[gerdesj]

When did the Slashdot effect get renamed to Hug of Death? Anyway, 'tis broken for me too.

There must be quite a few hits on your website when HN links it. nginx out of the box can handle quite a lot of connections, assuming that it isn't trying serve something too complicated on each one.

[politelemon]

I believe the phrase originated from Reddit many years ago, where the audience isn't fully familiar with the phrase's previous incarnation.

Since then it has been reappropriated widely on HN and Imgur and any place where people gather and unwittingly cause a denial of service with the best of intentions.

[gerdesj]

Thank you. I can't say I've been keeping up with my memes n that. The damn kids must have grown up or something!

I have to say, it is quite fun watching words, phrases and ideas being made up on the fly at a prolific rate these days. I can still remember reading about memes in a Richard Dawkins book and a few years later the concept was coerced wholesale by the internets. I still remember thinking "what the fuck is a roflcopter" and then suddenly achieving enlightenment. My granddaughters were born with thumbs that can doom scroll.

Nowadays are properly weird and will continue to get weirder. Despite that it will also continue to be normal.

[johnisgood]

> I can still remember reading about memes in a Richard Dawkins book and a few years later the concept was coerced wholesale by the internets.

You and I both! It's fascinating.

[water-your-self]

A communal denial of service

Dare i say, a cDoS

[scrlk]

> When did the Slashdot effect get renamed to Hug of Death?

Probably around then time when reddit really started to take off, so I'd guess early 2010s.