Right. Let’s get into the absolute state of the modern world — because the recent Cloudflare and AWS cock-ups have exposed something we’ve all known deep down: we are not the advanced, clever, sophisticated species we pretend to be. Not even close.
We are basically apes with Wi-Fi, and the moment that Wi-Fi disappears for more than three minutes, we react like toddlers being weaned off sugar. Refreshing browsers. Shaking phones. Whimpering. Absolutely pathetic.
You’d think that with all our “innovation” and “digital transformation” and whatever Silicon Valley buzzwords we’re currently slobbering over, we would’ve built a resilient, durable, modern infrastructure. Something worthy of a species that brags about being the pinnacle of intelligence.
But no. Instead, the entire planet runs on two companies, and a handful of engineers who are forced to duct-tape the internet together at 8am before their coffee kicks in. That’s not an exaggeration. That’s literally what’s happening.
And we just accept this. Cheerfully. Blindly. As if it’s perfectly reasonable for civilisation to depend on a few servers in Oregon and a permissions file that apparently no one thought to keep under a sane size limit.
If aliens ever swing by and run an audit, they won’t need to invade us. They’ll take one look at Cloudflare being a single point of failure for half the world and say, “They’re doing a perfectly good job of destroying themselves. Leave them to it.”
Because yes, the internet is fragile. Comically fragile. It’s basically structural toilet paper. The cheap stuff, the translucent stuff, the stuff that dissolves the moment you think about it.
One tiny tickbox goes wrong in Cloudflare’s backend and suddenly global businesses freeze, apps die, Spotify wheezes, ChatGPT collapses, and people start frantically slacking their colleagues: “Is it down for you?” Yes. Obviously. Because we built it like idiots.
And let’s not pretend the consequences were small. The moment Cloudflare and AWS face-planted, the real world started glitching like a Windows 95 demo.
Shops couldn’t take payments. Banks froze like they were waiting for permission to exist. Delivery apps died mid-order, leaving people waiting for shit microwaved-chips they’d never receive. Smart homes locked people out – imagine standing on your own doorstep being told by your door that it “cannot connect to the server.” Half the airport departure boards in Europe went blank, which is hilarious because they were replaced with the one thing more frustrating than a delayed flight: a rotating loading icon. Electric cars refused to start because, apparently, the future of transport depends on AWS remembering who you are. Even bloody kettles stopped working – because for some inexplicable reason, modern kettles need Wi-Fi. A kettle, the easiest machine ever invented, somehow requiring the internet to boil water. And of course, the ultimate tragedy: nobody’s smart doorbell could record the postman not delivering their parcels. The end of civilisation, right there.
This is what happens when you take every ordinary object, every mundane process, every stupid little task, and decide, “Yes, this absolutely needs a cloud backend.” No it fucking doesn’t. Your fridge does not need a firmware update. Your toothbrush does not need Bluetooth. Your lightbulbs should not be able to have an existential crisis.
And of course, all this “smart” nonsense only exists for one reason: so companies can capture data you never agreed to give them, and then pretend they’re doing you a favour by “enhancing your user experience.” I tell you what, my user experience would be massively enhanced if I simply didn’t need to agree to a binding contract just to use a fucking lamp.
And do you know what makes this whole thing even funnier? We volunteered for this. We sprinted toward convenience like moths to a flame. Instant maps. Instant entertainment. Instant answers. Instant everything. We wanted a world where nothing required effort, and shockingly, that world turned us into absolute vegetables.
We rely on Google Maps because apparently street signs are a lost technology. We rely on Spotify so heavily we’ve forgotten the names of the songs we like. We rely on ChatGPT for basic questions our grandparents could’ve solved while half-asleep and holding a cigarette.
So when these things go down, we don’t adapt, we malfunction. We just sit there frozen, staring at our screens as if waiting for a divine message. People whisper, “I can’t work.” You can’t work because ChatGPT won’t load? Grow up.
What’s even worse is that we’re addicted to these tools, yet we don’t understand a single thing about how any of it works. Most people genuinely believe websites just… appear. Mention Cloudflare and they think you’re talking about a Marvel villain. Mention AWS and they assume it’s a parcel service. Mention DNS or load balancing and suddenly they’ve got urgent business on TikTok.
And honestly, a big part of the problem is the branding. We called it “the cloud.” The most misleading, childlike, soft-focus name we could’ve chosen for the thing running the entire fucking world. Call it what it actually is – giant fuck-off warehouses full of humming metal that get very angry when a file is slightly too big – and maybe people would respect it.
But no. We had to give it a name that sounds like something you’d nap on in a Disney film.
“The cloud stores your photos.” No it doesn’t. A server in Dublin stores your photos. And if someone spills coffee on the wrong rack, your entire digital childhood evaporates.
“The cloud powers your apps.” Again – no it doesn’t. A room full of overheated machines running code nobody understands powers your apps. A cloud is what you point at when you’re trying to entertain a toddler.
But tech companies love the word because it makes everything sound magical and effortless. It hides the messy reality that the internet is physical, fragile, aggressively mortal, and run by stressed interns in hoodies working night shifts.
People don’t grasp the scale or the seriousness because we wrapped it all in soft language. You can’t rely on something and also misunderstand it at the same time – yet somehow, that’s exactly what we’ve done.
And yet, these same people demand flawless uptime, 24/7, 365, as if the internet is a constitutional right.
Here’s the truth: We allowed our entire digital existence to be focused through monopolistic chokepoints. Cloudflare sneezes, the world faints. AWS stubs its toe, civilisation collapses. We didn’t diversify. We didn’t question the stupidity of putting every egg in one flimsy basket. We trusted monopolies blindly because thinking for ourselves was too much effort.
And it’s not just everyday people falling for this bullshit – governments have marched straight into the same dependency trap with the enthusiasm of a toddler running toward a plug socket.
For all their grand speeches about “national security” and “digital sovereignty,” every major institution is wired directly into the same handful of companies they barely understand.
Police databases sync through third-party networks that have all the reliability of a kid with a crayon and clean walls. Court systems rely on digital backends that no judge knows how to pronounce, never mind operate. Even emergency services like the NHS – the organisations literally responsible for saving lives – depend on authentication systems hosted by companies whose best advice is “turn it off and on again.”
Every politician loves standing in front of a camera, puffing up their chest, and saying we’re a “modern digital nation.” But behind the curtain? Everything they brag about is rented. Leased. Borrowed infrastructure held together by contracts, wishful thinking, and a customer success manager named Josh.
And here’s the truly terrifying part: none of them have a clue what any of it means. They sign off billion-pound deals about “cloud migration strategies” without being able to explain what a server actually does. They trust vendors blindly because the brochure had the word “innovation” on it five times in bold. And when something inevitably breaks, they look shocked – shocked! – like the consequences were unforeseeable.
We haven’t built a resilient digital nation. We’ve built a digital dependency clinic, where every institution from hospitals to schools to transport networks relies on third-party services like addicts waiting for their next fix.
And they justify it all with the same idiotic lines: “It’s efficient.” “It’s cost-effective.” “It’s the future.”
No. It’s outsourcing your backbone and hoping no one notices.
When governments can’t function without asking Cloudflare for permission, that’s not progress – that’s a national disgrace.
So now, when the infrastructure creaks, the panic is biblical. The moment the internet breaks, people lose their sense of identity. Souls leave bodies. Productivity evaporates. Suddenly every office in the country transforms into a bad telenovela: “Oh god! I can’t log in! What do I do!?” Anything, mate. Do literally anything. Read a book. Write something offline. Organise your day. But no, we prefer paralysis. Because our thoughts, like the rest of our lives, live in the cloud.
None of this would’ve fazed anyone even a few decades ago. If something stopped working, people just… got on with their day.
In the 90s, if your computer froze, you didn’t stage a psychological breakdown – you kicked the tower, swore a bit, and made a cup of tea. If the internet dropped, you didn’t panic – you went outside. Or, god forbid, you just waited like a normal human being instead of clawing at the router like a raccoon trying to access a bin.
Go further back and it gets even more ridiculous. People navigated entire cities without GPS. They just looked around. They used landmarks. They used their memories – imagine that, a brain being used for something other than deciding what take-away to order.
Your parents and grandparents didn’t have meltdown procedures for minor inconveniences. They didn’t crumble because one tool was unavailable. They were capable of doing basic tasks without the safety net of an app handing them step-by-step instructions. They didn’t need YouTube tutorials for everything from tying shoelaces to reheating pasta. We like to act as if older generations were primitive, but they were infinitely more resilient than us.
We keep saying we’re “the most advanced generation in history” – yet half of us feel the onset of a panic attack if our phone battery dips below 20%. How advanced can you be if you can’t handle silence, darkness, or boredom without sprinting to digital stimulation like a rat pressing a button for sugar?
And yet we have the audacity, the sheer arrogance, to call ourselves modern. But a modern civilisation doesn’t grind to a halt because one company misconfigured a system. A modern civilisation has resilience. Redundancy. Backup plans. We have none of that.
We have convenience. And dashboards. And shiny interfaces that make us feel competent. But underneath it all, we’re a Jenga tower built by idiots.
And here’s the part everyone needs to hear: This outage wasn’t the big one. This was a teaser. A warning shot. A polite little cough from the universe saying, “If you carry on like this, you’re fucked.”
One day the internet will go down properly — not for an hour, not for an afternoon, but long enough that people will be forced to confront the empty vacuum that is their offline life.
People won’t know how to work, communicate, travel, think, or even feed themselves without instructions.
We saw what happened during the loo-roll apocalypse. Imagine that energy – but for literally everything. A proper, extended digital blackout.
Day one: mild chaos. People pacing around their living rooms like zoo animals. Everyone asking each other the same question with a trembling voice – “Is it still down?” Workplaces grinding to a halt because apparently no one has remembered how to do anything without a glowing rectangle telling them what to click.
Day two: confusion. People trying to “work offline” and immediately discovering they don’t actually know how. Printed documents? No one has any. Pens? All dried out. Plans? Gone. Their calendars lived inside an app that lived inside a service that lived inside AWS, which is now lying face-down in a digital ditch.
Day three: societal wobble. Supermarkets can’t restock properly because the logistics systems are digital. People start panic-buying again, because why not relive the psychological trauma of hoarding bog roll? Cash-only shops suddenly become the new Premier League – queues, arguments, drama – because no one remembers how money works when it isn’t contactless.
Day four: identity crisis. People realise they have no idea who they are without the internet. No algorithm telling them what they like. No feed telling them what to think. No notifications giving their day structure. It becomes painfully obvious that most modern personalities are nothing more than digital reflections held up by servers that are now having a very long nap.
Day five and beyond: complete societal self-awareness – the worst possible outcome. People will finally understand just how much of their life was outsourced to machines they never understood, controlled by companies they never questioned, running on infrastructure they never even bothered to imagine.
This is the part that terrifies me. Not the collapse itself – we’d survive that. What terrifies me is the moment people look up from the rubble of their daily routines and realise, “Oh shit… I don’t actually know how to exist.”
And when that day comes, we won’t be able to say, “No one warned us.” Because we built this on purpose. We chose convenience over competence. Automation over awareness. Dependency over resilience.
The tragic thing is, it didn’t need to be this way. We could’ve built a digital world that wasn’t held together by chewing gum and wishful thinking. But no – we wanted shiny. We wanted instant. We wanted “seamless experiences”.
We could’ve built systems that didn’t rely on two monopolies doing everything flawlessly. We could’ve decentralised, diversified, added layers. We could’ve created proper local infrastructure instead of piping everything through data centres thousands of miles away just because some Silicon Valley evangelist whispered the word “scalable” into a microphone.
But that wouldn’t have been sexy, would it? Robustness never wins awards. No one wants to watch a keynote about dull-but-reliable engineering. People want animations. Buzzwords. Futuristic nonsense about digital transformation and leveraging synergy. All the performative theatre of progress with absolutely none of the actual foundations.
We could’ve built something better. We just… didn’t.
Maybe, and I’m not saying this lightly, maybe we need a restart. Not an apocalypse. Not a return to living in tents and eating squirrels. Just a reset. A reminder of what it feels like to function without being digitally babysat. A reminder that thinking is a skill, and we’ve let it rot.
Because this world we’ve created, where people freeze the moment a website doesn’t load, is not impressive. It’s not modern. It’s not sustainable. It’s a joke.
The Cloudflare and AWS outages weren’t just technical problems, they were a mirror. A big, brutal mirror showing us exactly what we are: lazy, dependent, tech-brained, and utterly fragile.
We think we’ve mastered the digital age. In reality, the digital age has mastered us.
And until we accept how stupid that is, we’ll keep building a fragile world on fragile systems surrounded by fragile people.
And we’ll call it progress.
Idiots, all of us.