I’ll preface this that I am not in the personality cult of Musk worshippers. Credit where due, but also accountability. Making inefficient processes efficient, I’m game. Filling in a niche, okie doke. I’m still waiting on solar panels and something other than Jules Verne’s version of tunnels (high speed rail is in every respect a better choice). The whole Twitter debacle is hilarious to me, as this is a man who has not experienced any sort of consequences and is an absolutely amazing grifter (SpaceX subsidies would make you shiver).

He ran his mouth, put in an offer for a company with horrible financials, accepted terrible conditions, and tried to back out. Clearly the lawyers were salivating at the prospect. I get that the folks working at Twitter are worried about job cuts – they will get fired and collect severance and the talent gap for those skills means another job (hybrid no doubt) is an option. The change certainly sucks fierce, but there are much worse situations. So he’s now leading a company with staff that have one foot out the door. Culture issues abound and headhunters are at the friggin’ buffet.

As for the actual mechanics of Twitter, this is even better.

Twitter makes all its money on advertisers, which is funded on two core aspects. First is metrics. There needs to be a lot of accounts and volume of activity. Bots be damned, the pump those numbers! Second is message control. Ain’t no company that wants their ads to show up in the middle of racist tweets or death threats – so content moderation is an eternal struggle.

So if bots are removed, metrics go down, advertisements go down. If content moderation is removed, advertisements go down. So that’s 2 plans that won’t make $$$.

Hmm, so let’s see if the content (you) can become the source of income. The absolutely insane thought of negotiating in public with Stephen King has to rank really high in my list of “shit that I never thought I’d see”. Apparently those who want a blue checkmark will pay $8/m to keep it. Which is such an astoundingly dumb idea as these are the people generating the content advertisers want. Freedom of speech has a monthly fee.

And finally, how can anyone in their right mind think that this person can be the CEO of yet another company and actually accomplish anything? If ever there was evidence that tech CEOs don’t actually provide any value, here’s the perfect use case.

This is Bond-level villain stupidity. And I’ve got my popcorn.