Down goes Twitter! Down goes Twitter! Will Earth survive?

And you thought “The Day the Earth Stood Still” was just a movie.

On Thursday, the unthinkable actually happened: “Twitter suffers outages” screamed The Times’ headline. (OK, “screamed” may be hyperbole, but you get the idea; plus, the headline neatly fit in a Twitter feed -- had there been a Twitter feed, that is.)

Even as I write this, Twitter is up, then down. In fact, it’s causing me to question my very existence as a writer. After all, “If you can’t tweet it, who will read it?” (Nice, huh? R.I.P. Johnnie Cochran!)

Although I’m not as bad off as some.

For instance, I’m sure the more than 1 million followers of Ashton Kutcher are truly suffering: First Demi, then trouble with the DMV, now this.

Also, I’m really worried about Kelly Oxford. She’s the young woman profiled recently in The Times in an article headlined “Twitter sensation Kelly Oxford hooks Hollywood.”

Or, as the headline writer summed it up (in an almost-Twitter-friendly subheadline): “Social media’s quippy queen Kelly Oxford goes from tweeting to screenwriting on the strength of her posts, snagging a book deal and reeling in Hollywood fans like Jimmy Kimmel.”

I picture Oxford sitting in her home in Alberta, Canada, suffering from Twitter withdrawal – no longer a “quippy queen” but just a mom and a wife, another Hollywood dream dashed. (I suppose she could actually call Jimmy Kimmel, or more likely, she could call his people, and his people would call him, but it’s not the same, is it?)

Really, never have so many suffered so much for the lack of so few words.

Like all technological glitches, though, I’m sure this will be resolved “shortly.”

Or, as the Twitter site said at one point Thursday: “The issue is on-going and engineers are working to resolve it.”

Which means that somewhere in India, or Taiwan, or the Philippines, or (gasp, could it be?) even some tech center in a Rust Belt state, if we’re lucky, a couple of guys making 8 bucks an hour are working through lunch to restore our world.

So let me just say, “Bruce” in Bangalore, millions of people are rooting for you.

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