Credit: dorkshelf
Due to overwhelmingly popular demand for #TrueDetective, we’ve been made aware of an issue affecting some users. Please try again soon.
— HBO GO (@HBOGO) March 10, 2014
At 10:50 on Sunday night, so many viewers tuned in to watch the season finale of True Detective that HBO Go, HBO’s direct-streaming service, crashed. Typically, episodes are only available on HBO Go after they have aired on TV. Last night, however, HBO let subscribers stream the episode through HBO Go as it was being broadcast live.
The Internet Phenomena Blog posted a graph that depicts HBO’s massive traffic spike:
credit: Internet Phenomena Blog
As you can see, the spike occurred at 9:00 p.m. Eastern, the exact time True Detective started. Despite a flurry of furious tweets, the service remained offline until approximately 12:30 a.m., at which point viewership spiked for another hour and everyone went to bed angry. We were all in Carcosa, then.