Staff Favorites: 404 Error/Fail Messages
By Affinitive
Websites hiccup every now and then, but when they crash spectacularly hard, there’s not much one can do, aside from grinding teeth and muttering a few choice words. We like to make the best of situations, so we’ve rounded up some of our favorite error messages, which were surprisingly hard to rustle up when we actually wanted to see them.
Andrew says, “I like it when sites use humorous videos in their error pages.”
Patrick says, ”I’d be sad too if I were the Mayor of broken links.”
Katie says, “My favorite fail mascot is from Design Bomb because of its design and fun wording – ‘Holy Funk Ship You Just Got 404′d On Son!”
Andrew says, “The New Yorker. Because I am classy like that.”
Erica says, “This fail page makes me laugh even though I am angry when Hootesuite fails, I mean how can you be mad at the cute owl on the milk carton?”
Bob says, “Because it’s ours (and I created it). 
”
Christina says, “Back when Tumblr used to have a sense of humor, they adopted a mascot that the Oatmeal created for them. Since then they’ve reverted back to their default message, even though their servers still crash like the world is ending.”
Patrick says, “This is beyond a fail, the fish is dying and the bird is waiting patiently. Grim.”
Erica says, “It’s a bearded Conan riding the Twitter whale–do I have to say why this is genius? LOL, 404 error pages should make you laugh BEFORE you scream at the inanimate object known as your computer, this does that well.”
Adam says, “This one is just great!”
Rob says, “Star Wars reference and an octocat mascot? What’s not to like?”
Christina says, “I was inspired to write a haiku, titled “fail.” It goes like this:
The cutesy whimsy
Does nothing but stoke my ire
Why won’t you just work?!”