Pranksters pretend as fired Twitter employees, give interviews to media

Tesla CEO Elon Musk immediately fired former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal and several other top executives after becoming the new owner of the microblogging site. According to reports, Musk is apparently on a cleaning spree and may fire up to 75% of Twitter's workforce. This provided an opportunity for some pranksters to steal the limelight.

Several images and videos went viral on Friday, showing two men carrying boxes standing near the entrance of Twitter's San Francisco headquarters, claiming to have been fired by Musk, according to news agency ANI.

One of them, identified as "Rahul Ligma," also spoke to the media and claimed that Musk had fired the entire team of data engineers. The second individual introduced himself as "Daniel Johnson."

Several media outlets, eager to be the first to report the news, failed to verify its veracity and published stories about Twitter employees leaving the company's headquarters. CNBC's Deirdre Bosa, who posted that a "entire team of data engineers" had been let go, was one of the more prominent posts.

Bloomberg, the Daily Mail, and NBC were among the other major news outlets to cover the story after the duo spoke to the media.

In their haste to report the news, the media outlets failed to recognize that "Ligma" is an internet slang term.

The news prompted Elon Musk to respond to the prankster incident with the witty tweet "Ligma Johnson had it coming."