Culture

Some Random Dude From California Was Getting A Lot Of Accidental #CensusFail Abuse Last Night

He received a lot of angry tweets last night.

by Sinead Stubbins  10 August 2016

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Hey I don’t know if you’ve heard, but last night’s census did not go well at all. Due to technical difficulties (caused by hackers?) many millions of Australians were unable to complete it when the Australian Bureau of Statistics website glitched sometime after dinner.

The social media outrage culminated in the #CensusFail hashtag, which also produced some pretty funny internet to boot.

However, many people online last night didn’t find the website breakdown particularly funny — there was a $180 a day fine at stake, after all. These people took to Twitter and fired off some furious criticism at the @abs handle while they desperately refreshed the census page in vain.

Too bad that the Twitter handle @abs doesn’t belong to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, and actually belongs to some poor man called Andrei Soroker from Oakland, California.

Last night, Andrei was bombarded with irate tweets and it took several hours before anyone figured out that they were directing their anger towards the wrong guy. Andrei told Mashable today that this isn’t even the first time it has happened. “I find it absolutely hilarious. I get a lot of rogue tweets (usually aimed at ABS-CBN), but the ones meant for the Bureau of Statistics are some of the most thoughtful. I added ‘Not Australian Bureau of Statistics’ to my Twitter bio a couple of years ago, because I quite like the name,” he said.

“I find it interesting and kind of alarming that so many people don’t understand how Twitter works.”

After the initial shock wore off, Andrei even started having a little fun with it!