'The Y2K I was promised as a child': The best memes born from the global IT outage

As businesses and service providers around the world scrambled to deal with a mass IT outage, the internet delivered memes.

Social media users made light of the global IT outage caused by a software update by a US cybersecurity firm.

Key Points

• A global IT outage sent banks, media organisations, retailers and airports into chaos on Friday.
• It was caused by an error in an update by US cybersecurity company CrowdStrike.
• Many social media users found humour in the situation.

Computer systems around the globe were hit by an unprecedented IT outage on Friday, with banks, media companies, airlines and shops all impacted and many forced to close.

The outage was caused by an error in an update issued by US cyber security company CrowdStrike and impacted Windows users.

But while government officials and IT experts scrambled, social media users, as usual, found humour in the situation.

Some compared the situation to Y2K, a computer programming flaw that was expected to cause global havoc as the year changed from 1999 to 2000.

Others joked about who was behind the outage.

There were also tributes to the IT workers attempting to salvage companies' systems, and to office workers hoping to get time off.

Is Australia still affected by the outage?

Home Affairs Minister Clare O'Neil said on Saturday morning that Australian businesses impacted were now back online, with the economy in a "recovery phase".

Businesses are still cleaning up the mess created by the outage, particularly Jetstar after thousands of people were left stranded by 150 flight cancellations.

Retailers including Woolworths, Coles, Dan Murphy's, and BWS are open and operational, but some checkouts remain closed and some have altered opening hours.

As the world returns to normal and moves on, we'll always have the memes.

Additional reporting by the Australian Associated Press