Elon Musk Fires Engineer Who Told Him His Tweets Weren't Getting Views Because People Are Bored Of Him

"I have more than 100 million followers, and I’m only getting tens of thousands of impressions."

Elon Musk reportedly fired one of his remaining engineers on the spot for the crime of letting him know that people are sick of his shenanigans and he’s simply not interesting enough to keep their attention for long. According to the tech news site Platformer, “multiple sources with direct knowledge of the meeting” say that musk gathered together some Twitter engineers and advisors on Tuesday, demanding to know why his view count was low.

“This is ridiculous,” said Musk. “I have more than 100 million followers, and I’m only getting tens of thousands of impressions.”

The anonymous sources say that one of just two of the principal engineers left at the company stepped forward with the truth and was immediately punished for it. They had looked into the issue, and there was no glitch or fiendish plot at word that was suppressing his reach. The problem is simply that not a lot of people are looking at his tweets anymore because we all got sick of his antics pretty fast.

They showed him a Google trends spot showing how his popularity score had plunged from 100 down to a nine as evidence that the problem wasn’t in Twitter’s code, but in the fact that Musk is only interesting when he’s massively screwing up, but that gets old fast. The apartheid emerald mine heir did not like that answer at all.

“You’re fired, you’re fired,” he said to the engineer.

Platformer had to note that they withheld the name of the engineer “in light of the harassment Musk has directed at former Twitter employees.” Not long after he took over Twitter and threw the company into chaos with mass layoffs and ill-advised changes, he named one of those former workers in his “Twitter files” tweets, and one of them had to flee his home due to the flood of harassment that resulted.

Musk certainly had a reason to suspect that it was a problem with Twitter that was causing his low view count, seeing as it’s been functioning steadily worse since he took over. On Wednesday, the vast majority of Twitter users found themselves unable to post tweets unless they scheduled them, and the direct messages and follow function were broken for several hours. It was one of the biggest breakages the site has seen in many years.

However, it appears that Twitter’s reach algorithm is working normally, for now. A number of experts put out the warning that the new views counter, launched under Musk in January, would do the opposite of what the CEO was hoping and would only highlight how little engagement many individual tweets get. Musk was hoping that it would prove that there is more activity on Twitter than people think, but it appears to be having the reverse effect, showing that people aren’t even looking at tweets much.

The rest of the Platformer article paints a grim picture of what the remaining workers at Twitter are dealing with, speaking anonymously on the depressing state of the offices and feeling pressured to be less than honest to avoid getting fired.

“When you’re asked a question, you run it through your head and say ‘what is the least fireable response I can have to this right now?'” said one worker.

Musk’s ego problem also reportedly continues, with employees saying that he can’t stand to hear any indications that technology exists that he doesn’t understand. He’s still coming to his workers with baffling demands that have them chasing their tails.

“There’s times he’s just awake late at night and says all sorts of things that don’t make sense. And then he’ll come to us and be like, ‘this one person says they can’t do this one thing on the platform,’ and then we have to run around chasing some outlier use case for one person. It doesn’t make any sense.”