When a link hits the @Front Page of @Reddit, or just gets a whole lot of views, the Hug of Death is when the destination site doesn't have robust enough servers to take that much traffic at once and it will basically shut down the site's ability to serve out pages anymore. Basically an unintentional DDOS attack.
References
- What is the reddit hug of death?, reddit.com
Contexts
- #reddit-lexicon (See: @Reddit Glossary)