15 Best Twitter Shutdown Memes Saying Goodbye To The App
It was like a Twitter-wide yearbook signing.
Well folks, it looks like it could be the end of the road for Twitter — at least, that’s what the vibe on the app was on Thursday, Nov. 17. When reports of a mass employee exodus led to an unexpected shutdown of Twitter HQ on Thursday night, users took that as a sign the app would soon vanish. Instead of logging out and moving on, loyal Twitter users did what they do best: tweeted some hilarious memes. Though the app is still very much alive as of Nov. 18, it’s unclear what the future holds, which is why these 15 Twitter shutdown memes saying goodbye to the app are exactly what you need to laugh through the confusion.
It all started on Wednesday, Nov. 16, when, according to The New York Times, Musk sent an email to his staff in which he reportedly said Twitter has a tough road ahead and offered three months severance to employees who no longer wanted to work there “to build a breakthrough Twitter 2.0.” Musk’s desire to apparently only want “hardcore” employees to remain reportedly led to hundreds of staff members resigning on Nov. 17. Following the wave of resignations, the company reportedly alerted its staff via email that it would be “temporarily closing [its] office buildings and all badge access will be suspended,” according to reporting from Bloomberg on Nov. 17.
Sources close to matter reported to Reuters on Nov. 17 that the public version of the app was possibly at risk of shutting down, following the departure of many engineers. Reuters estimated that over 500 employees were part of the mass Twitter exodus. One source reportedly told Reuters, "If [Twitter] does break, there is no one left to fix things in many areas." Yikes.
Once Twitter users began experiencing outages around 9 p.m. ET on Nov. 17, with nearly 1,900 outages reported to Down Detector by 10:20 p.m. (compared to a baseline of 11 at that time), the panic kicked in.
Despite all signs pointing to chaos, many users chose to live tweet through (what was thought to be) the shutdown of Twitter instead of abandoning the sinking ship completely. Musk aptly waved a digital pirate flag amidst the chaos.
Because Twitter can’t take anything seriously, the memes that spawned from the chaos were top-notch. First, up, a Club Penguin nod, because why not? I guess the Twitter equivalent of “waddle on” would be “fly high”...
Moms were doing what moms do when friendships break up:
The tough questions were asked:
Minds were reeling about how to explain this to future generations:
Books entered the chat:
Alternate sources of joy (who knew this place was fun?!) will need to be found:
Tech blogger Jane Manchun Wong executed what one might call a “burn-meme”:
Twitter 2.0 looks sus:
R.I.P Twitter (maybe):
Goodbyes on Twitter were giving high school vibes:
Though Mastondon seems to be Twitter’s most viable replacement right now, nothing will ever take the place of this bird app:
The tweets said “bye” but nobody would leave:
Twitter users frantically shared their other handles:
Please forgive me, Tumblr:
Still, people could hear the orchestra playing:
Between the immediate firing of Twitter’s top executives on Oct. 27 and the subsequent firing of nearly 50% of its staff the next week, it’s no surprise users have been prepping for a shutdown since Musk acquired the company. Users first began to make peace with Twitter possibly sailing off into the sunset when Twitter Blue was abruptly removed from the app on Nov. 11. The sentiment was much more amped up on Nov. 17 and 18, and it seems people are readying themselves for the disappearance of the app they’ve been tweeting on since July 2006.
As for Musk’s response to the Twitter goodbye party, the entrepreneur spent Nov. 17 tweeting memes of his own, presumably trying to own (?) millions of users who believed the app wouldn’t make it through the night.
As of publication on Nov. 18, Twitter is alive and well, but whether or not the company can survive in its current state with minimal staff remains to be seen. The tweets bidding adieu to the app appear to foreshadow some immediate shutdown, but it’s likely the Twitter experience may simply degrade due to glitches no one is there to fix, as NBC News reporter Ben Collins pointed out on Nov. 18.
If this truly is the end — thanks for all the good times, Twitter. You really were the best.
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