People Are Tweeting The Same Joke About Elon's Twitter Fiasco In Thousands

16 Nov, 2022

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Since 3 pm Eastern Time on Tuesday, Twitter users have been posting the same phrase, “buying Twitter for $44 billion to make it worthless in two weeks is the closest Elon Musk will come to giving money away,” at the suggestion of a social media marketer.

Today while working at home, Saeed Awawdeh, a 25-year-old social media marketer in New York who goes by @SaeedDiCaprio on Twitter, came up with the concept. “This was a bathroom break idea to u,” he said. The social media specialist says he threw together a hasty post on the social media platform in between other jobs.

“It was just a spur-of-the-moment thing,” he says. “I just posted it and went home.” It's true, however, that Musk's post was rooted in his anxiety about Twitter going bankrupt if its staffing and business model aren't overhauled. “I’ve been tweeting for a while now, and my buddies have been leaving the platform, putting my job of running the Twitter accounts for a variety of companies in jeopardy,” he says.

Thousands of users have re-posted the original tweet in response to its popularity, saying they're pleased with the post's spread. “I’m delighted with the response to the tweet,” says Awawdeh. Being part of a dialogue and a community on Twitter is my favourite component, and I always feel fulfilled when I can spearhead one.

His post included a screenshot of what appeared to be a notification from Twitter warning him of a social network's hateful conduct policy violation and urging him to remove the post. Pease Anderson, a tabletop roleplaying game designer and journalist from Chicago, Illinois, has joined the fray.

After Musk's takeover of the site, Musk's direction in the direction of travel resulted in Pease becoming infuriated. “Every day I wake up to see this site assaulted and slaughtered a little bit more by a ruthless owner,” he says. “At the very least, we can shitpost our way through it.”

“This meme is obviously funny,” says Alex Turvy, a meme researcher at Tulane University in New Orleans. “Musk has become a common enemy on Twitter—he’s been made into a meme—and that’s what makes it so funny,” he says. It’s a joke that got out of hand, and this is not what people expect from him.”

The grassroots, Twitter-based movement has strong similarities to copypasta (text blocks copied and pasted across the web), which are often utilized by Musk supporters. The scene in Spartacus, where hundreds of people are shown standing up to declare that they are Kirk Douglas' Spartacus in 1960, parallels this scene.

Turvy believes that shared knowledge is what makes this meme so powerful. Keeping up with each day's Twitter mayhem has been difficult, but this project seems as if it will be remembered as part of the 'jokelore' that relies on a shared cultural memory,” he says.

As for what Awawdeh wishes to achieve, Musk might realise that he has possibly made a mistake. “The people responsible for creating this app are dissatisfied with where he is taking it,” he says. “I've been a loyal creator on this platform and have created billions of engagements and impressions without being remunerated by the platform itself, so a paywall to access the reach I've built was a blow to Twitter creators, including myself.”