'How do I shut down Twitter?'

As I write this, I feel bereft, a lonely man in an empty world. Twitter is down, and it's all HMV's fault.

Despite Twitter's reputation as a hystrionic swarming ground for bullies, trolls and gossip-mongers, only very rarely does something with enough widespread appeal occur to take the whole social network offline.

Today, HMV may have managed that - ironically, by asking the soon-to-be infamous question, "How do I shut down Twitter?"


(Don't worry, I'm fairly sure using the dog's OK under that whole fair usage parody law... or is that only in America?)

In what may be the fastest time-to-implosion ever to take place on Twitter, the @hmvtweets account has just gone from blowing the whistle on mass redundancies at the troubled high street retailer, to the tweets being deleted (detweeted?) and one marketing manager allegedly asking "How do I shut down Twitter?".

By the time I managed to cobble together the image above, this unnamed hero had achieved what Anonymous could only dream of - and Twitter was fail-whaling all over the place. Unless it's just a problem with my internet connection...

Anyway, with no Twitter to turn to, this post is really more of a reflex action than anything productive. But let it stand as testament to the day HMV got their wish, and a nation momentarily felt the pang of isolation from our Twitter friends.

Boo HMV. Boo :'(