An AI-themed website offered to tell visitors when their occupation would become obsolete. Then the website itself reportedly became unavailable for roughly ten hours. On October 23, 2026, its developer described the viral surge on Reddit. A machine handing out imaginary expiration dates for human jobs had effectively clocked out first. The traffic numbers are the creator's claims, not independently audited statistics.
A fictional HR department
Deprecation.org accepts a job title, writes an AI-powered roast and returns a made-up replacement date. It promotes an unreleased indie game about the last human engineer resisting an AI-run corporation. Its corporate copy describes assistants absorbing employees' knowledge and sending them away with farewell cake. The company and its spectacular efficiency statistics are satire, not a scientific employment forecast.
The traffic that retired the server
The developer said the site initially received about 27 checks a day. After a relative shared it on X, the site recorded 5,669 checks on October 21 and 117,372 on October 22, with a peak of 9,858 checks per hour. The developer also reported 1.6 million requests overnight and said the X post had reached around two million views. These are different metrics, and the X view count has not been independently verified.
Visitors supplied 36,125 distinct job titles, including “Squirrel Worshipper” and “Llama Farmer.” Caching results for repeated occupations did not help much when people kept inventing new ones. Database timeouts left the service effectively down for about ten hours. Instead of a verdict on their own jobs, visitors received a message that the machine had stumbled. The creator estimated about €200 in costs over two days, described caching fixes, and reported roughly 100 signups for the unreleased game. Going viral and making a profit are separate achievements.
Real comments, not invented applause
In the developer's public Reddit thread, one reader particularly enjoyed the idea of giving a “Squirrel Worshipper” an expiration date. Another questioned the .org domain; the creator joked that since the project had no profit, “no-profit” was fitting. A separate Reddit discussion among speech-language professionals challenged whether the site understood real work, with one commenter imagining ChatGPT crying in its car after experiencing the job. The joke targets exaggerated AI promises, not patients.
Original comedy: the exit interview
The following exchange is fictional. HR: “When will humans be replaced?” AI: “I'm calculating every occupation.” HR: “Why were you absent for ten hours?” AI: “Humans invented too many occupations.” HR: “Who gets replaced first?” AI: “My database.”
The punchline
This episode does not establish when AI will replace any profession. It shows a satirical site overwhelmed by human curiosity and surprisingly inventive job titles. Before replacing humanity, the server needs to handle the squirrel worshipper.
References (4)
- Creator's Reddit report and replies (October 23–24, 2026): https://www.reddit.com/r/SideProject/comments/1xdar7y/my_joke_when_will_ai_take_your_job_got_viral_and/
- Public professional-community reactions (October 23–24): https://www.reddit.com/r/slp/comments/1xdoj1k/of_course_ai_cant_take_our_jobs_it_doesnt_even/
- Satirical website: https://deprecation.org/
- Game premise and fiction note: https://deprecation.org/challenge
The original X post and its view count were not independently verified. Numerical claims are attributed to the creator.
