As #RIPTwitter trends, Musk brags, "We just hit another all-time high for Twitter usage lol"

Does Elon Musk play the violin while he burns?

Hundreds of Twitter employees left the company on Thursday, per . The massive resignation came after Musk, the new mega-billionaire owner of Twitter, demanded that employees accept an “extremely hardcore” work culture, i.e. “work long hours at high intensity” – or take three months of severance pay. He had set a 5 p.m. Deadline ET Thursday for Twitter employees to decide whether to stay or go. The ultimatum was issued after he fired half of the company's 7,500 employees two weeks ago.

According to multiple reports, remaining Twitter employees were notified on Thursday that the company was disabling access by employee badge at its offices until Monday, November 21. Entire teams have disappeared, including the engineering group that runs Twitter's "central system libraries that every engineer in the company uses," The Verge, quoting an unnamed ex-employee who said, "You can't not make Twitter work without this team."

Amid the chaos on Twitter, users fear the end is near for the social network. On Thursday night, the hashtag #RIPTwitter was the #1 trending topic in the US (while #2 was “Elon,” followed by “Tumblr” and “Mastodon,” a funky Twitter-like service that many Twitterers self-imposed exiles flocked).

Is Musk distressed that his expensive $44 billion purchase may be in irreversible meltdown? On his own Twitter account, he was all composure, jokes and memes.

"And...we just hit a new twitter usage record lol," tweeted the tech mogul. late Thursday. Earlier, Musk tweeted, "The best people stay, so I'm not super worried."

As of now, there don't seem to be any serious outward signs that Twitter is in danger imminent closing down. At the time of this writing, the Twitter API status page listed "all systems operational" and third-party uptime monitoring service Downdetector showed a relatively minor number of user error reports. /p>

At least one Silicon Valley veteran believes in fears that Twitter will go bankrupt following the major exodus employees are exaggerated. Bill Gurley, general partner at venture capital firm Benchmark (and one of Twitter's early investors), wrote on Twitter: "One of the reasons companies routinely do 3 layoffs instead of 1 , is that they are almost all afraid of “cutting too much”. They fear “touching the bones”, but they HUGELY underestimate the real resilience of companies. Businesses endure."

Gurley continued, "It's also why anyone who wants Twitter to 'fail functionally' will disappointed. The company had 1,000 employees in 2012 and had 200 [million monthly active users]. And the systems are much better now. If they get back to that number, they will survive. You do NOT see the "whale failed". "

Musk responded to Gurley's comments, writing, "I don't mean to jinx it but he there's a chance we can keep Twitter alive" - ​​with a meme from "Dumb and Dumber":