When you can’t get bbc.co.uk your first though is “has the world ended?”
Very occasionally something goes wrong and you can’t get the BBC website. Oh my God, you think, has the world ended? What could possibly take the BBC offline? It’s funny how we think that the BBC’s website should be more robust and resistant to code screw-ups or inexplicable breakdowns than other websites.
Usually, the BBC website shows back up within minutes and all is well. You can relax in the knowledge that a battleship-sized asteroid hasn’t knocked the earth of its magnetic axis and messed up all communications across the planet. Nor has a NASA-covered up brown dwarf star (masquerading as an icy comet) initiated an Extinction Level Event.
Joking aside, it is telling to notice just how destabilising it feels when a website like BBC doesn’t work. Worse yet those times when you can’t connect to the internet at all. I don’t know about you, but I will admit to a sort of nameless panic at being suddenly cut off from…well, you know, the real world.
