[ryanstorm]

Imagine being a non-tech savvy user or someone who understands the world more literally than figuratively. That sort of message could be pretty confusing for them.

[Sohcahtoa82]

Windows 95. "This program has performed an illegal operation and must be shut down"

"WTF AM I GOING TO JAIL?"

[cjs_ac]

This was my grandmother's reaction. She turned the computer off, closed the curtains, turned the lights off, and waited for the police to show up.

She also used to cheat at jigsaw puzzles by gnawing at the pieces so they would fit.

[paulddraper]

That was an unexpected turn.

[jerjerjer]

Users can't read error messages anyway.

[Sohcahtoa82]

It depends on the type of user, even among the non-tech savvy.

A message as simple as "Sorry, reddit is receiving too much traffic right now and can't handle your request. Try loading this page later.", 99% of people will understand.

But there's that 1% of people that aren't just non-savvy, they're willfully non-savvy to the point where words stop having meaning to them just because they're referring to something related to a computer. The type where if you ask them something as simple as "Is the computer turned on?", they say they don't know. Meanwhile, the screen is showing their desktop.

[capableweb]

I don't think showing "you broke reddit" for a 5xx request counts as an error message. If it was a 4xx, maybe.