Hours after Elon Musk took total ownership of Twitter, videos of supposed laid-off employees carrying boxes outside Twitter's San Francisco headquarters circulated on social media.
Mr Musk acquired Twitter on Thursday and since then rumours regarding the layoffs of the old employees have been swirling on the internet. So when two men carrying cardboard boxes stood outside of the Twitter office, it seemed like they were part of a lay-off.
In one of the videos, a man claiming to be an ex-Twitter employee spoke to news outlets about being laid off. However, he said that he had to leave the interview to "touch base with my husband and wife".
In another video, another man identified himself as a software engineer named "Rahul Ligma". In an interview with a reporter, he spoke about Michelle Obama's memoir 'Becoming' and said, "Michelle Obama wouldn't have happened if Elon Musk owned Twitter, Obama in 2008 wouldn't have happened".
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The strange statements by the pair of pranksters led to suspicion from people online. Even though a lot of news outlets reported that the two men were ex-employees, The Verge confirmed that "Rahul Ligma" did not exist in Twitter's Slack or email system. In fact, it reported that "Ligma" is a fictitious word used to prank people.
Elon Musk, who is famous for his sense of humour and distrust of the media, also came out with a witty reaction to the whole prankster episode. "Ligma Johnson had it coming," he joked.
Meanwhile, this came after Elon Musk laid off top executives and signalled that he will in fact lay off employees.
"The bird is freed," Elon Musk tweeted on Friday after completing the takeover of Twitter and firing the social media giant's four top executives, including Parag Agrawal, legal executive Vijaya Gadde, Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal and General Counsel Sean Edgett. He had accused them of misleading him and Twitter investors over the number of fake accounts on the platform.
