A man calls out Vice Media’s CEO after the executive complains about receiving thumbs-down emojis from terminated employees at a virtual town hall meeting.
In a TikTok with over 1.3 million views as of Tuesday, content creator @therealcornpop takes Vice CEO Bruce Dixon to task for his “embarrassing” behavior.
“F*cking embarrassing for Vice to even allow that town hall to go that way,” @therealcornpop begins.
He says Vice recently laid off “all of their staff” because the company is “in complete shambles.” The company hosted a town hall where it announced to terminated employees that they had lost their jobs, causing many to react with “thumbs-down” emojis as the virtual town hall continued.
According to Fortune, Dixon announced in a Feb. 22 staff memo plans to shut down the Vice website and lay off hundreds of employees the following week. The news comes a year after Vice filed for bankruptcy, with a group of lenders buying the company for $350 million. Vice was valued at $5.7 billion in 2017, The Associated Press reports.
Vice employees were then forced to wait for days until the scheduled town hall to know their fate within the company. It was there that Dixon and COO Cory Haik delivered the news of their termination while employees reacted and protested in real-time with a flood of thumbs-down emojis.
“The CEO had the f*cking nerve to say that it was ‘impossible to ignore’ the deluge of thumbs-down emojis that people are sending in the chat as they are quite literally losing their jobs,” @therealcornpop says.
He then criticizes the corporate model of a town hall, claiming its focus and goals are nothing like the traditional New England town hall, which gathers townspeople and town counselors for real dialogue and perspective-sharing.
“Corporations took [town halls] and said, ‘This is a great opportunity to have an open dialogue with our workers!’ Except execs and corporations don’t want to have a dialogue; they just want to be able to say something to everyone all at once. … It’s not a town hall; it’s an assembly,” he argues.
It’s important to note that while discussion did not seem to be encouraged at the Vice town hall, several online sources state that company town halls, even those held virtually, should have a Q&A portion.
@therealcornpop questions whether a leader who finds the negative reactions of terminated employees “too distracting” to continue said firing should be in a position to terminate at all.
“You have the stones to remove people’s economic security completely from underneath them, but you don’t have the stones to keep the sentence moving even as they throw things at you that can’t touch you?” he presses. “Maybe you shouldn’t be in charge of their livelihoods then.”
CEO Bruce Dixon eventually ends the virtual town hall, stating that the team will “organize this in a way where [they] can actually give the information to people who want to receive it.”
@therealcornpop ♬ original sound – therealcornpop
“Laying people off in a mass setting and then being surprised when the masses are united against you,” one viewer observed in the comments section.
“Town hall but cameras off and all mics muted,” another person wrote.
“It’s not enough for them to control us, they want us to love them,” came a third response.
“Vice executives received hundreds of thousands in bonuses just a month before the layoff of its employees,” a fourth viewer claimed.
It’s true: According to HuffPost, senior executives at Vice received over $1 million in “retention bonuses” one month after the company filed for bankruptcy in May 2023 and just a single day after it slashed over 100 jobs in a first wave of layoffs.
Some viewers suggested that the executives expected “civility” from the workers and were incensed when the worker’s behavior did not meet their expectations.
“‘It’s impossible to ignore your anger, but I would like to,'” one commenter wrote.
The Daily Dot has reached out to Vice via email and @therealcornpop via TikTok direct message for more information.