What makes a woot woot?

How is it that woot got to be so popular that showing a brown paper bag on their site immediately crashes their servers? Ok, so they don't crash, but they don't respond because of the DOS caused by everyone trying to purchase all at once. Of course, if it were hosted over dialup, that wouldn't be so impressive. But they're not, and I don't get it.

How did woot get to be so popular while upsetting so many people when they can't buy something? Ok, so I'm mostly speaking out of frustration, but there are some real issues going on.

For example, during the Woot-off last week there were plenty of times I couldn't get it to load. At one point, I saw a BOC (woot fans know what that is), clicked "I want one", then it went back to the previous item saying "Sold out". 30 seconds later the BOC was again on the site, I clicked "I want one", got it added, but the payment timed out. By the time it would actually accept my payment, they were gone.

I'm starting to get frustrated with woot. If they can't handle the load, they shouldn't have become so popular. Their website seems to fit in the bag... random (will it load or not) and...

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