NewsRescue
Elon Musk, the CEO of Twitter, has mockingly renamed both his business “titter” and himself “Harry Bolz” in his most offensive practical joke since seizing control of the social media site.
A picture shared on Twitter last week appeared to indicate that the letter “w” on the sign outside the company’s San Francisco headquarters had been covered with paper. Musk said on Sunday that he had since ordered the word to be painted over, changing the sign to say “Titter,” contrary to what several Twitter users had initially believed the image had been altered.
Musk claimed that since San Francisco law prevented him from completely deleting the letter, he simply had it modified to match the background colour of the sign. He yelled, “Problem solved!”
The second-richest person in the world obviously wasn’t done with the toilet humour since on Monday, Musk changed his Twitter handle to “Harry Bolz,” seemingly for no reason other than the overt allusion.
Within minutes of the name change, Twitter users discovered that a “Harry Bolz” coin had been produced.
Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in October of last year. He immediately began removing some of the platform’s more objectionable speech restrictions and reduced its staff by 75% in an effort to turn around its financial situation. The billionaire has added his own irreverent humour along the way, most notably when he declared last month that any journalistic emails to Twitter’s press email address would automatically be answered with a poo emoji.
But it seems that Musk’s love of practical jokes is turning off marketers. Some of America’s top marketing executives are reportedly anxious about appearing with “Harry Bolz” at a trade conference in Miami later this month, according to a report published last week by online news outlet Semafor.
Tariq Hassan, the chief marketing officer of McDonald’s, claimed in one email reported by Semafor that Musk had “perpetuated racism” by removing speech limitations on Twitter. On Thursday, Forbes magazine asked Twitter for a remark and got “a poop emoji” in return.