Master of horror Stephen King sent a chilling tweet about Elon Musk’s controversial decision to rebrand the social media platform as X.
“Twitter Twitter Twitter Twitter Twitter,” the “It” author wrote in a post on Thursday.
He repeated the Musk-owned app’s former name 14 times before adding, “And in case you didn’t get that: Twitter.”
Musk — who changed his profile picture to X’s generic-looking logo from a headshot of himself in a $7,500 armor-clad costume at Heidi Klum’s Halloween party last year — responded with “xx” and a kissing emoji.
One mimicked King’s sentiment, strategically typing out the word “Twitter” 13 times arranged in the letter “X.”
“I’m on Stephen King’s side on this one,” another wrote.
However, others didn’t seem to care about what “The Shining” author’s input.
“Grow up. Grow up. Grow up. Grow up,” one response said.
“I think he’s drunk or on something,” another tweeted.
The mixed responses come after a wave of hesitancy to adopt the new branding, which also ditched the iconic blue bird logo that became globally recognizable over the past 17 years.
“Elon Musk hasn’t gotten over his X,” Irish YouTuber Jacksepticeye joked.
“They’re changing the Twitter logo to an “X”. Literally the icon I click on when I want to close something on my computer,” comic book writer Dan Slott added.
Others were more pointed in their criticism of Musk’s decision. Gary Black, the Future Fund co-founder and a noted Tesla bull, openly questioned the logic behind the move.
“I’m struggling with rebranding Twitter to X and losing the little blue bird’s brand equity,” Black said, adding that “advertisers who dislike change may wait to see how the branding change impacts advertising efficacy.”
The rebrand is the latest in a series of controversial moves by Musk, who is attempting to lure back advertisers that fled the platform over its loose content moderation practices.
It’s also marks another step towards Musk’s vision for X, which is to be the “everything app.”
“Buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app,” Musk tweeted in his first public confirmation of the proposal back in October 2022 — shortly after he purchased then-Twitter for $44 billion.
Musk also changed Twitter’s corporate name to “X Corp” earlier this year.
The Post has sought comment from X, which recently changed the auto-response on its press email from a poop emoji to: “We’ll get back to you soon.”
Musk is a vocal proponent of the concept of a “super app” such as China’s WeChat, which offers services ranging from payments to food delivery and ride-sharing.
However, he’s faced challenges in his quest to rival WeChat, such as financial hardships and the debut of Meta’s competitive platform Threads.
Threads, which has an interface that is already strikingly similar to X’s, became even more identical to its Musk-owned counterpart this week when it unveiled a chronological newsfeed.
As of Tuesday, Threads lets its users sort and view their app in a chronological format based on the accounts they follow or in the original, algorithmically driven “For You” feed, which features a mixture of followed and recommended accounts.
“Ask and you shall receive,” Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a Threads post responding to a user who had requested the feature.
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