Twitter’s living wake kicked off with Elon’s 5PM deadline

Screenshot of the Twitter trending page, with “#RIPTwitter,” “Tumblr,” “Mastodon,” “MySpace,” “#GoodByeTwitter,” and “#butts” being listed as the top topics in the US.

We don’t know how many of Twitter’s employees looked at Elon Musk’s “take three months’ severance or agree to stay and get Xtreme” offer and decided to head for the exits, but by all available accounts, it was a lot of them.

As my colleagues Alex Heath and Mia Sato report, the departure of entire important teams leads people who know Twitter well to think that it’s only a matter of time until things break down. According to the New York Times, some “critical” employees were pulled into meetings with Musk and his advisors, who tried to persuade them to stay as the time ticked down.