Literally adding insult to injury on Thursday night, several very personal disses aimed at Twitter owner Elon Musk were projected onto the outside of Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters. The prank came just hours after yet another chaotic and destructive day for the social network under Musk’s leadership.
The insults, which you can see in the video above, or here via Twitter user Joshua P. Hill, were projected next to Musk’s name and scrolled by on a loop large enough to include several good ones, some inspired by real events and some that just dunked on him rudely. If you can’t watch the clip, they were:
“Baby, supreme parasite, petulant pimple, apartheid profiteer, dictator’s asskisser, lawless oligarch, insecure colonizer, cruel hoarder, space Karen, mediocre manchild, pressurized privilege, petty racist, megalomaniac, worthless billionaire,” and “bankruptcy baby.”
Whether musk saw the insults isn’t known — the building itself had been closed for several hours at that point, after Musk abruptly ordered all employees to work from home until at least Monday. Apparently, all employee badges were disabled to prevent anyone from getting in.
The reason for the closure has not been formally disclosed, but it appears to be related to a catastrophe of Musk’s own making.
On Wednesday he emailed a mean spirited ultimatum to employees, ordering them to commit to “extremely hardcore” work, or be laid off immediately with 3 months’ severance. By this, Musk said employees who stayed would be required to work long hours under brutal conditions and still face the constant threat of being fired. The email was of course leaked almost immediately.
Musk gave employees until 2:00 p.m. on Thursday to agree to these terms or, he said, that would constitute their acceptance of being laid off. Alas, on Thursday the deadline came and went and according to multiple reports, as many as 75% of the company’s already decimated workforce opted not to agree to Musk’s demands.
This may be in part because prior to Musk’s ultimatum, he’d spent the week treating his employees like garbage. On Monday, Twitter abruptly and without any warning fired all their contract workers. Then Musk publicly disparaged the work of Twitter developers, more than once either grossly misunderstanding or deliberately misrepresenting how Twitter event functions, and then he fired employees who dared attempt to correct him.
So for those catching up, it isn’t clear how bad things are at Twitter at this moment, but it isn’t good at all. We’ll see how things go tomorrow.