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All those carefully crafted images of snowscapes will have to stay locked up for a bit, East Coasters, because Facebook and Instagram are down. (Update 11:12pm: Our brief Facebook-related national nightmare appears to be over, at least for me and Janko Roettgers on the West Coast.)

I’m not clear what any of you on the East Coast would be doing on Facebook at this hour, given how much liquor it appeared you bought as “provisions” during the day on Monday, but as of about 10:10pm PST Monday evening, Facebook appeared to be down for just about everybody. Facebook acknowledged something was wrong with an error message on its main site, and all the usual “is it down?” sites weighed in with the usual messages.

Stand firm, East Coasters: you can still distribute pictures of bros playing beer pong on 1st Avenue through your other social media channels. But this long cold winter night might just get a little longer should you be unable to document the snowfall in your neighborhoods for family members and those annoying friends from high school who live in California.

Facebook is Down. Instagram is Down. Whatsapp is Up. That tells you who is sharing critical infrastructure. — Rahul Thathoo (@thathoo) January 27, 2015

Speaking on behalf of those annoying friends from California, we’ve actually got the windows open in Oakland right now because it was a little unseasonably warm tonight. Stay strong, East Coast Facebookers: there’s always Ello (and maybe Twitter).

Here's a quick Instagram video I shot of the Bros playing beer pong in the middle of 1st Avenue during #blizzard http://t.co/Bm9JV36jd5 — Brandon Wenerd (@brandonwenerd) January 27, 2015

I’ll update this post with good jokes or more information until I get tired and have to go to bed.

10:50pm PT: Facebook and Instagram still appear to be down. As far as I can tell, civilization has not collapsed. But I did have to finally shut the windows in Oakland as the temperature dropped into the low 60s.

I liked this one:

Facebook and Instagram users are now having their Charlton Heston Planet of the Apes moment pic.twitter.com/82FCwuFDlO — Michael Pinto (@michaelpinto) January 27, 2015

10:55pm PT: Instagram fesses up:

We're aware of an outage affecting Instagram and are working on a fix. Thank you for your patience. — Instagram (@instagram) January 27, 2015

10:57pm PT: We learn a lot about ourselves in these moments:

Things I learned while Facebook was down. 1. Weather elsewhere doesn't affect me. 2. I don't "like" anything. 3. I have 2 kids. — Dave Pell (@davepell) January 27, 2015

10:58pm PT: Is this a way bigger deal than we first realized?

Facebook, Instagram, Tinder, other sites all down apparently due to a huge DDOS attack. http://t.co/Amvp7BCxuZ pic.twitter.com/GcNMlCUZGS — Avinash Kunnath (@avinashkunnath) January 27, 2015

11:02pm: It’s now very serious: Tinder is down:

Tinder is down so RT for swipe left, fave for swipe right, please. — Ashley Mayer (@ashleymayer) January 27, 2015

11:06pm: Everything is still somehow down. But don’t worry, Yo is crushing it:

Yo your loved ones to let them know you're ok during these hard times. — Yo (@YoApp) January 27, 2015

11:15pm: Facebook appears to be back. I have not investigated Tinder yet because I’m a married man.

11:52pm PT: Jay Parikh, vice president of engineering at Facebook, appears to have had a rough night:

Well that really sucked. — Jay Parikh (@jayparikh) January 27, 2015

Further update by David Meyer now that Tom has sensibly retired for the night: Turns out it was an internal mistake on Facebook’s part.