IRREVERENT News

ZURICH - Officials announced today that the global internet will be rebooted at 2100 hours UST.

The reboot is expected to take "about a half hour" and result in worldwide internet access outages for most of that time. Netflix streaming and Hulu Plus subscribers are not expected to notice anything out of the ordinary.

"This is a necessary step that we must take every now and then to prevent the global tsunami of pornography and spam from clogging the entire system," said internet spokesman Serge Köhl at today's press conference. "On occasion, we must just flush it all out and even the playing field for malware authors and credit card thieves."

Bloggers, youtubers and just about everyone online were quick to hatch an overwhelming number of conspiracy theories regarding the reboot, all of which have been dismissed by internet officials.

"As usual, bloggers and tweeters have blown this way out of proportion," said Köhl. "From time to time, things like the internet just need to be rebooted, because the underlying technologies are fundamentally buggy and riddled with memory leaks. Be thankful we're not taking more time to apply the latest patches too. The internet's behind in routine maintenance, truth be told. You're lucky huge pieces of the internet aren't falling down around you every day."

Some conspiracies followed familiar themes. Sick of answering the question, Department of Defence spokesman Colonel Merl Mcbride assured the world that today's reboot had "absolutely nothing to do with Skynet." "I don't know why everyone keeps asking this anytime anything happens to the internet," said Col. Mcbride. "Skynet is a fictional plot construct used in the 'Terminator' movies to examine man's relationship with technology. It's not real, folks, so please stop asking."