Please Advise! What Evil Forces Attacked The Tyee?

[Editor’s note: Steve Burgess is an accredited spin doctor with a PhD in Centrifugal Rhetoric from the University of SASE, situated on the lovely campus of PO Box 7650, Cayman Islands. In this space he dispenses PR advice to politicians, the rich and famous, the troubled and well-heeled, the wealthy and gullible.]

Dear Dr. Steve,

On Friday The Tyee site went down for about seven hours. The official explanation was a server failure. But I’m not buying it. What's the real story?

Signed,

Alex J.

Dear Alex,

Of course Tyee readers are too sharp for cover-ups. They want facts. Right now however, all we have is theories. Those are more fun anyway — facts are tedious. So let's go. We are through the looking glass here, people.

First off, a mea culpa: Dr. Steve made an initial attempt to claim credit for the server attack. He was bluffing. It was an opportunistic ploy to settle a contract grievance, namely Dr. Steve's long-standing request for a trunkload of Post Banana Nut Crunch cereal. This fine breakfast product is no longer available in Canada — Dr. Steve considers this the chief foreign affairs debacle of successive Canadian regimes dating back to the Harper era. Dr. Steve saw a chance to gain some leverage and acquire a supply of that crunchy-yet-not-too-sweet tropical goodness. But he is innocent of any sabotage. Further inquiries can be directed to his attorneys.

Now to the main theories:

BC Ferries

Not long before The Tyee went offline, BC Ferries was having its own web problems. Last Tuesday its site was erroneously indicating nine-sailing waits on the Tsawwassen-Swartz Bay route.

Could it be that The Tyee was impacted? News from Victoria is often delivered to The Tyee’s Vancouver office by truck while international reports usually arrive via container ship. Combine the BC Ferries issues with the Port of Vancouver strike and you had a perfect storm. Tyee reporters were forced to cover the waterfront, leading to coverage gaps elsewhere. On Friday, The Tyee’s fragile house of cards collapsed.

Alternatively, the problem may have been the failed truck delivery of the rice cracker, ketchup potato chip and Swiss chocolate snacks that power The Tyee newsroom gerbil wheel.

Or maybe The Tyee threw a propeller blade like the Coastal Celebration. At least when The Tyee fails to load, no one's weekend plans are ruined.

Rebrand

The Tyee lapse came suspiciously soon after Elon Musk renamed Twitter as X. The Tyee braintrust may have seen this as an opportunity to scoop up a highly recognizable brand, retooling the site to re-emerge under a new nameplate: The Twitter. Or perhaps Tyee management were merely inspired by Musk’s bold move to abandon an incredible store of brand equity in favour of a stupid name that may put the channel-formerly-known-as-Twitter alongside soft-core porn sites in every Google search. Thus The Tyee may have announced plans to re-emerge as, say, the Pink Paradise Gentleman's Club & News Digest. The subsequent internal revolt crashed the server.

RFK Jr

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been offering up some increasingly convoluted conspiracy theories of late. One might even conclude he is engaged in an ongoing game of Conspiracy Mad Libs. One of RFK Jr.’s recent surmises: Elon Musk’s driverless cars will put drivers out of work and then, desperate for money, those unemployed former cabbies and truck drivers will allow Bill Gates to implant microchips beneath their skin, after which they will be instructed by their overlords to perform tasks, such as watching ads, in order to earn small cryptocurrency rewards.

There’s a certain improv brilliance at work here. One is inspired to achieve new levels of paranoid speculation. How about this: The Tyee goes dark, convincing devoted readers that the End Times have come, leading to an orgy of jaywalking and human sacrifice, thereby giving the tyrannical Trudeau regime the excuse for a totalitarian takeover, after which The Tyee is rewarded for its complicity with a force of slave labour made up of freedom-loving patriots, including members of Danielle Smith’s cabinet and your second cousin from Thunder Bay who knew about this all along and has warned you many times. In addition the Trudeau government will make a small donation to the TFSCY (Tyee Fund for the Socialist Corruption of Youth). You should too, if you know what's good for you.

And another Trudeau-related theory.

Implant

Shortly after The Tyee went down, Justin Trudeau appeared in public with a round bandage in the middle of his forehead.

Coincidence? Coincidence is the opiate of the masses, fool. Coincidence is a synonym for sucker. Trudeau’s new cyber-surveillance third-eye implant — and that is almost certainly what it is — was co-ordinated with The Tyee, which was of course offline during the surgical procedure. The result is a combined Tyee/Trudeau special op that brings our mutual vision into perfect alignment while also allowing us to keep track on those who oppose our common agenda, which we remind you is for your own good.

Meta

The most popular theory for the Tyee crash was that Mark Zuckerberg simply decided to demonstrate his Death Star powers and The Tyee was his chosen target, knocking us offline as a warning to other media outlets to fall in line. This theory however is particularly ludicrous, since Mark Zuckerberg is a benevolent master who would never do anything terrible like that, however much we may have deserved it for our disloyalty, and certainly Zuck will never do it again as long as we do not spur him to righteous anger, which The Tyee assuredly has no intention of doing again, ever ever. Ever!

That's it. Nothing more to see here. Forget you read any of this.