The Ugly Honesty of Elon Musk’s Twitter Rebrand

I woke up Sunday to find I had begun using the social network formerly known as Twitter. The app had updated to show the new name chosen by its owner: X. Now, underneath the friendly and familiar blue icon with a white bird, that letter alone was displayed—X—as if my iPhone was affirming that Elon Musk’s Twitter had become an error. Soon after, the bird icon disappeared, too, in favor of a white-on-black 𝕏.

The change has rolled out slowly. First the website rebranded, and then, by the end of last week, Musk had dismantled the Twitter signage on the company’s San Francisco headquarters and on its rooftop. (It has since been .) Reprising the creeper thinking that inspired Musk to name Tesla’s models the “S,” “3,” “X,” and “Y,” such,” Twitter also reportedly gave several conference rooms new, -oriented names, including “eXposure” and, once again, “.”