Yeah, no. Musk bought Twitter because he HAD to. He very publicly made comments about buying Twitter at absolute meme-stock prices, but didn’t disclose that he already owned a LOT of Twitter stock. So, when his comments predictably increased the price of Twitter stock, he had two choices: Either it was just talk, and he was BLATANTLY guilty of stock manipulation and the Feds put a target on his back, or he acts like he totally meant it.
So he went with option two, acted like he was serious and wanted to buy twitter. Then he tried everything he could think of to kill the deal, accusing Twitter of all sorts of wrongdoing and lies, but Twitter was more careful than that. They got their shit right, and Musk couldn’t back out. So he bought Twitter, rather than go to prison.
The fact that he could also kill the tracking twitter account was completely incidental. Musk is an idiot, but even he isn’t that stupid. Musk initially offered $5,000 to the account holder to stop, and then balked at the return offer for $50,000. Now, I may not be a billionaire tech-bro, but I’m pretty sure that spending $50,000 to achieve a goal is preferable to spending $44,000,000,000. He’s dumb, but he’s not that dumb.
Yes AND he’s desperate for approval from those he sees as peers. Twitter enabled things like the Arab spring and was a useful tool for protest organizing and shining a light on horrific things - it was a lot of bullshit too, but it was also that.
The Saudis and other authoritative, fascistic dickheads with billions all over the world benefit from a useless Twitter and the decreased threat that it can be a tool used to coordinate where the guillotines get set up. And long story short, we now have a useless joke of a Twitter.
It was win win for him and the people propping him up, either his delusions that he would be successful with Twitter came true (they didn’t) or his likely failure makes all those ghouls happy and he sees indirect benefit from unrelated investment/contracts and someone telling him, “you’re the coolest, bro” and him replying, “watch, hey look, are you looking? Look how fast I can run, are you looking? I’m probably the fastest dinner ever actually” [Proceeds to run slow, trip and fall on his face]
I don’t think he would have gone to jail, he’s too rich for that and that’s not how justice works apparently but I thought there was a heap of stuff that was going to come out in discovery during the trial that was so embarrassing and damning that he preferred to pay the money
Also the part where Twitter has invested in s tier lawyers and brought and iron clad contract that heavily favored them. Which being an entitled idiot he agreed to. So when he tried to back out he literally couldn’t afford the penalties because he didn’t have enough cash and getting it would loose him control of his companies.
Definitely not him being dumb and entitled. Surely it was a petty $50k grudge.
I think you’re giving him too much credit. The announcement that he owned Twitter shares already hiked the price. If he wanted to short pump and dump he should’ve just kept his mouth shut, get on the board and then sell his stocks. The initial hike to his 9% ownership was on par with his buy offer hike. If his plan was to pump the company he could’ve done it without the legal trouble. Also the second price hike was after he had already made a public bid for the company and the company had accepted the offer. At that point he was locked in to buying the company. There was speculation if such a deal is allowed to go through, but the reality is that unless someone else steps in Musk had two options, he either buys the company or he gets taken to court and is forced to buy the company.
He had to buy the company, but not because he was risking going to jail. He had to buy it because he screwed himself over by making the bid in the first place. I don’t get the need to make him seem like an intelligent man. He didn’t have any grand schemes or ulterior motives or someone else footing the bill. He simply made a horrible move, probably because he’s a huge manchild who didn’t like that the CEO of Twitter didn’t completely lick his boot.
He wasn’t trying to short Twitter. He was trying to pump and dump. Though the dumping probably would have been done more tactfully than the standard pump and dump. Musk getting publicity for holding the stock helps to keep the value up. Tesla’s been inflated forever, and he thought he could do the same with Twitter.
Yes, the primary reason he bought Twitter is that he screwed up during his pump and dump scheme. There are several reasons he was looking at Twitter in particular, including the jet tracking, how much he loves Twitter anyway, his hate for being told what he can and can not post, etc. I also suspect he’s lost most of the people who will tell him the truth and is now surrounded by right-wing grifters (for politics and aiming his money, they’re smart enough to not try to take the money directly). All these reasons were part of why the pump and dump was plausible as something else, and why it was Twitter that it happened to. Probably not even Musk knows how much of the intent to buy was legit (though not for 44b) and how much of it was the pump and dump.
He had a scheme; I don’t know that I’d call it grand.
I don’t remember the specifics but I think it was a sort of a “no questions asked” kind of bid, where he chose to not do the due diligence. He did try to play the “My estimation of Twitter was misled because I wasn’t disclosed to vital information” card and it got him nowhere.
I honestly don’t think he was TRYING to do anything but shitpost. It didn’t look like a well thought out plan, it looked like an idiot talking out of his ass and realizing that his memes were also crimes.
If he had really cared about the jet tracking thing, he wouldn’t have burned $44b buying twitter to handle it. He just would have bribed / lobbied politicians to put a “public safety” exemption into effect for public data about flights. Make it so that private jets aren’t available in the public feeds / databases. Getting a law like that passed would have cost him tens of millions rather than tens of billions.
He gives them the old razzle dazzle, and even tech investors get so impressed with his confidence and his technobabble and his statements like “This is ready to ship today” that they’ve just lined up to give him money.
I think what’s happening now is that the blush is coming off the rose. Elon first got his money because he was involved as a founder in a company that he was fired from because of incompetence, but kept a large enough founder equity stake that he cashed out a billionaire. Then, because money was cheap and because you hit a tipping point where it’s easier to make money than lose money, he failed upwards.
Now reality is starting to catch up with him, and he’s in a panic. He’s psyched himself out enough that he’s turned pure Trump, doubling down and becoming more outrageous instead of taking his responsibility to his companies into account.
The only thing of his that is ever ready to ship today is his crowdfunding pre-orders and investment opportunities.
The rest of it is just bullshit, smoke and mirrors, inevitable delays, and gaslighting his cult into thinking he never previously promised something “ready within 3 years” would be completed last year.
I truly hope we eventually pass the tipping point where it becomes more widespread knowledge that he’s an incompetent “idea guy” instead of a visionary inventor.
It re-enforces the idea that he is a “genius” who is playing “4D Chess” and that he “has a plan” and not that he’s a fucking drug addled freak who is making decisions based on his emotional state at the time.
There was no plan, there’s never a plan. Rich people just play this game where, because they have enough money to insulate themselves from their bad decisions, they pretend that “this was always their plan.”
Anyone who thinks spending 44 billion dollars on shutting up a teenager constitutes a “genius plan” is already fully on-board the Musk cult. I don’t think there’s really much reinforcement happening.
I agree we shouldn’t pretend he’s anything less than a dumb asshole who got caught with his pants down.
I dunno man. A teenager baiting a billionaire into spending a significant amount of his fortune to shut him up sounds like the most successful troll in history to me.
Holy shit this dude fucking lives on his plane. Like I feel guilty about the 2-3x per year I fly to see family but this fucker has flown that far already in the past week. Why? Does he not know how to do a video call?
Ugh, I feel the same. I know the top 1% of the world or whatever emits tons and tons more CO2 per year than the other 99%, but I didn’t know it was this bad. That plane is flying multiple times per day. Sure Musk is probably not in it all the time, but that doesn’t matter.
Private jets should be banned all together, let’s see how quickly they suddenly find out the internet exists.
All air travel should have fuel and emissions tax. Normalize them to commercial airliners. That’ll incentivize larger, more efficient plane designs. It’ll also punish private jets. Also charge a fee for any planes not at least X% full. Also give discounts and waive fees for planes over X size that service under-served airports.
A bunch of regulations like this should make private planes prohibitively expensive, like 10-20x their current cost. But that’s a lot of legislation that huge corporations and billionaires would oppose.
Planes are already pretty fuel efficient per passenger. And larger planes are unlikely, because this would mean all runways they want to use must be extended so the can start and land there.
Commercial planes with high occupancy got somewhat efficient (until you compare to other modes of transportation), but private jets with 1 ego on board are incredibly fuel inefficient.
Planes are already pretty fuel efficient per passenger
Eh… They’re similar to cars for a similar distance. But, that still means gobs of CO2 emitted if you’re traveling from NY to LA, which would be a massive trip in a car.
That’s domestic flights in the UK which are stupidly short. Short and long haul flights are at 150g which is already less than ICE cars at ~170 and not far above the average bus at 100g. Though obviously no where near electrified rail.
People with private jets often charter them out when they’re not using them. The best place for an airplane is in the air. Only bad things happen when you let it sit around on the ground all the time. It’s not much different than commercial planes that spend most of their time in the air.
Sure, a private jet will have more emissions than an Airbus, but it’s a marginal increase. It’s not like rich people with their planes are producing a million times more pollution that wouldn’t exist if they didn’t have a private jet. They’re still going to fly, at least for longer trips.
It’s easy to go down a rabbit hole with this line of reasoning. Who else is using less efficient aircraft or taking unnecessary flights? Are all those police helicopter flights necessary? What about people flying to go party on an island somewhere versus some more noble purpose? Or airlines with a half empty flight? Meanwhile, it’s the oil companies producing the vast majority of carbon emissions while we squabble over travel itineraries and choice of aircraft.
If elon didn’t have a private jet and had to travel in a regular passenger plane, it would aboulutely make a difference I’m carbon emissions. Right now, we are seeing emissions from passenger planes AND private jets. Take away private jets and the passenger planes will still create the same emissions regardless. Your argument is that the addition of private jets are a “marginal increase” of emissions.
That makes no sense. Less planes = less emissions. Private jets + planes = more emissions. Just like, if most people took public transportation on the road. Busses + cars = more emissions than if there were no cars and only public transportation left. There would be less emissions if the wealthy traveled in a regular passenger plane like everyone else.
It’s easy to go down a rabbit hole with that kind of reasoning.
The point is that one plane can transport a large amount of passengers in one trip, compared to, transporting the same amount of passengers in a private jet would take multiple trips. Transport more people with less fuel use. This is why public transportation is so important. It actually does make a difference. Elon just likes his toys and doesn’t give a shit about the effect it has on the environment. That’s why he’s so focused on Mars.
This planet is doomed because of people like him, and he knows it. Otherwise, he would be investing his money into making the earth a better place instead of investing in trying to leave it.
Every private jet flight is wasteful. But, Elon Musk’s wealth fluctuates by up to $5 billion every single day. Even if he spent $5m a day on his jet, it would be an amount he wouldn’t even notice. He could literally buy a brand new private jet every single day and not notice the cost.
This follows classic maritime law: You don’t have to pay taxes if you live in the air. That is what my lawyer Chareth Cutestory said. I have the best lawyers
You shouldn’t really feel guilty about anything like that. Asking hundreds of millions to billions of people to drastically change their lives and practice austerity is insane while billionaires do whatever they want and corporations push legislation that makes it harder to conserve. Our meager efforts won’t matter much if the biggest offenders go pollute wantonly.
Individual’s biggest efforts are pushing for legislation and politicians who will curb corporate abuses. Everything is a drop in a bucket that’s already overflowing.
There’s a limit to what is ethical when it comes to the acceptance of one’s own carbon footprint. It’s OK to use plastic bottles every now and then, but fuck flying 3 times a year. This is part of the problem, and something that we’ll need to learn to live without eventually.
So the full story would be that Elon stayed up until 5:30 a.m playing Elden Ring in a Vancouver hotel - was very stressed, saw on Twitter that people knew he was raging in Vancouver based on the Jet Tracker - stressing him out even more -
Though “Fuck it, maybe I can’t beat Malenia, but at least I can beat this asshat on Twitter tracking me!”
…If only FromSoftware had added some pay-to-win elements… Like “For A Small $1 billion Micro-Transaction you get the uber Malenia slayer sword!” -
We would be living in a totally different timeline
I wouldn’t doubt that was his initial motivation for making the suggestions.
I also remember that he tried to back out of buying Twitter multiple times. While doing so he was pretty public about all the crazy crap he would do with Twitter.
Despite all that Twitter went to a judge and got them to force Musk to complete the sale. He’s a crappy CEO for Twitter but it’s kind of on the former Twitter leadership for forcing that situation.
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