AWS absolutely fucking imploded today, taking half the internet down with it like some archaic house of cards built by a bunch of vibe coders…
Websites crashed. Apps became glorified loading screens. Services that millions of people depend on daily just… vanished.
Poof. Gone. Because one company controls so much of the internet’s backbone that when they sneeze, the entire digital world catches pneumonia.
But you know what still worked?
Email.
While everyone was frantically refreshing their broken apps and wondering if the internet apocalypse had finally arrived, email lists kept humming along like the reliable old pickup truck that starts every morning while your fancy sports car sits dead in the driveway.
This is exactly why you need an email list going into 2026.
Not just as a nice to have marketing tool, but as essential survival gear when big tech decides to go tits up again. (And they will)
We’re being force-fed “AI” everything.
Algorithms decide what we see, when we see it, and who gets to reach us.
Social media platforms change their rules overnight and suddenly your audience disappears.
Search engines get “smarter” and push your content into a viewless abyss.
But email?
Email is direct.
It’s yours.
When you hit send, it goes straight to people who actually asked to hear from you. (Obviously there’s a few rules but hey…)
No tech giant pulling the rug out from under your entire business model because they changed their terms of service.
Email is becoming one of the last genuine connection tools we have left, besides actual handwritten letters. It’s personal, intentional, and refreshingly human especially cause there’s so many people championing being replaced by AI which is hilarious.
So while everyone else is building their castle on big tech quicksand, build your email list. Cause when the next AWS outage hits, and it will, you’ll still be able to reach your people.
Stephen Walker.