© IE Online Media Services Pvt Ltd
Tags:
Journalism of Courage
By now, Elon Musk’s bizarre use of Twitter is not jolting anyone. On Tuesday, Musk shared a photograph with two men and wrote, “Welcoming back Ligma & Johnson!”. In the next tweet, he proclaimed, “Important to admit when I’m wrong & firing them was truly one of my biggest mistakes”.
At the onset, it might look like Musk is referring to Twitter rehiring former employees after erroneously firing them, but the ‘Twitter employees’ in the photo are pranksters who go by their gag names “Rahul Ligma” and “Daniel Johnson”.
‘Ligma’ and ‘Johnson’ made news when they pretended to be former Twitter employees who were sacked following Twitter’s official acquisition by Elon Musk on October 27. Both of them got media attention as they appeared in front of Twitter headquarters with cardboard boxes that supposedly held their office supplies and even gave media bytes. Musk also responded to their prank by tweeting screenshots of media reports featuring them and wrote, “Ligma Johnson had it coming ”.
Musk’s latest tweet, which alluded to the reports of Twitter’s messy firing and rehiring saga, is not being taken well with many netizens criticising him for being insensitive to thousands of employees who were fired with little-to-no notice.
Criticising the business magnate, a Twitter user wrote, “This is so gross and dehumanizing to the people he actually fired. Grow up, Elon.” Another person remarked, “Is it just me who finds this ‘bit’ a little creepy and uncool given the actual 7000+ people you did fire in the last couple of weeks? Feels Ike you’re mocking people you’ve fired. Certainly it’s not going to make Bay Area technologists more keen to work with you.”
Last week, Twitter fired almost 90 per cent of its India staff. Before that, it laid off approximately 3,700 employees. This fast-paced mass firing was soon followed by Twitter reaching out to dozens of employees to rejoin the work as their job termination was deemed a mistake. According to reports, the social media company has most recently terminated 80 per cent of its contract employees without giving them any notice.
