Twitter is seemingly circling the drain under Elon Musk’s stewardship, and with the trending term #RIPTwitter, users are apprehensive that the site may disappear.
The term started trending when hundreds of Twitter employees offered to resign without signing the ultimatum Musk gave them. Musk asked all his remaining employees to join him in building Twitter 2.0, which involved long hours, or they could walk away with three months’ severance pay.
According to internal messages by The Verge, hundreds of people have decided to leave, and the level of resignations indicates that the platform will soon begin to crumble.
Musk closed Twitter offices until Monday, November 21 due to a wave of resignations. He notified his employees in an email and told them, “Please continue to abide by company policy by refraining from discussing company confidential information on social media, press, or elsewhere.” His closing line implies that everything should be expected after the weekend. “We look forward to working with you on Twitter’s exciting future,” he wrote.
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Overnight, social media users predicted the death of Twitter using the #RIPTwitter hashtag. Musk himself acknowledged the term by tweeting memes. “How do you make a small fortune on social media?” he asked before replying: “Start with a big one.”
He also tweeted a meme of someone throwing a gang sign on a grave, with the Twitter logo posted above the person and headstone. The meme implies that users are still in touch with Twitter to discuss the death of Twitter.
#RIPTwitter wasn’t the only trending word as people used #GoodbyeTwitter and #Twitterdown to predict the end of the social media site.
On October 27, 2022, Elon Musk successfully acquired Twitter for $44 billion. It came after he initially offered to buy the site earlier in the year but tried to back out of the deal in the following months due to a dispute with the existing Twitter board over the number of fake accounts on the social media site.
Since his takeover was completed, he introduced a controversial $8 Twitter Blue plan that gives users a verified check mark. This led to an increase in the number of parody accounts. Musk then suspended new sign-ups on Twitter Blue, confirming that he would relaunch on November 29 “to make sure it’s rock solid,” he said Tuesday.
