On Wednesday at 8 p.m. ET, President Donald J. Trump tweeted his long-awaited, highly anticipated, super-hyped "Fake News Awards." The internet collectively pounced and eagerly clicked the link in his tweet to see who the winners were.
And the FAKE NEWS winners are... https://t.co/59G6x2f7fD
Earlier this month, the president teased that he was going to present the awards a few days late. "The interest in, and importance of, these awards is far greater than anyone could have anticipated!" he claimed.
The Fake News Awards, those going to the most corrupt & biased of the Mainstream Media, will be presented to the lo… https://t.co/MFPjW1foo3
Except...the awards posted Wednesday on GOP.com weren't viewable. Instead, hordes of people got a 404 Error page.
The link to the Fake News Awards doesn’t even work!! I mean, you can’t make this stuff up...
"Don't worry, we're making it great again," the error message on the Republican National Committee website read.
A little too on the nose here for the #FakeNewsAwards
Others landed on a big, white blank page with a message that said the site was temporarily offline.
@realDonaldTrump Solid work, Donald.
People had some ideas on how to fix it.
The GOP will fix the broken Fake News Awards link and Mexico will pay for it.
But after 30 minutes, the site was still down. Sad!
When you send out the Fake News Awards but it’s a broken link
And they were super let down that this monumental event in American history was a 404 Error.
This 404 error has really cheapened the spirit of the Fake News Awards.
LIVE FROM THE FAKE NEWS AWARDS:
Not to worry, though. Thanks to internet caching, the initial publication of the list was preserved. There were 11 awards total. And the winners??
CNN led with four awards, including one for a story on Trump feeding fish while visiting Japan, and the New York Times scored two.
ABC, Time, the Washington Post, and Newsweek each received one.
People also started tweeting screenshots and lists themselves, since the official site of the Republican Party was broken.
⚠️ 2017 Fake News Awards – The full list 2017 https://t.co/kMhi5hGD0e
Journalists noted, however, that the recipients had publicly issued corrections or faced repercussions for the articles that the president deemed "fake."
Worth nothing that most of the 11 recipients of the Fake News Awards issued corrections or faced consequences for i… https://t.co/qV0IUty3Rm
(Apparently, though, the awards ceremony was super classy).
Dinner here at the Fake News Awards is very classy
With all the drama, people were "sad how politicized the Fake News Awards have become..."
Sad how politicized the Fake News awards have become. Wish it would get back to its roots and focus on the fake news.
All the mainstream media attention made them so "commercial," one Twitter user said.
I used to like the fake news awards before they got so commercial
Others thought the whole thing was a sick plot twist in this crazy reality TV show we all must be living in.
And the Fake News Awards lead to a Fake Website because whoever's writing this season of America is drunk at their… https://t.co/MoNV4owiJ5
Or that maybe the blank screen/error page was really what we were supposed to see. "Maybe that's the lesson. Maybe that's what we're supposed to take from this," someone mused.
i mean, in the big picture - if you think about it, the website works! maybe that's the lesson. maybe that's what w… https://t.co/RLZpaBCCig
In 2013, Trump had this advice on how to fix a "complex website" that is broken: "Blow it up and start all over again-then sue the culprits and use the proper team!"
When a complex website is broken the best thing to do is blow it up and start all over again-then sue the culprits and use the proper team!
More than 40 minutes after the president tweeted the awards list, GOP.com was still down. The party then addressed the crash in a tweet, saying: "Traffic is off the charts. Come back soon."
Tonight, https://t.co/YTZAIJpNhb saw more traffic than ever before. Even though the servers were scaled up, the int… https://t.co/bXoBDkaCh4
After 90 minutes, the site was still a completely blank screen. Big, if true.
Now I got this.
Finally, after nearly three hours, the page loaded, which showed "The Highly-Anticipated 2017 Fake News Awards" was a blog post.
A source close to the Republican National Committee expressed dismay that the party would participate in the spectacle.
"The RNC has become the dumpster for misplaced shit that’s too crazy for the actual White House," the person told BuzzFeed News.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯