Do you have, like, evidence of this, or is it just plausible sounding vibes?
I imagine Twitter being pretty left-leaning was one factor, but I think you also have to consider things like Elon simply being the world's biggest egotist and also very stupid, and most banks being able to see that this would be a terrible investment.
The best plans are the ones where you gain an advantage whether it succeeds or fails. For Musk’s fascist backers, him buying Twitter was such a plan: if he successfully turns it into a right-wing disinformation platform they win, and if he destroys it utterly they also win.
None of us will know the full story for a long time, but it seems likely Elon was a useful idiot that his backers knew would be like letting a bull lose in a China shop. Not that Twitter was not problematic in a lot of ways, but its sort of decentralized communication did make things harder for despotic assholes for a bit
I believe you’re underestimating him. An idiot, he’s not. It all kind of fits with Musk rolling over on Ukraine. He always has some weak excuse for all his actions. Because the US public believes lies, he gets away with it.
People act like twitter is somehow unique and irreplaceable. In reality with the rise of the fediverse breaking the network effect couldblet a genie out of the bottle they can't put back: decentralized communication that isn't beholden to corperate entities easily pressured by governments
It's a theory that doesn't make much sense to me. If he wanted to censor protests, blowing up twitter is counterproductive because now people will go elsewhere. Anyone can just make a website for $5/mo
I would say the fact that he said he would do it, before buying Twitter and proceed to actually crash it, is pretty good proof.
After that we got even more proofs when the story about his daughter not wanting to talk to him anymore and him saying that she got brainwashed by her “leftist school” or smth like that, it didn’t happen suddenly, she probably started giving him shit for it before that story.
There’s never gonna be any real proof about it but Elon has proved so many times that he’s not that stupid, he’s just fuck you money rich and he gives zero fuck, because he realized that he can.
I really can’t believe that Elon is willing to make himself the heal and devalue his “brand” for this wild conspiracy theory shit. He’s just a narcissistic, autistic, wealthy, douchebag. It’s the obvious and most reasonable explanation. He’s so delusional he didn’t realize how horrible his ideas are.
Its likely that Musk was a useful idiot in this situation. He backed himself into a corner w/ his dumb tweets and ended up being on the hook for the purchase of twitter. Then he either needed to pay a billion dollar fine or buy twitter. Thats when arab oil money volunteered to fund his blunder likely because it was a win-win for them. They either make money off of the success if twitter gets better, have huge influence over trends if twitter remained the default information platform, or deter future expensive rebellions if twitter was decimated.
Musk’s idiocy gave dictators their opportunity to deal a deft blow to their largest enemy, information, and he probably just thinks that he’s a genius who earned that investment.
It’s the whole reason he turned to the right, the lack of shame or standards. He was a darling if the centre/moderate left when he was the king of renewable energy, electric cars, space travel, etc. But then he realised those people won’t just blindly clap everything you do during the incident with the cave diver. The right on the othe hand will cheer anything sfor someone with the right views, like what’s happened with Laurance Fox last week.
Yeah sure, Elon totally intentionally obliterated his own image among progressives and liberals to prevent another Arab spring because he is a very stable 10D chess master who’s always a trillion steps ahead…
Nothing was intentional. He has no clue. He bought Twitter because he’s a pissy little man-baby on adderall who can’t keep his mouth shut.
And he’s ruining everything because he has no idea what he’s doing and he fired the persons who knew.
It’s not really a benefit of the doubt at all. People just rarely have a grand intricate plan. If you see someone being impulsive and stupid all the time why would you think anything they do is/was part of some grand plan of theirs? It’s way more likely he walked ass backwards into anything we come up with.
I definitely believe he got into the situation as an idiot. But he didn’t purchase twitter 100% by himself. I think his financial backers absolutely intended to destroy twitter. Or at least sabotage its ability to spread free speech.
From what I can tell, he has some level of technical competence, more in engineering than in software, and basically not at all with people. I'm not sure if he has a neurodivergence in the area that prevents him from acquiring an understanding of people, or if he basically regards other humans as objects to be shifted around in bulk, and thus not worth considering, but his career demonstrates both him fucking up socially, and him being played by people who want something from him.
He does not have any level of technical competence.
He understands cars or rockets the way a kid who is really into models does: he can tell you dimensions, horsepower, or payload capacity. He can’t apply any of that knowledge - they’re just memorized stats to him. When you get him talking about what those stats mean, he makes stuff the fuck up based on the reaction of the room. He’s getting sued for it right now… Again
He tries to make it sound like he’s this flawed genius with a grand plan to save humanity, but he’s just a billionaire who loves collecting futuristic looking toys to brag about
Oh no, it was intentional on the part of the SA and foreign backers. Elon is the scape goat. They bought it for the man-sized rich toddler and let nature take its course. Can you think of someone less reliable to put in charge of Twitter to cause it to crash and burn?
I mean, the shareholders of all of his other companies let him stick around. Are the shareholders of Tesla in on some plan to watch him decimate the value of their investments? At best, they’re being held hostage by the impact of him throwing a fit and liquidating his massive personal holdings.
I think the market is just trying to figure out how divorce him knowing how much damage he could do on his way out
The Muskovite purchasing Xitter (“X” being “sh” like in Chinese “xiao”) took Xitter private. It’s not “the market,” it’s “a handful of private investors.” Not trying to play semantic games but Xitter’s investors are not representative of an open market.
On the fourth day, God made Lemmy and He saw that it was good.
On the fifth day, God made Elon Musk and He saw that it was bad. Really bad. So bad that he made Nazis so that Elon Musk would look less bad in comparison, but then Elon joined them instead and gave them a louder microphone.
“Holy shit!” said God and He went back to making other humans, but a shitty little piece of Elon was still stuck in the mold and God kept accidentally making other shit-humans, like Roy Cohn, that professor who did the university prison experiment, and finally got out the last piece of shit and named that one Carrot Top.
God was so ashamed that He decided to go take a depression-nap. He still needed a way to cover up the mess He made, so He gave children the ability to get cancer and went to sleep. And to this day, still He sleeps soundly to the cacophony of everyone crying out for help to escape the living hell that we live in, populated by a bunch of shitty cartoonish villains.
For as much of a genius that he thinks he is, why didn’t he do literally nothing after he comes on board and watch how twitter functions first before he starts firing people? Wouldn’t you want hire more people instead if you want to implement new features for the super app he is dreaming of?
Hey, if this level of decision making is all it takes to become a tech CEO, maybe I should become a tech CEO if this acting thing doesn’t work out for some reason. Seems pretty easy.
Ego! He is absolutely convinced he’s a genius and smarter than everyone else. People sniffing his farts and praising him are not helping either. There’s only one thing Musk is good at and that’s riding top of the Dunning-Kruger wave.
I am sure a guy that helps advance EV industry and develops spaceX knows a thing or two on running a company. From my understanding, since he bought Twitter at such high price, he had to cut cost before he was swimming in negative cash flow.
The guy is not a genius in any way at all. Maybe research how he actually got where he is. It sure as hell wasn’t because he’s some kind of revolutionary person.
He didn’t design any EV or rockets. On top of that the best mode of transportation in the future is train rail. He completely stopped the California Hyperloop and now is digging holes underground with le epic meme company name.
Little correction here, Musk proposed the pie in the sky Hyperloop idea to stop the California High Speed Rail from being built.
If you are ever in LA, you should drive by the sad looking Hyperloop prototype next to SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne (don’t get out of the car, not a safe area) and you will immediately see how ridiculous the entire Hyperloop idea is.
I’m convinced that he “made the best out of a bad situation” once he realized he couldn’t get out of the acquisition.
He’s not doing any of this for any other reason than trying to destroy one of the largest platforms for leftist voices in the U.S./world. He’s pretty successfully accomplishing his goal, with that frame of mind.
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, but Elon really isn’t that smart and he certainly isn’t a genius. Elon has a BA in Physics from a school known for business degrees. He also got a BS in Business, but UPenn and Wharton are known more for how hard it is to get in than how hard the classes are.
The website CollegeVine says UPenn is known as the “Social Ivy” and “UPenn’s admissions is highly-selective, but students applying to the UPenn College of Arts & Science (CAS) will find it less academically competitive than schools like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford (although exceptional academics are still a must).”
By the way, he started college in 1990, transferred to UPenn in 1992, and states he graduated in 1995, but UPenn refutes that saying he graduated in 1997. This is a school where 96% of those who are accepted graduate within 150% of the degree time (4 year degree within 6 years) (www.collegetuitioncompare.com/edu/…/graduation/).
Musk of course says he completed the courses in 1995, but there was some sort of mixup with an English and History credit that delayed the degree by 2 years.
I’m typically not one to judge what degrees someone pursues or how long they take to finish those degrees, but when people start calling someone who loses $40 billion a genius the gloves come off.
IDK how helpful words like “smart” and “genius” are as predictors of academic success anyway.
A wise person studies consistently and conscientiously and gets good grades. A wise & wealthy person would also hire people to have great ideas for them and be frank in telling them how terrible their own ideas are.
He named it X because he’s a puerile man child that wanted PayPal to be X.com before Peter Thiel forced him into being a billionaire, kicking and screaming, and he’s never really gotten over it.
What’s easier to believe? He made a terrible financial decision and consistently made worse decisions to make one of the worlds largest social media platforms into the ground or he just an immature man child that has no goal other than to be edgy?
I think it’s easier to believe that powerful people saw it as an opportunity to control a popular social space for controlling discourse and dissent. Western folks might not think of it much, but social media did some good before. One Egyptian dude even named his daughter Facebook. Some of these places still have literal kings.
I think there’s a 3rd option that he knows he’s making it shitty and horrible and it is on purpose and was the goal. Maybe not always. It might have started as stupid posturing, but it seems like there’s goals now and there’s buy in from authoritarian parties.
Twitter wasn’t even worth $44B when he paid $44B for it. Hence why the board jumped on the offer. Musk didn’t even think it was worth that much, hence why he tried to weasel his way out of the deal after the board called his bluff.
Unfortunately this is the equivalent of missing a step when going down a set of stairs for Elon with his mass of wealth - not enough to qualify as a fall for him
Getting called out for wearing his cowboy hat backwards the other day probably bothered him more than losing $40B
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