Earlier last week, a national cell phone outage sparked comparisons to the opening of the apocalyptic Netflix film “Leave The World Behind.” The problem started with AT&T’s network, but also affected Verizon and T-Mobile customers as well.
It impacted over 70,000 users and prevented them from using emergency services like 911. No reason was given for the outage—but of course social media users took to X/Twitter to joke about how it was reminiscent of the 2023 film starring Mahershela Ali, Julia Roberts and Ethan Hawke.
“Leave The World Behind” begins with communications going down after satellites get disabled in what appears to be a cyber attack. In typical disaster film fashion, things just keep going downhill from there.
For those who love a good conspiracy theory, one of the producers of “Leave the World Behind” is Barack Obama (the story was based on the novel by Rumaan Alam). Though the cell phone network worked diligently to immediately restore services, that didn’t stop the ridiculous antics.
Some spouted intricate theories about Obama once again being in the White House while someone else stated: “The predictive programming of the Obama’s movie, ‘Leave The World Behind’ is becoming a little too real right now. I wouldn’t put it past our own federal government to institute a terrorist or cyber attack, just to blame it on foreign countries like China and Russia.”
One user, who was a bit more grounded, noted: “T-Mobile, US Cellular, Verizon, AT&T and Leave the World Behind all trending this morning. I can only imagine all of the unhinged conspiracy theories that will be entertained as a result of this…all coming from the MAGA camp of course.”
Another playfully stated: “The government saw yall watching 500 minutes of a story on Tiktok and cut everybody service off.”
It doesn’t take much for folks to draw the most outrageous conclusions from something that can easily be attributed as a glitch—and social media merely amplifies this behavior.
One user joked: “Everyone with #ATT waking up this morning and trying to remember if they paid their bill this month.” Many users caused an uproar upon realizing they’ve lost all cell service, but since then the panic—has hopefully— subsided.