F*ck Them Kids

Image: Zara

Salam alaikum, fam! How goes it? What kind with the internet lately? Actually, scratch that - we don't even want to talk about it, yet we absolutely have to talk about it because it’s been absolute chaos out here in these digital streets.

If you’ve been lagging, dropping frames, or screaming into the void while your fiber line acts like a dial-up connection from 1998, congratulations: you are not alone. Welcome to the great South African internet meltdown of 2026.

1. The Great ISP Gaslighting Campaign

Let’s set the scene: It’s June 3rd. We’ve been dealing with a massive, nationwide internet outage since mid-May, and ISPs are treating it like a national state secret.

Our resident gamer-in-chief describes the weekly ritual of calling their ISP after their connection completely dropped for a solid 30 minutes right in the middle of a gaming session:

ISP Support: "Have you tried turning your router off and on again?" The Reality: It’s 21:55. The WhatsApp support line closes at 22:00. Support drops that line and instantly ends the chat before even checking if it worked. Peak customer service.

Every time you call, they treat you like you’ve never seen a computer before. “How many devices are connected? Are all the lights on?” Respectfully, we are not the 70-year-old auntie you think you're dealing with! We are trying to run live deployments at work and debug things in real-time. Give it to us straight!

What's Actually Happening?

While ISPs are being incredibly hush-hush, MyBroadband let the cat out of the bag. We aren't just losing packets; domestic hosting providers are getting absolutely hammered by sustained DDoS attacks involving a lovely combination of IP fragmentation, carpet bombing, and DNS amplification.

The wildest rumor going around the office? The attackers were allegedly holding the networks hostage for a grand total of... 16,000 Rand.

Sixteen. Thousand. Rand. The whole country is being held hostage because multi-million-rand hosting providers can’t put their lunch money together? Or maybe it’s an honour thing. Imagine your one job is being a hosting provider, and you get rinsed for R16k. Embarrassing.

💡 (Pro-tip from the house: Fixing your DNS to a static IP completely saved our connection at home. Look into it.)

2. May Was Apparently "International Hack Everyone" Month

Speaking of cyber security (or the absolute lack thereof), did someone leave the back door open to the entire country’s infrastructure last month?

Let’s look at the sheer volume of data leaks and cyber casualties dropped on us in a single week:

• The Virtual Card Wipeout: Andy's brother got a call from Discovery Bank's Fraud Department. Someone had been draining his virtual card via tiny $3 increments until it was all gone. No phishing links clicked. The prime suspect? A massive Oracle platform hack that leaked student info (addresses, cards, alles) across multiple major universities like Wits last year.

• The Pick n Pay ASAP Leak: Right after that, an email drops from Pick n Pay. The old ASAP platform got breached. Addresses and card digits leaked (luckily, no CVVs).

• The Zara Marketing Breach: Scroll a little further down the inbox... boom, Zara got hacked too. Thankfully, just cookies and marketing info, but still - what is happening?!

  
  

A Sidebar on the "Woolies Bombings"

In the middle of all this digital warfare, we also had the Woolworths store bombings. We are only laughing because it happened in the early hours of the morning and nobody was hurt, but come on - the culprits clearly just wanted that high-tier private school chicken and that ultra-filtered private school water.

Pure Tech Anxiety for the Elderly

Honestly, we are stressed for elderly people online. One of our uncles casually mentioned how his mom downloads everything that gets sent to her phone. Listen, Ouma is 90. It might be time to confiscate the smartphone. There is absolutely nothing wrong with a vintage Nokia 3310. Bring back buttons!

Even the tech-savvy among us aren't safe. Andy admitted to falling for a highly sophisticated Discord ransom hack earlier this year because it came from a trusted friend's compromised account. The hacker threatened to delete their Gmail account unless they paid up. Andy’s response? "Go on, ballie. Pop off."

Thanks to local backups, the loss was manageable, but YouTube/Google support took four weeks to respond, only to declare: "Oops, our data retention policy is only 7 days, so we already deleted it forever." Structural flawless logic right there.

3. "The Homies Are Paying Tax Now"

Before Madame Producer (a.k.a. Rushka) blows her metaphorical whistle to stop the yapping, let's look at some wholesome news in the local gaming scene. The industry is growing up!

• Collins "Skarra" Manyame has just stepped into a massive new role as the Social Media Manager for Carry1st! With his background as an esports presenter, content creator, and production mastermind, he is absolutely going to cook.

• Jess Hinds also just started her new role at Free Lives!

  
  

We love to see local gamers getting full-time employment in their line of passion. The homies are thriving. The homies are paying tax!

Except for Tenbee - our favourite "LinkedIn Influencer." If you want a dose of toxic corporate positivity mixed with high-level DevOps and Kubernetes yapping, he’s your man. He’s out here playing chess while the rest of us are playing checkers, even if reading LinkedIn posts makes us want to vomit sometimes. It’s giving 2016 Instagram facade mixed with "I love sitting in 2 hours of traffic to be in an office cubicle" energy. Bootlicker vibes, but we love him anyway.

4. Mobile Gaming is King (And Zara's Controversial Collab)

Kelly Kikx recently came up to Joburg for a PUBG Mobile pop-up activation, aiming to get local download numbers up.

It makes total sense when you look at the wild stats for Africa. Out of roughly 350 million gamers across the continent, a staggering 300 million of them are mobile gamers. Everyone has a smartphone, making it the most accessible platform by far. While Call of Duty Mobile has a literal "Fast & Furious" style ride-or-die cult following in South Africa, PUBG Mobile is making massive corporate waves.

Speaking of gaming blending with lifestyle, Zara just dropped a collaboration to celebrate PlayStation’s 30th anniversary.

Current Stock Status: Mixed Reviews:

• PS1 Controller Crossbody Bag (R500) -> Cult Favorite

• PSP Crossbody Bag -> Super Cute

• High-Top Sneakers (R900) -> Decent Quality

  
  

The catch? Zara put the entire collection under the Boys Age 6–8 section.

Jay-Ann Lopez, co-founder of Black Girl Gamers, wrote a scathing article about it, pointing out how tone-deaf it is to market a 30th-anniversary retro collection to Gen Alpha kids who don't know a damn thing about the original PlayStation. This is prime Millennial bait!

While some call it tacky, we’re mostly indifferent. If it’s cute and affordable, buy it - who cares if it’s in the kids' section?

Though it doesn't quite pull at the heartstrings like the legendary high-fashion gaming collabs of the past. Remember Final Fantasy x Louis Vuitton in 2016? Or when Riot Games teamed up with Louis Vuitton for League of Legends in 2019 and had Tiffany & Co. design the World Champions trophy? We were broke varsity students crying from afar back then, but man, that LV prestige skin for True Damage Senna was everything. The real-life clothes might have been sick nasty, but that varsity jacket? Stunning.

What are your thoughts? Did you manage to snag a Zara PS1 bag before it sold out, or are you still too busy restarting your router for the fifteenth time today? Let us know in the comments below!