As Twitter destroys its brand by renaming itself X, Mastodon user numbers are again soaring | TechCrunch
techcrunch.com
It's not just lemmy that's benefiting from Elon Musk.
You are viewing a single comment
It's not just lemmy that's benefiting from Elon Musk.
Musk trashed Twitter with intent, by design, and on purpose. Elon Musk is worth 95 Billion more now than when he bought Twitter.
The continued forced cognitive dissonance is the grandest example of info_corpo_kabuki i've ever seen. It's all just so fucking dumb.
Elon bought it to trash it so he could have access to Saudi markets for his electric cars and rocket ships. The face he's a fascist fucking cunt who gets to stick it to liberals where they most liked to exchange news, information and organize online was just a bonus for him.
He didn't want to buy Twitter. He lost a lawsuit that forced him to buy it. None of it goes that deep.
I don't buy this, simply because he bought it. He didn't need to destroy it, could could have just turned it off.
That Twitter had essentially become accepted as an official source of communication and Elon's purchase of Twitter so near to the time that he was experimenting with his ability to perform market manipulation on his own companies using Twitter, those things combined made me assume a large part of his reason for purchasing Twitter was to see how far he could take market manipulation and if he could influence other companies. In my darkest version of this scenario, I think Elon was just testing how far his reach is.
Maybe the verified checkmark debacle really was created by incompetence and Twitter tried quickly to fix it, or maybe it was a nefarious way to undermine legitimacy and cause a multi-billion dollar blip on the stock market. Either way, I could easily imagine Musk telling politicians and CEOs after that, "look at what I was able to do just by moving a single finger. Now imagine what I could do to you if I really wanted to."
I really like the razors, here Hanlon's razor is relevant:
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity"
I'm sure Elon has no grand plan behind any of this, just a chain of impulsive actions.
Well put. He's been too busy sniffing his own farts. He's out of touch with reality, as most ultra rich people are.
Little wonder what he is trying to turn Twitter into with X. He's tried it several times with several other companies, all of which either failed or ejected him.
He's even tried it with the "X" name more than once.
He is impulsively trying to manifest this idea of something into existence despite the fact that it repeatedly fails. Because the idea just isn't good.
He wants to make the western equivalent of WeChat, when a good amount of the functionality is already hadled by Whatsapp in Europe and non-Sino Asia, and Americans are pretty resistant to the idea domestically. He failed the moment he politicized it. Hell, he failed before he even bought it because Twitter has always been a narcissistic den of toxicity--Tumblr, all grown up. There's a reason that Jack created a Twitter clone under a different company with different everything while CEO of Twitter. It was a sinking ship, and Elon was in the wrong place at the wrong time because he thinks he really is something special.
Oh, the conspiracy side of the story is just to sound saucy. I don't think these were calculated moves, but I still wouldn't be surprised if he tried to profit from his incompetence by labeling it as a flex to those he wants to control. Like, a dumbass who accidentally shoots their own foot and then shouts, "yeah bitch! And that's MY foot! You think I won't cap you too?!"
This assumes all other things are equal.
Elon musk and Donald Trump and others are not stupid. They may act stupid. Their brains may be psychologically damaged by the distance their money allows them to put between themselves, others, and the consequences of their actions.
But they are not stupid. If they were stupid, their stupidity would sometimes bite them in the ass in a way that actually has consequences for them. Since that does not happen, we can be relatively certain that their actions are going according to plan...their plan? Maybe. Or their accountant's plan. But until a mistake costs them actual money that they cannot recoup through tax shenanigans, I find it hard to accept that they aren't just evil.
This. He's on the hook for a relatively small percent of his personal wealth. He has a ton of government contracts, which equate to cash flow. To insulate that cash flow, he needs a loss. He can get that loss by destroying the value of Twitter, which he also artificially inflated by making an insane offer in the first place.
The thing that folks don't get is that money is different when you have none, some, and a ton. When you have none, you are effectively living moment to moment - when youre out, you spend what you have on your immediate needs, and make it work the rest of the time.
When you have some, which is most of us, you may live paycheck to paycheck, but you can still plan two weeks at a time and may have some long term plans.
Elon musk and others in his bracket could literally burn 99% of their wealth and still have more money than almost anyone else. This level of rich is marked by planning years in advance, and having contingency plans to take advantage of set backs. For example, a market crash for most of us means we lose wealth and still probably never recover it. But for Elon musk, a market crash is just a fire sale on stock. He can sell at a loss for tax benefit, or he can buy up stuff at step discounts. The benefit of wealth is that ever situation can make you more money.
Yes thank you, this is what’s happening for sure. He’s so immature and petty and he can’t hide it.