Reacting To The Fake Twitter Employees Who Trolled The Media | "Ligma + Johnson"
Fake Twitter Employees, Media Trolled, Elon's War Room - November 9, 2022 (over 2 years ago) • 12:38
Transcript:
| Start Time | Speaker | Text |
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Shaan Puri | Somebody in our group chat knows this guy who did this, and he shared a text message that the guy sent before he did it.
So he goes, "Yo bro." And the person says, "Sup?" He goes, "Are you doing anything in the next hour? Wanna help me pull off a stunt? I'm at the gym and I need a box, lol. I'm gonna walk out in front of the Twitter office with a box in my hand. There's hella TV crews outside."
So, Elon takes over Twitter. I guess the purchase went through. I feel like there was never confirmation that he actually wired the money. He just literally showed up at the office and was like, "Yeah."
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Sam Parr | There hasn't been like a proper ribbon-cutting moment. It's not like it was really just water.
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Shaan Puri |
Just like, went into the office and they're like, "I guess you own it now. You seem to be here."
"It's mine... yeah, it's mine." Like playground rules.
Wow, that's all it took to have Twitter.
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Sam Parr | Have you ever heard of a coup? Like a coup d'Ă©tat with governments? You know, I read a lot of...
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Shaan Puri | yeah they're pretty cool | |
Sam Parr | yeah they are | |
Shaan Puri | that joke | |
Sam Parr | I read a lot of history books... or history jokes. I read a lot of history books about whatever, and they talk about a coup. I'm like, "So you literally just walked into the White House and said, 'This is mine,' and the general promised me that he's going to convince these soldiers to attack." You know what I mean?
It's an interesting concept. You're like, "So it's all just made up, I guess." These rules that we live by, this is just fiction. That's kind of like what I felt he did. He just walked in and was like, "Well, I own this now. Thank you."
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Shaan Puri | Did you see Derek Lewis, the UFC fighter? Have you seen the compilation of his thing where he says, "Just get up"?
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Sam Parr | no | |
Shaan Puri | So, they're like, "Derek, you're a big knockout artist, but the knock on you has always been, what if you get into a wrestling thing? How's your jiu-jitsu? Are you training?"
And then there's a clip of him saying that, and it's like a 6-minute compilation of literally somebody taking him down. He doesn't do jiu-jitsu; he just stands back up. He's so, so powerful.
That's how I feel. That's what Elon Musk did. He's like, "No, just walk in. Yeah, take it." What do you...
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Sam Parr | What do you mean? He's like, "Well, I'm just gonna walk in with a sink and take it."
So anyway, he does this thing where he just says, "This is mine," and there are all these reporters outside of Twitter's office. Something's missing for the story.
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Shaan Puri | They're waiting for the story about something going wrong. Elon comes here, and oh, there's a protest, there's a walk.
So what happens is the first big story that occurs is a picture of these two guys. They look kind of nerdy, like engineering types, and they're holding giant cardboard boxes. It says, "These two data scientists were fired today from Twitter." Here, they're seen walking out with their possessions in their boxes.
I saw it and immediately something looked a little off because I was like, "This guy just looks so goofy." But I was like, "Well, that's pretty believable. You know, there are many goofy-looking people that work in tech." But okay, oh my god, you look... wow, they really found the perfect character. He looks pretty goofy. And then I read the name, and it says...
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Sam Parr | But he... but he... but he had a box in his hand. So each had a brown box, which is just foreign because if you work at a tech company, you don't even probably own anything. You own enough just to put in a book bag.
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Shaan Puri | put your laptop in your backpack | |
Sam Parr | yeah and like if you do get fired do they even like is that a thing where you like hand people a box anymore | |
Shaan Puri | I don't know, you know what I mean? They played it perfectly.
So then it says, "Rahul Ligma and Daniel Johnson were fired today." Blah, blah, blah. I saw that and I was like, "Oh my God, this guy executed a Ligma!"
For those who don't know, Ligma is a little joke that people play on the internet. It's like, "Ligma..." and then you say something, blah, blah, blah, "Ligma."
Then someone's like, "Ligma? What's that?" I'm not familiar. "Ligma nuts!" Alright, so that's the joke.
They did this to basically... I think CNBC was the first one who reported it, and then the same photo just kept getting spread everywhere because everybody wanted this story about it.
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Sam Parr | The ladies at the party included a CNBC reporter. The original tweet said something like, "We're at the scene of Twitter. These two engineers just came out and said they're the first to be laid off."
It's so clear how defeated they are. There's just a visible... they're just visibly defeated and totally broken. Rahul Ligma says now he has no idea how he's going to be able to afford his Tesla payments.
Then he's sitting there holding a Michelle Obama book. It's like him with his box just holding this Michelle Obama book. I don't know why.
She tweeted out, "This is just the first of many that's going to happen." It was just like a crazy, crazy scene. | |
Shaan Puri | So, people have heard this part of the story, but now we got that "My First Million" exclusive juice on top of it.
Somebody in our group chat knows this guy who did this, and he shared a text message that the guy sent before he did it. He goes, "Yo bro," and the person replies, "Sup?" He continues, "Are you doing anything in the next hour? Wanna help me pull off a stunt? I'm at the gym and I need a box, lol. I'm gonna walk out in front of the Twitter office with a box in my hand. There's hella TV crews outside."
Then, this is literally how he pulled this off. He gets an empty box and a Michelle Obama book—there's nothing else in the box—and he walks out, and the TV crews go for it.
I thought that was amazing. I mean, what kind of genius is this person? Then he goes...
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Sam Parr | there's hell in tv crews let's go get them | |
Shaan Puri | And he goes, "Bro, the media is so dumb. I literally put 5 minutes of planning into this. Even my uncle in India has seen the picture now."
And he goes, "Did you just see the cameras and just walk out there?"
He goes, "Yeah, basically. I got to the gym that's near Twitter's headquarters. I saw all these cameras, so I just went to it. Amazing, that is."
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Sam Parr | so funny | |
Shaan Puri | the better who is | |
Sam Parr | this guy | |
Shaan Puri | he's like a founder of like a tech startup basically he just | |
Sam Parr | did this before oh my god | |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, I'm ready to invest. His thing says "stealth startup," so I'm like, I'm ready to invest in whatever he's doing, any valuation there is. | |
Sam Parr | hella tv there's hella tv cameras on | |
Shaan Puri | Name your price, Ligma. And then, so he goes, "Okay, so that was him." Did you see the interview with the other guy, Daniel Johnson?
No? He also had a little gem. His was on video, and they were like, "You know, how do you feel about this today?" He's like, "I don't know. I just gotta go home, I gotta talk to my husband and wife, and regroup."
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Sam Parr | wait what he goes | |
Shaan Puri | I don't know. I just really want to go home. I want to talk to my husband and wife and rehearse the most San Francisco thing ever to happen. Did anyone comment on that? The news didn't even cover it. They just played the clip, and when I saw that, I was like, "Wow, that is the funniest thing I've ever heard." Perfect timing! These guys are like, you know, comedic geniuses basically.
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Sam Parr | yeah this is pretty gold | |
Shaan Puri | Amazingly well played!
Yeah, I don't... do you want to talk about the Elon war room? Like, what he's actually doing in there? Do you want to talk about that or not really? Have you followed?
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Sam Parr | Not really. I mean, I read that he said, "Hey guys, you have a week to get this one thing done," and I think that that's cool. That's a good way to run things.
I'm nervous he's going to screw it all up. I make money from Twitter, so I don't want it to go away.
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Shaan Puri | but I don't | |
Sam Parr | I got cordial | |
Shaan Puri | to shill bro | |
Sam Parr | With the... yeah, yeah. I have consulting calls to take, so I don't really care. When he talks about this stuff, I'm like, "This doesn't impact me that much." I don't care what you're going to do.
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Shaan Puri | Well, I just want... I don't care; it's not going to impact me. But I do find it interesting how he's going about this.
So basically, the report is that he goes in, and the first report I thought again was another troll, but I guess this is real. You see this? He told every engineer to print out all the code that they've committed and that they've written in the last 3 or 6 months and have it ready for review. Did you see this?
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Sam Parr | why print so you could just see the the | |
Shaan Puri |
Page link those, and then they changed their mind. I guess they realized how bad of an idea that was, and like... you know, an hour later they're like, "Shred the papers. Actually, we're gonna review on the computer. Just be prepared to review."
So people are like... all these engineers are like, "I printed out like 300 pages of code." So I guess I'll just print this. I don't know what's going on here.
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Sam Parr | Dude, and what's crazy is, if you go to BusinessInsider.com, the headline is like, you know, I think it says something like "The Toil of Working at Twitter." It's painting it like these people... here's their code of what, yeah, this is what it's like to toil at Elon Musk's Twitter. The expectation is literally to work 24/7 and does...
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Shaan Puri | he really think that that's what do you got straight clown behavior I cannot believe they're doing that | |
Sam Parr | I can believe it. One of the people familiar with the situation described the feeling of the company under Musk: "Your job is on the line." It's like, dude, your job's always on the line! This isn't like it's your right to work at Twitter, you dumbass.
But I thought it was funny because, come on man, you're coding this. Yeah, you're going to have to work 50 hours, maybe for a little while. But also, I think a lot of employees at Twitter are probably like, "This is awesome! We've been sitting on our ass. Let's do it!" That side doesn't seem to be getting covered a lot. | |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, and so he created, I guess, a war room. He basically brought in a bunch of people he trusts. He brought in people from his other companies, like his chief legal person. That guy's now like the general counsel.
Basically, he created a war room, and now here's who's reported to be in the war room: it's Elon, his chief counsel, and then it's Jason Calacanis.
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Sam Parr | Oh, and then it's... I think Jason's amazing, but like, what the hell does he know? Yeah, like I said...
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Shaan Puri | Sriram from a16z is just a venture capitalist who is a former PM. He used to work at Twitter and also had to run at Twitter.
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Sam Parr | and clubhouse and snapchat | |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, and then also, I guess like some other people, some engineers or people from like Boring Company or Neuralink or whatever, like some people he trusts, like his cousin, is there. They basically just set up shop and they were like, "Alright, well, we're gonna do this thing."
And they're like, "Change the logged-out page. It forces you to sign up." No, you should be able to read tweets before you sign in, you know? You sign up, and then, which is like an experiment that's been tried many times before.
And it's like, "You know, we need to have this verification program. We have, you know, 5 days to deliver this," I guess. So they're sort of trying to figure this out: who stays, who goes, what are we building, how are we gonna turn this thing around.
It's fascinating. I wish I could be a fly on the wall in this war room. I think that would be like probably the most interesting thing to do right now. | |
Sam Parr | I think it would be awesome. I hope they don't screw it up, though, because I got some *fucking* courses I gotta sell. So don't screw it up, Milan.
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Shaan Puri | My point of view has always been very simple. All the things he complains about are issues that power users would be annoyed at on Twitter, like the bot problem, verification, or the algorithm not serving me the tweets I want.
The problem is that I don't know whether 300 million people use Twitter. It's about five times smaller than the other big social services, and it doesn't really grow that much.
It's not like my mom doesn't use Twitter because she's worried about too many bots. If I tweet about crypto, that will tell me to buy crypto. That's not her problem; she just doesn't see value in it. And, you know, you gotta...
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Sam Parr | she just says I don't get it | |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, I don't get it. I don't know why I would need this. You know, I don't need to check this.
Whereas Instagram, WhatsApp, and Snapchat have all given her a reason to have it. She needs to have Snapchat if she wants to see more pictures of her kids. She needs to have Instagram if she wants to keep up with what's going on in Bollywood or whatever, right?
Everybody finds a need in the service, and that's the core problem with Twitter. The core need it addresses is only for people like us, and it doesn't address the need for a whole bunch of other people on the planet. If they wanted it to be more valuable, then they would need to do that.
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