Elon Musk loves sharing cryptic tweets.
Whether it’s posting a poem about beans with a hidden message about Dogecoin or sharing memes, Musk isn’t new to the Twitter thing.
And after longtime Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced he has stepped down from his position, it was only fitting that Musk would have a special tweet in mind to commemorate the news.
With no words as the caption, Musk tweeted out a sole image, leaving many raising an eyebrow or two.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 1, 2021
In the photo, there are two images - one with new Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal next to a photoshopped snap of a distressed Jack Dorsey, and one with the former social media mogul removed.
The original image depicted Stalin and his pal Nikolai Yezhov, who was the man pictured to the right of Stalin. Years later, however, Stalin apparently made the decision to remove Yezhov from this photograph at the Moscow Canal. In addition to editing out Yezhov, photo retouchers also inserted a new level of water to cover up the space where Yezhov once stood.
“...Stalin knew the value of photographs in both the historical record and his use of mass media to influence the Soviet Union, they often disappeared from photos, too,” History.com noted.
The publication further explained Stalin and Yezhov’s feud, “Stalin used a large group of photo retouchers to cut his enemies out of supposedly documentary photographs. One such erasure was Nikola Yezhov, a secret police official who oversaw Stalin’s purges.”
“For a while Yezhov worked at Stalin’s right hand, interrogating, falsely accusing and ordering the execution of thousands of Communist Party officials. But in 1938, Yezhov fell from Stalin’s favor after being usurped by one of his own deputies,” they added.
So what did Musk mean by sharing that photo? Perhaps no more than an attempt to stir the pot but nonetheless it looks like he is content Dorsey will no longer be a part of his go-to app.