World’s largest surf website collapses as conspiracy theories swirl!

Surfline goes down.

Surfline has long been the gold standard of surf websites. The tool, which started as a lowly pay-per-call phone line, transformed itself into a dominant force at the dawn of the internet age and is now the ubiquitous face of “knowing when to go” what with account managers from Malibu to Manasquan logging on to check camera angles of where they might be surfing if they weren’t managing accounts.

The Huntington Beach-based behemoth received a $30 million investment from the Chernin Group in 2020, became the “official forecasting partner” of the World Surf League soon thereafter and brilliant bright skies all around.

All around, that is, until hours ago when the juggernaut mysteriously disappeared from computer and phone screens worldwide.

Account managers met with an ominous message declaring “Internal Server Error” and mansplaining “Looks like we’re having a few issues here, thanks for noticing. Rest assured we’ve been notified of this problem.”

Except rest was all but assured and as happens in this day and age, theories immediately floated as to the cause of those “few issues.”

A powerful, though cloaked, surf voice openly wondered if the problem was excellent surf in Los Angeles and Orange Counties, California thereby forcing too many advertisements onto the server and crashing the system. Others pondered that Surfline’s long association with the aforementioned Huntington Beach had led to cyber attacks. Surf City, USA, as you might know, has recently pivoted to a culture war zone where breast cancer survivors are routinely harassed.

Whatever the reason, many hundreds, if not thousands, were made very sad.

Were you among them?

What is your assumption as to what went wrong?

Please share.