Have you seen a tweet that appears to show the CEO of X, Linda Yaccarino, promoting the number of people tweeting about the death of Henry Kissinger? The former diplomat died Wednesday, instantly becoming a popular topic across social media, but Yaccarino’s tweet confused plenty of people on X, with one person calling it “a really weird thing to say.” But it’s completely fake.
“Over 65 million users tweeted about the death of Henry Kissinger – up nearly 37% as compared to the death of Colin Powell. Wowzers! It all happens on X,” the fake tweet reads.
It appears the altered tweet was first shared by an X user who goes by Soul Nate, who tweeted the photoshopped screenshot with the caption, “??? what did she mean by this.” And while it’s not clear if Soul Nate was the one who originally edited the fake screenshot, it appears his version has been getting the most traction on X, formerly known as Twitter, at the time of this writing.
The fake tweet is clearly a joke about Yaccarino’s attempts to change the subject whenever the site’s owner, Elon Musk, says or tweets something controversial. And Wednesday had plenty of controversy in the world of X.
Recently, Yaccarino tweeted a generically positive promotion of “sports” when Musk threatened to file a lawsuit against the Anti-Defamation League over a huge decline in ad sales in September.
Yaccarino’s comments seem to be attempts to project a business-as-usual environment despite Musk’s incendiary comments, which appear to be getting more frequent as the months drag on. What happened today? Musk was interviewed by Andrew Ross Sorkin, where the billionaire used very colorful language to say he didn’t care if advertisers had stopped buying ads on his platform.
Sorkin had asked Musk about his recent tweet that was criticized for being anti-semitic, leading to a number of big advertisers pausing their ad campaigns. On stage Musk expressed regret for the tweet, but insists he was misunderstood.
Aside from Kissinger, another famous person, Disney CEO Bob Iger, was trending on the platform Wednesday night. But that’s yet another controversy started by Musk. After Musk said three times that any advertisers who pulled out could “go f*** yourself” the billionaire slipped in a “Hi Bob,” which just about everyone understood to be a jab at Iger.
Notably, the real Yaccarino hasn’t tweeted since Monday, when she shared a live chat between Musk and the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu. Yaccarino was reportedly in the audience for today’s interview and one imagines she has her work cut out for her if she really wants to woo back advertisers, the job she was ostensibly hired away from NBCUniversal to do.
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