'Rahul Ligma' Explains How He And 'Daniel Johnson' Trolled The Media By Pretending To Be Laid-Off Twitter Employees

Elon Musk's Twitter Acquisition has inspired a lot of talk, including discourse surrounding massive layoffs that sparked controversy in recent weeks.

About a week ago, two men known only as Rahul Ligma and Daniel Johnson saw this as a golden opportunity and took it. Just before Halloween, the pair went outside of Twitter HQ in San Francisco with cardboard boxes and pretended to be recently laid-off employees, effectively pranking the mainstream media and forcing them to publish corrections.

You may have read about this little media trolling escapade, but here's the full story, featuring an exclusive look into the prank's backstory from none other than Ligma himself.

What Is the "Rahul Ligma and Daniel Johnson" Meme?

This tale of trolling begins on October 28th when Elon Musk officially became the CEO of Twitter as his acquisition of the company was finalized. Shortly after it happened, rumors that Musk would lay off workers started to spread.

Sure enough, Musk was laying off workers in droves, including ex-CEO Parag Agrawal, General Counsel Sam Edgett, Chief Legal Officer Vijaya Gadde and numerous other employees. Last week, the laid-off employees started posting under the hashtag "#OneTeam" to share their status at the company and their condolences to those who were let go.

While this was a gloomy event for most, a man now known as Rahul Ligma decided to do a little trolling as the rumors spread.

That same day on October 28th, he took a cardboard box, stood in front of Twitter HQ and pretended to be a recently laid-off employee named "Rahul Ligma." A CNBC employee took the bait and reported on the story as if he was a legitimate employee, only being alerted to the meaning behind "ligma" after the story was up for hours.

We DMed Rahul Ligma himself on Twitter (@0interestrates) earlier this week to learn what inspired him to pull the prank, and he told us:

"I work out every morning at the gym that is in the same building as the twitter HQ. Saw a bunch of cameras outside that morning while walking in and thought that it was just kinda crazy that these people are outside waiting desperately for some action to happen. So middle of my workout i thought it would be really funny if i walked out with a box and they fell for it. So I texted a friend and asked him to pull up with a box. he pulled up with two and we just walked out and they fell for it."

What Was the Response to The Rahul Ligma Daniel Johnson Prank?

The story went up on CNBC and Bloomberg, both of which were corrected after Twitter started reacting to the interview with Ligma and Johnson and pointing out how odd their last names were, especially when spoken one after the other.

Most people couldn't believe that the reporters fell for the ligma prank, while others saw it as an example of the mainstream media's faults. Even Elon Musk got in on the fun, tweeting out a screenshot of the pre-corrected article and writing, "Ligma Johnson had it coming🍆 💦" to over 650,000 likes.

We asked Ligma if he was surprised that the media fell for the prank and he told us he wasn't, writing:

"I wasn't really surprised tbh. I was hoping at least one guy there would get it and they would turn off the cameras but instead, they kept going with the questions lmao. It was all improv including the names."

Throughout the interview, Ligma and Johnson sprinkled as many memes as possible in there, including a my wife's son meme.

At one point, Ligma starts riffing on Michelle Obama's book, which is in his cardboard box. We asked him why the Obama book and he told us:

"Daniel just brought the book with the box for some reason. When I was running out of stuff to say, I just picked up the book and started to talk about it. Serendipity."

For the full details on the Rahul Ligma and Daniel Johnson prank, be sure to check out our entry on the meme here for even more information.