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Since overpaying for Twitter to the tune of $44 billion back in late 2022, Elon Musk has spent the less-than-12-months since dismantling its famed verification system (and therefore gutting the site’s most useful function — aggregating news), chasing power users off the platform, and has wiped away anywhere from $4 billion to $20 billion in brand value after he decided to change the company’s name to X.
In the midst of rebranding the platform to X — instead of using terms like “tweet” and “retweet”, which have become a part of our cultural lexicon, the platform now calls its content “posts” and “reposts” — Musk had a massive glowing “X” sign installed on top of the Twitter’s headquarters.
Not only is the sign illuminated, but it’s both insanely bright and has a strobe-light effect. Given its absurdity, a tweet basically saying “imagine living across from this” went viral, as it has almost 60,000 likes at the time of this writing.
A Twitter user who apparently lives across the street from Twitter HQ then chimed in, telling the internet to imagine no more as this is now his reality. At the time of this writing, his tweet has over 185,000 likes.
Here’s another angle I forgot I had that shows the X strobing.
Also, my apartment building needs a bath. pic.twitter.com/t66erPuDlL
— Christopher J. Beale (@realchrisjbeale) July 29, 2023
Because Elon is Elon, though, the sign was apparently installed without the proper permitting, which has resulted in the city of San Francisco opening a complaint and investigation into the matter.
“A building permit is required to make sure the sign is structurally sound and installed safely. Planning review and approval is also necessary for the installation of this sign,” Patrick Hannan, a spokesman for the San Francisco Department of Building Inspection said in a statement, according to the New York Times.
Despite all of the branding changes that Musk has made to the platform, the website is still called Twitter.com.