We’ve hoped. We’ve prayed. We’ve constructed various Rube Goldberg-esque fantasies that begin with Mark Zuckerberg extracting a virgin $350 gray T-shirt from his closet and end with a bottle of room-temperature Fiji water falling on a frayed wire and shorting out Menlo Park.

But today it finally happened: someone unplugged Facebook.

It’s still not clear exactly what’s going on, technically speaking, but the outage has already lasted longer than a normal hiccup. Not only are Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Oculus down for their estimated 3 billion combined users – but the outage has also reportedly affected all of Facebook’s internal systems, leaving employees locked out of their digital calendars and physical conference rooms.

The downtime has provided us with the rare opportunity to experience the internet without Zuck watching over our shoulders – if we still remember how. Here’s a quick guide to filling the Facebook-sized hole in your day.

Staying in touch
There are two categories of people we connect with using Facebook: people we actually talk to in real life, and people we keep vague tabs on because we knew them at one point and remain oddly committed to hating/resenting them from a distance.

The good news is that if you actually talk to someone, you can switch to such forgotten old-world communication technologies as texting. If you’re just keeping tabs on people, it’s a weird waste of mental energy and you can just stop now.

Political debate
Facebook likes to claim that it’s the 21st-century town square: a public meeting space for citizens from all walks of life to come together, express their opinions, ignore what everyone else says and be a little bit racist. With the site down, it might take a little more effort to participate in the lifeblood of a democratic society, but you can still have the same impact if call into C-Span (any morning at 7am eastern!) and let an audience of over one person know what you really think about mask mandates.

Scientific research
You told everyone you’d get that jab just as soon as you’ve done your own research but now your main research tools – algorithmically served Facebook videos and extended-family WhatsApp threads – are down. Worry not. There is still a plethora of medical misinformation on BitChute, which is just like YouTube but with even lower standards. Or you could open up Spotify and tune in to Joe Rogan or head to Goop.com for the latest in unnecessary vaginal interventions.

Self-esteem
Never fear! Before Instagram figured out how to monetize insecurity, Condé Nast existed. You can still go to Vogue.com and feel worse about yourself in no time.

Getting into weird drama with a niche knitting community for no good reason but that you’re bored and Sandra the moderator is really going too far this time and someone needs to tell her what’s what
Honestly, this would be hard to replace if Reddit didn’t already exist. You’ll be fine.