WhatsApp is down for users worldwide

Bad news gang, WhatsApp appears to have gone down for people all over the world as people are suddenly finding they can't easily message their nearest and dearest.

Technology monitoring website Down Detector found that at around 7:15pm UK time the number of WhatsApp outages suddenly spiked from almost nothing up to 40,000, while a bit of data from about five minutes later saw that figure climb to 85,000 and then over 100,000 before appearing to drop down.

In fact, checking the site has seen several smaller simultaneous spikes on Meta's other platforms Facebook, Instagram and Facebook Messenger.

Naturally, this has caused a massive influx of people to X, as is always the case when another platform goes down, which is now full of people bleating that WhatsApp is down.

Obviously that GIF of the veritable horde of people coming down an escalator got another use, as is pretty much internet tradition at this point.

Meanwhile, other people joked that as we speak there'd be people 'making sure the app is down and she isn't just not responding', while someone else lamented that they probably wouldn't notice WhatsApp going down because their chat was 'dry'.

Frankly, one cannot move on X right now for all the posts about people saying everyone's going onto the social media site to complain that somewhere else isn't working right now.

Then of course there are the weirdos with a strange tribal loyalty to certain social media sites (and perhaps their billionaire owners) who seem to be delighting to see Meta fall down a proverbial hole.

Sorry gang, if you're desperately needing some regular WhatsApp communication and the app has failed you in your hour of need then you have my utmost sympathy.

Of course while we have you here you might as well while away the time until WhatsApp comes back by scrolling through a few of our fine selection of articles.

Otherwise you might as well spend the time watching people hop onto Twitter and have a meltdown over technology not working as it should.

If you're in the market for some GIFs of lots of people running together it's the perfect time to hop onto social media and scoop up some new reactions.

On the other hand, there are a number of other things you could do instead of being on your phone waiting for it to work again such as reading a book or touching a patch of grass to reacquaint yourself with the feeling.

Meta told LADbible: "We know some people are experiencing issues right now, we're working on getting things back to 100% for everyone as quickly as possible."