On the morning of Friday, October 22, 2022, Rahul Sonwalkar was at the gym in San Francisco. It was a cool, cloudy day, and just around the corner, a clique of journalists and camera crews had assembled at the doors of 1355 Market St, otherwise known as “The Twitter Building.” That Wednesday, Elon Musk walked through those doors carrying a sink. “Let that sink in!” the new owner tweeted.
But the best, most elaborate play on words that week did not belong to the boss. It’d belong to one of his (fake, not real) employees: Rahul Ligma, an invention of Rahul Sonwalkar. That Friday morning, Sonwalkar noticed the cameras when he walked into the gym. An hour later, they were still there, still trained at the doors of Twitter, waiting for something, anything.
Sonwalkar, wondering why the press didn’t have anything better to do, texted a friend of his, asking whether he’d want to pull a joke on the cameras: pretend to be employees that were sacked by Elon Musk leaving the building with their belongings. The friend, Daniel, brought two boxes. Each had a copy of Michelle Obama’s memoir, “Becoming.” They turned the corner toward the cameras, walking with long faces. For the first time that morning, the cameras moved abruptly.