Michael Che won April Fool’s Day with his surprisingly fantastic prank upon fellow SNL Weekend Update host Colin Jost, but did Elon Musk attempt to pull a (too-late) funny, too? That’s a question on people’s minds after the latest chaotic change to Twitter. This time, we’re not talking about how Elon de-checkmarked New York Times and then made it hard to discern legacy checkmarks from Twitter Blue members. There’s also the pushback from celebrities, including Karl Urban and Jack Black, but something else is afoot.
If one heads to Twitter right about now (on April 3), you’ll see a Dogecoin icon (yep, that dog) in place of the usual Twitter bird. No one knows why this is happening, especially since Musk was sued after pumping Dogecoin by someone alleging that it’s a massive pyramid scheme. So, is this another Dogejoke? As mentioned above, a user wondered if this was meant as an April Fool’s thing, but perhaps things are so buggy over there that this happened days after the intended fact.
Doge for some reason is showing up on Twitter and I can only assume this was supposed to be an April Fools joke that took 3 days to roll out because no one knows how the site works anymore pic.twitter.com/dIlXiOLHoI
— windows 98 Tech Support (@Win98Tech) April 3, 2023
Did inserting the icon break retweets, as well? People are wondering whether the two are correlated, and if things could further go downhill from here.
look, it’s the exact same user experience it’s always been, except verified and paid accounts are identical, retweets don’t say retweets anymore, there’s a doge icon we can’t get rid of, and the site administers a small but painful shock at random intervals
— Dave Itzkoff (@ditzkoff) April 3, 2023
“i will change the website’s logo to doge, my fellow redditors will love this”
the site’s code: pic.twitter.com/h6wFxnwQLa
—
Mat
(@MatttGFX) April 3, 2023
he changed the logo to the doge but couldnt even format it right. look at the pixels at the top of it. come on man pic.twitter.com/5e49LH3kN9
— zach silberberg (@zachsilberberg) April 3, 2023
did this dumb mother fucker really break the retweet attribution functionality to change the twitter logo to doge two days late for april fool’s https://t.co/MNAbGLKYet
— Kraidman (@sebmal) April 3, 2023
Heads are shaking everywhere about this silliness.
It took every remaining Twitter employee working over the weekend to replace the bird with the Doge, but everyone can agree the results are Le Epic Awesomesauce pic.twitter.com/w72OGSLRtO
— Patrick Monahan (@pattymo) April 3, 2023
WHY IS THE TWITTER LOGO NOW A DOGE BRO ELON THE MEME HAS BEEN DEAD FOR ALMOST A DECADE pic.twitter.com/mPr3omdK9h
— Nswipe (@nswipeeeeee) April 3, 2023
elon what the fuck are you even doing with twitter at this point why is the bird logo a fucking doge pic.twitter.com/760U6k71a3
—
Santa Ricky (@_FireMonkey) April 3, 2023
Still others are wondering whether this new icon is an attempt to bury the lawsuit in search results.
Elon Musk made everyone’s twitter a doge because he got sued
pic.twitter.com/bR5rJtV6Vt
— Blue
(@BlueFolf) April 3, 2023
no way he made the fucking icon doge to bury his racketeering lawsuit in search results holy shit https://t.co/15PIKtskWW
— MoppinUp (@mopdrive) April 3, 2023
Funniest conceivable reason for why he added the doge to the twitter main screen https://t.co/9h8A9Lv9ec
— Liv (@Liv_Agar) April 3, 2023
On a related note, Reuters recently posted an update, which is that Musk’s lawyers want to dismiss the case while claiming that the billionaire only meant to post his usual “innocuous and often silly tweets” and nothing more:
The lawyers said the investors never explained how Musk intended to defraud anyone or what risks he concealed, and that his statements such as “Dogecoin Rulz” and “no highs, no lows, only Doge” were too vague to support a fraud claim.
“There is nothing unlawful about tweeting words of support for, or funny pictures about, a legitimate cryptocurrency that continues to hold a market cap of nearly $10 billion,” Musk’s lawyers said. “This court should put a stop to plaintiffs’ fantasy and dismiss the complaint.”
Will Elon explain the new icon, or is he too busy laughing? Perhaps it’s not worth much effort to wonder because if he wants people to know, he’ll certainly talk.
(Via Reuters)