Messaging service WhatsApp, also owned by Meta, experienced problems on Tuesday. Though it did not suffer the same disruption to its services.
Meta issued a statement addressing the problems, with the company's communications lead penning in a tweet: "We're aware people are having trouble accessing our services. We are working on this now."
And of course, Elon Musk poked fun at the outages, penning on X: "If you’re reading this post, it’s because our servers are working."
The official X account also tweeted: "We know why you’re all here rn."
But now that Facebook and Instagram is back up and running, many have compared the outage to Leave The World Behind - the 2023 Netflix movie featuring Julia Roberts.
"Leave the world behind starts now," one person wrote on X.
"A leave the world behind scene is happening rn tell me I'm lying," a second added.
However, an impressed social media user wrote: "I'm getting sick of people mentioning Leave the world behind whenever something happens."
Leave the World Behind is based on Rumaan Alam's 2010 novel of the same name, and the flick is written, produced and directed by Sam Esmail.
The film is set during a family vacation on Long Island after it is 'interrupted by two strangers bearing news of a mysterious blackout'.
"As the threat grows more imminent, both families must decide how best to survive the potential crisis, all while grappling with their own place in this collapsing world," the synopsis continues.
Spooky...