Musk has become a cautionary tale for millions of nerds about what end-stage internet poisoning looks like.
He's one of the richest men in the world. He could have literally anything he wants. He had the respect and adoration of a massive amount of the public, getting loving name-drops and cameos in Iron Man and Star Trek.
Instead of indulging in a spectacularly hedonistic life, or pushing hard on his massively successful world-changing businesses, or spending time with his flotilla of offspring, he spends his time acting like an edgy transphobic 14-year-old on twitter.
It’s not even real censorship. Everyone knows that the word is “dick”. It’s like Louis CK once said, “the f word” is far worse than just saying “fuck” because you’re making the other person say it in their heads while washing your own hands of having said it. If it’s so offensive then don’t make me think it. If you want to say fuck or dick or whatever, just say it.
I sometimes wonder how Elon Musk would be as a person if he hadn’t become filthy rich.
Does being the richest man on the planet just enable his craziness, or did it cause it?
But then I let go of that thought, because I don’t want to give a petulant man-child who is apparently proposing literal dick measuring contests any more attention than they already get.
I know this breaks the rules by being needlessly snarky as well as not adding anything whatsoever to the conversation. Will remove if anyone is annoyed by this, just felt the need to type it out.
It's so annoying how any press around twitter makes it sound like Elon had 44 bills lying around to personally buy the company for himself. He may have put himself in charge with that money, but whose money was it again?
“On April 20, Musk disclosed that he had secured financing provided by a group of banks led by Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Barclays, MUFG, Société Générale, Mizuho Bank, and BNP Paribas, for a potential tender offer to acquire the company.[30][31] The funding included $7 billion of senior secured bank loans; $6 billion in subordinated debt; $6.25 billion in bank loans to Musk personally, secured by $62.5 billion of his Tesla stock; $20 billion in cash equity from Musk, to be provided by sales of Tesla stock and other assets; and $7.1 billion in equity from 19 independent investors.“
So, about 56% was Musk’s money and, if I’m understanding that correcly, 28% Twitter’s, 16% independent investors.
I think that's looking at it backwards. They both have more money than they can spend. They don't need something to be good for business. Rather, they need their business to be good for them. They grow their business to prove that their dicks are bigger -- metaphorically, until now.
They might even agree with that armchair diagnosis of megalomania. They'd just disagree that megalomania is a bad thing, if you are in fact the greatest human being in the world.
One does have to wonder what it will do for Musk's (metaphorical) dick if he manages to kill off Twitter -- not the lost money, which is pocket change, but the business failure. He certainly has SpaceX and Tesla to fall back on, and if he can push on to Mars everything else will be trivia.
Indeed, it does seem to be hard to pin down what the victory conditions are. It's clearly not money. It has something to do with control of the public discourse, but Musk is destroying Twitter's influence.
It's hard to tell if he knows that. He seems to think he's got some kind of grand long-term plan, but even if he does, his short-term behavior doesn't seem to contribute. If he thinks he bought up an enormous customer base for his "everything app", he seems badly mistaken.
I fail to see if some people hate musk so much that they fail to even recognize the most obvious joke. I don’t understand how anyone can read that tweet other than a way for musk to say « this whole dick measuring contest between meta and twitter is ridiculous »
> a way for musk to say « this whole dick measuring contest between meta and twitter is ridiculous
He started it! The joke backfires because it’s a cowardly cop-out from admitting fault. Humour has to have a kernel of truth to it. This tweet is a kid slapping a cat, getting swiped and declaring—to nobody in particular—that all cats are idiots. No!
He's one of the richest men in the world. He could have literally anything he wants. He had the respect and adoration of a massive amount of the public, getting loving name-drops and cameos in Iron Man and Star Trek.
Instead of indulging in a spectacularly hedonistic life, or pushing hard on his massively successful world-changing businesses, or spending time with his flotilla of offspring, he spends his time acting like an edgy transphobic 14-year-old on twitter.
What a waste.
The internet is bad for you.