In the hours after the New York Daily News, a 99-year-old tabloid known for its punchy front pages, laid off half its newsroom staff, a few tweets surfaced from the paper’s account featuring some pretty hilarious GIFs.
On Monday, after an email from newspaper publisher Tronc to the staff notified them that 50 percent of its roughly 85 employees would be cut, the Twitter account shared a GIF of John Travolta’s Vincent Vega looking around aimlessly.
The darkly humorous meme, which has since been deleted, is likely a nod to the paper’s unknown future.
It’s also fascinating because its unclear who might’ve sent it. The entirety of the Daily News’ social team was let go, according to a tweet from former employee Candace Amos.
After the initial tweet, a tweet with a story link, likely already scheduled, was sent out. After that? Another great GIF with a powerful message: “It’s a mad house!”
It was followed by an epic third tweet tagging Tronc that featured Sean Connery in “The Untouchables,” saying, “They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That’s the Chicago way!”
Those tweets have since been deleted. Luckily, we have screenshots.
The responses to the tweets have been overwhelmingly positive online, with many celebrating whoever decided to use their last vestiges of power (i.e., passwords) to drag their former employer:
UPDATE: 4:10 p.m. ― Later on Monday afternoon, yet another tweet was posted. This one linked to Twitter’s page that explains how to reset a lost or forgotten password and was accompanied by the eyes emoji. The tweet is likely a nod to whoever is running the account and how they have yet to revoke access from the previous owners.
That tweet has also since been deleted.
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