Serdar Yegulalp
Senior Writer

#FiveWordTechHorrors: Your IT nightmares, in brief

analysis
Dec 11, 20132 mins

Folks have taken to Twitter with the hashtag #FiveWordTechHorrors to sum up all that's nightmarish about IT

Brevity is the soul of wit, as Ernest Hemingway once demonstrated when he wrote his six-word short story: “For sale: Baby shoes. Never worn.”

Now, the explosion of the #FiveWordTechHorrors hashtag on Twitter has shown you can sum up all the ghastliness and heartache of IT in phrases of one word less than Hemingway’s example. Here’s a collection of the most pithy, pointed, and perceptive favorites:

And last, but definitely not least:

This story, “#FiveWordTechHorrors: Your IT nightmares, in brief,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Get the first word on what the important tech news really means with the InfoWorld Tech Watch blog. For the latest developments in business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.

Serdar Yegulalp

Serdar Yegulalp is a senior writer at InfoWorld. A veteran technology journalist, Serdar has been writing about computers, operating systems, databases, programming, and other information technology topics for 30 years. Before joining InfoWorld in 2013, Serdar wrote for Windows Magazine, InformationWeek, Byte, and a slew of other publications. At InfoWorld, Serdar has covered software development, devops, containerization, machine learning, and artificial intelligence, winning several B2B journalism awards including a 2024 Neal Award and a 2025 Azbee Award for best instructional content and best how-to article, respectively. He currently focuses on software development tools and technologies and major programming languages including Python, Rust, Go, Zig, and Wasm. Tune into his weekly Dev with Serdar videos for programming tips and techniques and close looks at programming libraries and tools.

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