Netflix is Down, and Fans Are Freaking Out

Netflix hasn't had the best year -- and today it's not getting any better, as the streaming giant is struggling with a rare service outage in the United States. The streaming service's website is working, so services like IsItDown might tell you that everything is fine, but when users go to log in to the website, you get an error page like the one seen below, indicating "Error code NSES-500." That, of course, has sent people to social media to ask: "Is Netflix down? Is it just my Wi-fi? Is it cake?"

Reported outages jumped from a couple hundred to several thousand in the time between 2:15 p.m. ET and 2:20 p.m. ET. Some users are still saying that the service works on mobile devices, although ComicBook has not yet been able to confirm that. 

After about half an hour, Netflix released a statement via their website.

"We are currently experiencing issues streaming on all devices," the message reads. "We are working to resolve the problem. We apologize for any inconvenience."

Update 2:55 p.m. ET: Some users are beginning to indicate that their service is returning.

You can see the error screen here:

While Netflix is ultimately just an entertainment platform, and audiences have plenty of other ways to watch their TV shows and movies (at least the ones that aren't exclusive to Netflix), the size of the company, and the way it shapes the pop culture discourse, means that as soon as it goes down for a minute, it's world news.

The timing is especially frustrating for users, since it's Friday -- not just leading into the weekend, but also the first day of release for a bunch of new content. With the recent release of Stranger Things 4's huge, twisty finale, fans have been talking about Netflix on social media more or less nonstop for a while...so this is just a new angle in the conversation

You can see some of Twitter's best, funniest, and most memorable responses below.