Fans hilariously react as ChatGPT went down

Mark this date, y'all as it’s the day the internet collectively screamed, “Where’s ChatGPT?” For a whopping seven hours, OpenAI’s favorite chatbot went AWOL, leaving millions in the digital lurch. If you were among the hoards refreshing your browser, hoping for the comeback of ChatGPT, you’re not alone.

So, what did users do during this digital winter? Twitter (yeah, yeah X) lit up from relatable memes to sheer panic posts. Students were crying over unfinished essays. Professionals missed deadlines, and casual users were just trying to settle bets or whip up witty Tinder replies.

A user writes: "College students and work-from-home workers are in shambles right now."

Another user said: "College students and Katy Perry rn."

Another user said: "250-word essay due by midnight, I have no idea what to write and ChatGPT is down? Yeah, it’s over."

A user went on to say: "Let’s see how smart some of your really are now."

A comment read: "Damnn someone is failing in exam somewhere in the world because Chatgpt is Down."

Another comment read: "How is Taylor going to write her corny songs now 😭😭"

"That explains all the grammar errors and misspellings I have been seeing in the comments lately. 😂", read another comment.

---

ChatGPT’s disappearing act

The curtain dropped at around 1:30 PM ET on December 27. What started as a few error messages snowballed into a full-blown blackout, peaking during the early afternoon.

By the numbers, it was a jaw-dropping 15,000 incidents were logged on Downdetector, with users flooding forums and social media. People couldn’t connect to ChatGPT or even its shiny new sidekick, the Sora text-to-video generator.

The outage held its grip until around 4:00 AM Spain time the following day, which is basically forever in internet years. By late evening, OpenAI declared “we are almost fully back online,” but the damage was done.

---

But, like, what actually happened?

OpenAI played it cool, attributing the chaos to an “issue with an upstream provider.” Vague much? No name drops, no techy jargon breakdown. Just a polite, “Sorry for the inconvenience, we’re on it.”

Was it server overload? A glitch in the matrix? Aliens? (Okay, maybe not aliens, but still.) While OpenAI stayed tight-lipped, it’s clear the hiccup wasn’t entirely in their hands.

---

OpenAI’s damage control

To their credit, OpenAI stayed on top of communication. Their status page and socials were buzzing with updates.

They thanked users for their patience and assured everyone they were working overtime to fix things.

By late evening, ChatGPT was mostly back online, just in time to salvage some late-night productivity.

If this feels like deja vu, you’re not wrong. December’s been rough for OpenAI. Earlier this month, another outage sent users into a frenzy. And while ChatGPT remains the GOAT of AI chatbots, these disruptions are giving major side-eye vibes to its reliability.