You sit there, the excitement bubbling somewhere deep in your gut as you type the name of your favourite website into the URL bar.
Salivating, you hover your index finger over your keyboard, slowly licking your lips in anticipation as you press enter.
For a second, all you see is a blank screen. The rush of adrenaline is almost too much to handle.
That's when it happens.
404. Page Not Found.
503. Service Unavailable.
You do one of two things: desperately pound F5 in the faint hope that all the page needs is a reload.
Or you give up, and cry.
Thankfully, some web developers understand this most hellish of experiences, and do what they can to make it easier for you. Instead of a single line of text telling you the page can't be loaded, they place an image, or make or joke, or do something else to help lessen your trauma.
RTE
From repeats of Reeling in the Years on the tellybox to RTE 50, Ireland's state broadcaster loves a bit of nostalgia. What better way to pull at the heartstrings of would-be visitors to the RTE website than with a lovely little picture of Bosco? Then again, unless you're in your mid-20s or older, chances are you won't have a clue who or what this doll is.
The blasphemy.
When Twitter launched back in 2007 it was plagued by downtime, mainly due to its servers keeling over whenever something big happened. It kept happening right into 2009 with the death of Michael Jackson and during the 2010 World Cup.
In an effort to keep users content Twitter introduced the Fail Whale, which appeared whenever the site was "over capacity". Today we see less and less of the big guy, but that hasn't stopped him becoming an internet icon in his own right, spawning artwork, cakes and fan-made merchandise. Heck, there's even a Fail Whale Fan Club.
The Huffington Post
"We don't wanna wait, for our lives to be over, we want to know right now what this page will be..."
Yikes.
At one point or another, The Huffington Post used this utterly devastating picture of James Van Der Beek from your big sister's favourite 90's drama, the inimitable Dawson's Creek.
What's even more devastating though is that they've since removed it in favour of a more conservative but infinitely boring version:
Blizzard Entertainment
Games company Blizzard Entertainment try to deter you from taking your frustration out on your computer screen by giving you a realistic preview of what it might look like after the deed is done.
Whitespark.ca
The Canadian-based design company goes some way to make up for giving you an error by letting you "fire" one of their employees, Brent.
If you choose the "Good Riddance" option (don't pretend you wouldn't) you're then presented with a follow-up page documenting what happened to Brent after Whitespark let him go.
Warning: it's not pretty.
Lark News
This one, from parody news website Lark News, is in our opinion the clear winner:
