Forget breaking the Internet, Kim Kardashian broke the App Store

Looking forward to Christmas? So am I — unless humanity ignominiously implodes en route to December 25.

What would lead me to raise that possibility? Oh, just the fact that not only did Kim Kardashian’s newly-launched emoji app immediately shoot to the top of the App Store charts, but its popularity even caused sweeping technical difficulties across Apple’s giant app repository.

We brought this on ourselves, didn’t we?

Kim’s Kimoji $1.99 app was released Monday, as we detailed yesterday — finally giving users the kind of classy “panties round a pair of ankles” and “oversized asses” emojis that, frankly, I can’t believe I managed to have conversations without.

Ok! We’re back! Everything is fixed! Get KIMOJI now in the App Store! https://t.co/1xP9liDahl pic.twitter.com/21XVf7x6lr

— Kim Kardashian West (@KimKardashian) December 22, 2015

But it didn’t take long until technical problems kicked in as a surge of users attempted to download the emoji app.

“Apple, I’m so sorry I broke your App Store!!” Kim tweeted. “I can’t believe so many people downloaded my KIMOJI app that it affected the entire app store!”

“Ahhhhhhhh I still can’t believe we broke the entire App Store!!!!” she wrote in another message.

Hey, maybe it was the App Store’s negative reaction was the tech version of a body raising its temperature as it fights off a virus. Fortunately (if that’s the word), the problem is now fixed, and users can download Kimoji to their heart’s content.

Luke Dormehl

Luke Dormehl is a U.K.-based journalist and author, with a background working in documentary film for Channel 4 and the BBC. He is the author of The Apple Revolution and The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our Problems … and Create More, both published by Penguin/Random House. His tech writing has also appeared in Wired, Fast Company, Techmeme and other publications.