The Smiling Whale

I get the Twitter "over capacity" error screen at least once a day:

Why does this whale look so self-satisfied? And why aren't the birds straining on the ropes?

I would be embarrassed to run a web service that was so under-resourced, even if it were free to users, and I would be scrambling to enable additional capacity. Maybe the tweeting peeps at Twitter are scrambling; I don't know. This error screen sure doesn't tell me so. Maybe it should.

Comments

[Doug]

Yes. The odd thing is that it would be a lot more fun for everyone to see those birds with their necks straining and eyes bulging and the whale clearly barely hanging off the ropes. And maybe some other birds flying in to help. They could even ask users to provide "system strained to its limits" images. They've got a gazillion users who suddenly have a bit of extra time on their hands.

[Meg Houston Maker]

Coda: Turns out this image has a minor cult following, known affectionately as the FailWhale: http://www.failwhale.com/.