Breaking Twitter by Ben Mezrich

Author:Ben Mezrich [MEZRICH, BEN]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2023-11-07T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

On any other Thursday night, the procession would have seemed macabre: a few dozen cars snaking slowly through the open iron gates of one of the oldest cemeteries outside Charlotte, lit from both sides by the flickering orange glow of torches. The air was thick with the scent of burning, the only sound the crunching of gravel under the car tires. Both Mark and his wife, Gina, were dressed head-to-toe in black. Mark wore a cape tied tightly at his neck, while his wife sported a robe of velvet and silk that shimmered down over her stockinged legs.

It was only when he caught a glimpse of the two of them in the rearview mirror that the atmosphere shifted from macabre to absurd; his fake plastic fangs were so long they hung down over his bottom lip, and Gina’s pointed black hat was nearly piercing the faux leather upholstery of his Buick’s ceiling. Mark smiled as he watched Gina add more green makeup to her cheeks, and then she raised an overly jagged eyebrow at him.

“Ready to party like it’s 1699?”

He laughed, shaking his head. As bad as the joke was, the levity was appreciated. Waiting in the line of cars to enter a Halloween party sponsored by a local Charlotte charity—more than twenty minutes now, and they hadn’t even arrived at the check-in booth a dozen yards inside the cemetery’s dramatic front gate—had actually been the best part of his day. It didn’t even matter that his Dracula costume was ridiculously uncomfortable, from the fangs to the sticky pomade plastered to his head forming an obscene widow’s peak, to the polyester cape that seemed to trap his body’s warmth. He felt like he was lugging around his own personal sauna on an already unseasonably warm October night. He’d still have chosen a two-hour wait in the car with Gina over the day he’d spent corralled in his office, waiting for word from San Francisco.

But as the big moment had finally occurred—Elon signing his deal, officially taking over Twitter—there had been nothing but crickets. No email from the new boss telling his employees how excited he was, no comments about what the plan would be over the next few days or weeks, no comfort in the face of the many rumors that were now flying through the company, via text and tweet and Slack. Nothing but goddamn crickets.

Mark had stayed in touch with his team throughout the afternoon, mostly by Zoom. As the firings of Parag, Bret, and the rest of the top-tier managers had made the news, Mark had done his best to keep his charges calm, explaining that he was in the same boat—and although he’d heard all the same rumors they had, he believed that retaining talented employees would have to be a priority for new management. The goal was to make Twitter better, not tear it apart. When those firings were followed by the odd and confusing messages sent to the thousands of engineers at the

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