Here is a rather accurate description of an extremely rare situation, displayed by a program right before seppuku:
cannot handle the fatal error due to a fatal error in the fatal error handler!
Do such messages ameliorate or aggravate the user's angst of a software crash?
Answer
This is something that you have to be careful with, because you don't know what your users' state of mind is when your application is crashing. As always, it really depends on what kind of application you're writing, and how serious your users are likely to be about it.
In the case of something like Google Chrome (as @Josh's answer contains), it's hard to say. Was the user browsing Facebook when it crashed? Then probably not a big deal, a little humor is fine. But were they in the middle of filling out their taxes? Working on a blog post that was unsaved? Trying to purchase concert tickets? All stressful situations, and if my browser crashes, it's probably inappropriate to be cracking jokes about it.
The style guide at MailChimp says this:
Be serious. Don’t joke around with frustrated people.
And that's from MailChimp, a site that oozes personality.
There's a difference between having a "jokey" error message and a more conversational one. Clearly nobody wants to read "APPLICATION ERROR NOW EXITING", but I think there's fine line to walk here when a serious problem happens with your application.
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