Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism. Source: Getty Images
If we were a top executive at X-formerly-Twitter, a social media site used by hundreds of millions of people which is known for its incredible levels of toxicity and ruthless trolling, we’d probably avoid sharing too many details from our personal lives on there — but that’s just us.
Anyway, on Wednesday, X’s head of product Nikita Bier shared some of the grueling tribulations inflicted on him by an uncooperative chunk of chicken, earning him instant ridicule.
“Ate a piece of fried chicken tonight. It somehow tore part of my throat going down,” Bier wrote in a now-deleted tweet. “Now I can barely swallow (or speak.)”
Adding to his woes, Bier said the doctor told him he couldn’t get an endoscopy for at least four to six weeks.
“This feels like a Kafka novel,” Bier added. (Is it just us, or is Kafka in the air this week?)
It certainly sucks to not be able to see a doctor for what could be a serious medical issue. But Bier’s tale earned little sympathy — and heapings of mockery — from X users. And it became a newsworthy enough item on there that it earned an official Grok-edited summary in the site’s trending tab, which also includes dozens of viral tweets roasting Bier’s (in)ability to chew food.
Much of the jeering centered on how culinary blockages appeared to be a recurring problem for Bier. In late December 2023, for example, Bier posted about how he had to go to the emergency room after getting a “piece of steak” stuck in his throat for four hours, which was dislodged within minutes after he was given a glucagon injection. (“Doctors are Gods,” Bier enthused at the time.)
Weeks later, Bier made another post complaining about the $1,400 bill he was slapped with after visiting a doctor for yet another piece of steak that got stuck in his throat, which just so happened to dislodge itself before the doctor could actually treat him.
A consultant who’s worked for numerous tech adjacent firms and has been hailed as a “king of virality,” Bier was appointed as head of product by Elon Musk in June last year, amid X losing advertisers and bleeding users. At the time, Bier joked he had “posted my way to the top.”
Before joining, Bier had also served as an adviser for the app Protector, a rent-a-mercenary service that allows you to hire a private detail of armed guards and drivers. Bier bluntly called it “Uber with guns.”
His time at X so far doesn’t appear to have really moved the needle much, as the site’s user base continues to be in steady decline over half a year on, with some data suggesting it’s been overtaken by Threads, Meta’s Twitter clone. But at least the users who’ve stuck around like him, right?
“The only man keeping this site afloat is someone who doesn’t seem to realize he needs to chew his food,” mocked one user. Another patronizingly described him as if he were a snake. “Nikita Bier dislocates his jaw and swallows food unchewed, relying on his powerful gastric acid to break down the meals over several weeks,” the user wrote. Brutal.
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