The first few weeks of Elon Musk’s tenure as Twitter’s new owner and CEO have been marked by chaotic upheaval and controversy. But one thing Musk has made clear is that no matter how big a job he has taken on, he will always make time to troll celebrities. Today’s latest “fun” came after someone started a gag hashtag, #RIPJimmyFallon, which falsely announced the Tonight Show host’s death and quickly began trending. Fallon, who is very much not dead, tweeted, “Elon, can you fix this?” on November 15, to which Musk replied, 11 hours later, “Fix what?” Four hours after that tweet he punted, “Sounds like a job for @CommunityNotes!”, Twitter’s pilot program to let users suggest contextual information to add to tweets. (In this case, a link to a Newsweek story identifying the hashtag as a prank was eventually tacked onto Fallon’s tweet…which seems superfluous, considering Fallon’s tweet could be considered proof of life.)
One hour after that, Musk realized he had to get in one more joke, tweeting: “Wait a second, how do we know you’re not an alien body snatcher pretending to be Jimmy!? Say something that only the real Jimmy would say …” The hashtag remains, even though at this point most people know it’s a joke.
It’s ironic that Musk has been so publicly cavalier about Twitter fun at a celebrity’s expense, considering that one of his first acts as the app’s new owner was to suspend comedian Kathy Griffin for impersonating him, and proclaim that accounts doing impersonations without clearly indicating they were parodies would receive permanent suspensions. (That has proved not to be a hard and fast rule: Some celebrities and comedians, including The West Wing’s Josh Malina, still use “Elon Musk” as their display names.)
The Fallon hashtag debacle is a microcosm of the larger chaos that has plagued Twitter since Musk took over. Because of the new verification system as part of Twitter Blue, which allows users to pay eight dollars a month for a signature blue check mark, many accounts can now take advantage of the ability to wield the visual signifier of authority without actually having any. This makes it easier for false stories to spread on Twitter, particularly when oversight is low as the company undergoes significant employee shake-ups, thanks to Musk laying off nearly half of the staff earlier in November. (Per Bloomberg, the company later asked some of those terminated employees to return to work at the company.) He has since pressed pause on the “Blue Verified” program, with plans to relaunch on November 29 after ironing out some of the issues.
Musk has also reportedly fired several employees who have been critical of him, either publicly on Twitter or in the company’s Slack channels, per Bloomberg. This is a dramatic change in company policy from the pre-Musk regime, which seemed to encourage critical dialogue about the company’s practices and actions. “It’s important to note that Twitter has long cultivated a culture of internal dissent: ‘Communicate fearlessly to build trust,’” tech reporter Casey Newton tweeted. “No internal codes of conduct have changed since Elon took over. So this is all out of the blue.”
The unrest at Twitter has led several major advertisers to pause their relationships with the company, per The New York Times, including The Volkswagen Group, Carlsberg Group, and REI. (Musk reductively blamed the drop on “activists” who have vocally criticized his stated goals and management style, though organizations like GLAAD and the ADL have encouraged companies to boycott Twitter as an advertising partner.)
According to The Washington Post, Musk’s latest unconventional act has been to tell all employees they need to fill out a form by Thursday, November 17, indicating that they “want to be part of the new Twitter,” or lose their job and receive three months of severance. Musk has stated that the future of the company will be engineering-centric and “extremely hardcore,” requiring “working long hours at high intensity.” Presumably that does not include any remaining employees left in charge of stamping out celebrity misinformation.