What phrase describes a smaller site crashing after heavy traffic from Reddit?

The phrase “hug of death” describes a smaller site crashing after heavy traffic from Reddit.

The expression refers to a sudden flood of visitors after a popular site links to a smaller or less powerful one. The smaller site may run out of bandwidth, exceed hosting limits, or overwhelm its servers with simultaneous requests. Although the traffic is usually enthusiastic rather than malicious, the result can resemble a denial-of-service attack.

The broader and older term is the “Slashdot effect,” named for the technology-news site Slashdot. Similar bursts became associated with Digg, Reddit, social networks, and other high-traffic platforms. In the Reddit context, “Reddit hug of death” became a memorable description of the same phenomenon.

A “flash crowd” is another related term, but it is more general and can describe any sudden concentration of visitors. “Server squeeze,” “traffic flood,” and “link storm” are not the established expressions for this Reddit-related effect.