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Funniest Tweets About the Twitter Chaos

The site's still kicking following Elon Musk's takeover, but some users are already throwing it a wake.

Gael Cooper
CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," as well as "The Totally Sweet '90s." She's been a journalist since 1989, working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. She's Gen X in birthdate, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she'll be first in line.
Expertise Breaking news, entertainment, lifestyle, travel, food, shopping and deals, product reviews, money and finance, video games, pets, history, books, technology history, generational studies. Credentials
  • Co-author of two Gen X pop-culture encyclopedia for Penguin Books. Won "Headline Writer of the Year"​ award for 2017, 2014 and 2013 from the American Copy Editors Society. Won first place in headline writing from the 2013 Society for Features Journalism.
Gael Cooper
3 min read
Twitter is broken

Twitter's not dead (yet?), but on Thursday night, users were sure having fun throwing it a wake.

James Martin/CNET

Where else to mourn Twitter than on Twitter? While the site's still running amid the whiplash-inducing changes at the company following Elon Musk's takeover, users can't stop joking about its possible demise. 

Musk laid off half the staff, and hundreds of employees reportedly resigned after the billionaire reportedly delivered an ultimatum: Get on board with his approach, including long "hard-core" work hours, or leave. The dire headlines have left many Twitter users believing the site's end could be near, and they're dealing with the potential loss in true Twitter fashion, with jokes. Even Musk -- who paid $44 billion for the social media network -- tweeted a well-known cemetery meme, putting Twitter's logo on the gravestone.

Twitter, which no longer appears to have a communications team, didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. 

Here's a sampling of the dark #RIPTwitter humor.

RIP, grandpa

The smell of death was in the air for some. "Twitter tonight has some serious 'everyone gathered around grandpa's bedside at the hospice center' energy except everyone is also making fun of grandpa," one tweet read. 

Titanic farewell

There were plenty of references to the ill-fated Titanic's sinking.

"Absolutely refuse to say goodbye," one person wrote. "I am the band on the Titanic. I will just keep tweeting my dumb little tweets until we are all underwater."

Read another, "This is like the Titanic going down but instead of a string quartet we have the violent clashing of a thousand K-pop fancams." 

I'm gone

"If Twitter crashes and you need to find me, the hell you will," wrote one user. "I've got a two day headstart on you, which is more than I need. I speak a dozen languages, know every local custom, I'll blend in, disappear, you'll never see me again."

Breaking bad

One tweet mimicked Walter White of Breaking Bad fame, making a final statement.

Crushing out

"If you have a twitter crush on someone you legally have to tell them tonight," writer Zack Bornstein declared. 

Time zone trouble

The funniest tweets were flying during the US evening Thursday, so one person wrote, "European Twitter is sleeping through all of this. They're going to wake up to find all of us asleep, snuggled up together on the floor, with declarations of love scrawled on the walls and our most secret DMs printed out and burned in a fire pit."

Football fiasco

"It's surreal and sad seeing it unwind like this," one person wrote. "Hard to imagine turning it around. I mean the 2022 Packers what are you talking about?" (The Green Bay Packers football team lost 17-27 to the Tennessee Titans on Thursday night as Twitter jokes flew.)

Well, actually

Some addressed Twitter's infamous history, with one user asking, "But where will men explain things to me?"

Just can't leave

Said another, on Tuesday: "Everyone keeps saying goodbye on Twitter but so far, we are all still here. I feel like I'm at a dinner party in the Midwest.."

On fire

You've seen this GIF before -- it's the darkest timeline GIF from the show Community. Seems to fit.

So long, farewell

Even companies and organizations got into the spirit of the Twitter wake. The Washington State Department of Natural Resources shared its other social media sites in case Twitter disappeared, closing with, "We can also be found at most trailheads, screaming rec tips and salmon facts in 280-character quips."

Will the last tweeter please turn out the lights?

"The person who does the last tweet should get a prize or something<" one tweet read.

As of midday Friday night, Twitter was still operating, and the jokes about it were still flowing. Stay tuned.