In a fiery farewell address that was, fittingly, plagued by audio lag and a frozen video feed, Skype’s CEO Landon Bablandananavan delivered a scathing message to the public following Microsoft’s announcement that the iconic video calling service will be shut down after two decades.
“Let’s not sugarcoat it,” the CEO began, visibly exasperated. “Skype didn’t die of natural causes. It was murdered. And the culprit is every single one of you who jumped ship the moment something shinier came along.”
Bablandananavan seemed baffled by the platform’s fall from grace. “We were the pioneers! We were the verb! People didn’t just call, they ‘Skyped.’ That’s the holy grail of tech. And yet, the second you heard about Zoom, you all acted like you’d never heard of us. It’s like we were your high school sweetheart, and you left us for the new kid with a fancy background blur.”
He went on to lament the fickleness of users, pointing out that Skype had rolled out features like custom backgrounds and new call layouts, “but apparently, that wasn’t enough. No, you needed to be able to host a thousand-person call with your extended family and their pets.”
The CEO also took a jab at Microsoft’s decision to fold Skype into Teams. “Now we’re being absorbed into a platform people only use because their boss makes them. That’s our legacy? From household name to corporate afterthought?”
In a rare moment of vulnerability, the CEO admitted, “Even my own mother asked if we could ‘set up a family Zoom.’ I mean, come on.”
He closed the address with a final plea: “If you ever loved us, you could have at least ghosted us gently. But no, you had to make it a public spectacle. So congratulations, world. Skype is dead, and it’s all your fault.”
The press conference ended, appropriately, with the CEO’s video freezing on a look of utter disbelief.
Here is the official video statement:
Disclaimer: This is a satirical piece inspired by CollegeHumor’s “A Message From the Skype CEO.” Landon Bablandananavan is not a real person, and no actual Skype CEOs were harmed. Probably.
