Good day all. When Elon Musk closed on the deal to buy Twitter last Thursday, the first thing he did was fire the CEO, CFO and Chief Censor. There were pictures of them being escorted from the building with their personal items in card board boxes.
Add to this the rumors that up to 75% of the Twitter employees were going to be laid off, and the perfect storm arose to stick it to the media. Here are the hilarious details from the New York Post:
A pair of pranksters posing as laid-off Twitter employees tricked multiple media outlets Friday as the public anxiously awaited news on whether Elon Musk had begun axing staffers.
CNBC’s Deirdre Bosa interviewed two people who identified themselves as Twitter employees and were seen near the company’s San Francisco headquarters carrying cardboard boxes.
Skepticism immediately emerged on social media. One of the pranksters said his name was “Rahul Ligma” — a reference to a popular internet meme — and held a copy of Michelle Obama’s book “Becoming” aloft while speaking to reporters. The other said his name was “Daniel Johnson.”
And here we have the difference between “Journalists” and reporters. Journalists are all about “The message, in this case that Musk had begun the anticipated mass firings. A reporter would have called Twitter’s HR department and asked if these two were or had been employees. Instead, the journalists simply took everything at face value.
“It’s happening,” CNBC’s Bosa tweeted. Entire team of data engineers let go. These are two of them.”
“They are visibly shaken,” Bosa added. “Daniel tells us he owns a Tesla and doesn’t know how he’s going to make payments.”
ABC7 Bay Area reporter Suzanne Phan also tweeted about the alleged Twitter employees, writing that one had claimed “he was terminated during a zoom meeting.”
LEAVING TWITTER: an employee leaving Twitter today. Says he was terminated during a zoom meeting. Doesn’t know where he is going to work next. Says he is going to spend time with his family. #ABC7newsbayarea #ABC7now #Twitter #SF #BayArea pic.twitter.com/Txvs5fsa9y
— Suzanne Phan (@SuzannePhan) October 28, 2022
Shortly afterwards, those who actually work at Twitter started going “WTF, Over? Who are these guys?”
Bloomberg later reported that Twitter’s internal slack channels have “lit up with suspicion” that it was a hoax. The Verge confirmed the duo were not actually ex-Twitter workers and had carried out a hoax.
So it looks like someone at the Verge is actually a reporter and not a journalist and did something no journalist would ever think of doing. Making some calls and finding out if these two did work at Twitter.
As chatter about a potential hoax intensified, Bosa acknowledged there was confusion about whether layoffs were actually underway. CNBC updated its story to acknowledge it wasn’t immediately able to verify their identities.
It was at this point that people started calling Twitter and people they knew in Twitter to find out about these two clever guys.
Paul Lee, a product manager at Twitter, was among those who called out CNBC over its report.
“Quite ironic that a major news outlet failed to do basic diligence and fell for a crisis actor prank, resulting in the spread of misinfo, on the first day of new ownership,” Lee tweeted. “All you had to do was ask to see a badge or look for bird-themed stuff in the boxes. Also we don’t use Zoom.”
Finally, someone figured out that they had been had and started asking questions, you know, the ones they should have been asking when these two should up.
Questions being raised if these are legitimate employees. I asked someone sitting at the front desk, they wouldn’t comment but told me “I’ve never seen those 2 guys.” https://t.co/y16K4cK4ty
— Yasmin Khorram (@YasminKhorram) October 28, 2022
“You got conned. Name is ‘Rahul LIGMA.’ C’mon man,” another Twitter user wrote.
Of course it’s easy to see how these two pulled this off. They simply played to the preconceived notions of the Mostly Stupid Media. I seriously doubt that they expected this to work as well as it did. All I can say to this is…
Thatisall
(3 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
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~The Angry Webmaster~
