Twitter‘s future after its acquisition by Elon Musk is being questioned, as both artists and regular users of the platforms erupted in panic last night.

Elon Musk gave Twitter employees an ultimatum yesterday, saying that they should be ready for a ‘hardcore’ work environment or they could leave, and leave they did.

The ex-employees claim the platform is extremely close to shutting down, which sparked mass panic in its chronically online user base.

The future is looking extremely dire regardless for artists, since Pixiv, DeviantArt and Tumblr all had corporate meddling interfere with the freedom of its users and artists, souring the public’s opinion of those platforms.

Speaking of Tumblr, the blog-based site decided to poke fun at the situation and posted the following:

Readers with good memory may remember that Tumblr was one of the first social media sites to ban NSFW content on its platform, causing a mass exodus of its users to Twitter, making the irony of the situation palpable.

There is a parallel to be made about abusive relationships here, but I won’t bother. Maybe there’s a reason why the post was made on Twitter and not on Tumblr.

Twitter’s current owner does not seem to be bothered by the situation, instead reporting that the site hit an all-time-high usage.

Musk is currently joking on his Twitter timeline about the situation, posting memes while Twitter users have a collective meltdown about the uncertain future of the platform.

It is uncertain if Musk views the situation as a big joke or is currently trying to play off the death of the platform in the hopes that it can be salvaged:

Only time will tell if Twitter will rise up stronger from this situation or crash and burn completely, users can only hope that another suitable platform shows up to take its place if the worst happens.

If you want to see more about social media falling apart then check out our article about Pixiv’s latest decision concerning artist freedom.

This is Niche Gamer Tech. In this column, we regularly cover tech and things related to the tech industry.