I cant connect to the master server

I've been trying to connect to the master server to play some random net games, but I can't seem to at all. it just stalls for a minute and then the selector becomes glitched in a spot it normally shouldn't be. (join a game text becomes overrun with a duplicate from what i can tell)

to make matters worse, it prevents you from exiting the multiplayer menu until you either start and exit a local splitscreen game, or alt F4 to close the game.

The official STJr Twitter account has confirmed a few days ago that they're aware of the issue and that they're working on improvements for it: https://twitter.com/SonicTeamJr/status/1291815596800253954?s=19

Sonic Team Junior said:

This is an unfortunate side effect of the master server frequently going down. It's been doing this for a while, but we have something in the works to improve it. In the meantime, please connect via IP address or try again later.

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You can still connect to your favorite servers by specifying its IP address in the meantime. The master server website will very likely still be accessible even if you can't use it in-game, so try checking it and look for the IPs of version 2.2.6 servers (or version 1.2 if you're playing SRB2Kart) - https://mb.srb2.org/masterserver.php