A Timeline of Elon s Twitter Mistakes

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You know that scene in The Simpsons where  Sideshow Bob steps on a bunch of rakes? That's wha tElon's handling of Twitter has been like so far.  Except that he deliberately stepped on   all the rakes, because he thought he'd  be smart enough to not get hit by them. Starting around January, Elon Musk starts buying  Twitter stock. Lots of it. He looks at this enormous,   flailing company, which in the past 10 years has  only posted an annual profit twice, and by March   became the single largest shareholder. On April  4th musk discloses his stake in the company and   Twitter's stock price jumps by 27 percent as  a result. We can use this as a gauge of the  

strength of his reputation at this point; Merely by  being involved in Twitter, Twitter is perceived by   the financial class as far more valuable. On April  5th Twitter announces Musk will join its board of   directors. Internally, employees are freaking out  that musk might come along and fuck up the whole   company. We in the biz call that foreshadowing. Many  are wondering if this is even real or just memes,   which is not a typical thing to worry about in  a multi-billion dollar corporate buyout.   

The New York Times reports, "'Twitter has always suffered  more than its fair share of dysfunction', said   Jason Goldman who is on Twitter's founding team  and served on its board of directors in the past.   'But at least we weren't being actively trolled  by prospective board members using the product   we created." On April 10th Twitter announced  actually never mind, forget all that, Elon Musk   is not going to join the board of directors. Turns  out he didn't want to. So just... within five days he   had reversed course on the thing he spent several  billion dollars to do. To explain his reasoning,  

Musk tweeted a meme that he was going Goblin mode.  Epic. This tweet has since been deleted. This will   become a pattern moving forward, Elon desperately  wants the approval of Twitter shit-posters, so   he throws together, like, 2005s impact-font memes,  and he's just so XD random, and sometimes he just   steals someone else's meme and crops out their  username so they don't get any credit. It does   seem like a great deal of his motivation stems  from wanting to impress people on Twitter, which   is quite literally the most pathetic motivation  a human being can have. On April 14th Musk offers   to buy Twitter for 43 billion dollars, roughly  four times the projected annual cost to end   Global hunger by 2030, according to a 2016 report  from The International Institute for sustainable   development. Musk's stated reasoning for buying  the website are twofold: Firstly, he claims   to want to protect free speech on the platform. He  claims that he is a free speech absolutist, and as   we will see, no he's not. For example later when  he purchases Twitter, he will routinely fire  

anyone who criticizes him, or just you know anyone  he feels like. So his real issue is what he claims   is a left-wing bias in Twitter moderation, which is  you know, horseshit. Secondly he claims to want to   remove the Bots and spam accounts from the website.  I don't know why that would matter to him, or  

anyone, because it seems all websites have  spam and Bots, but Elon is very upset that Twitter   has them for some specific reason. That same day,  fellow parasite Jeff Bezos suggested that Elon   convert a portion of Twitter San Francisco HQ into  a homeless shelter. Elon tweeted a poll on Twitter   asking his followers whether he should just make  this whole thing a homeless shelter, because no   one goes into the office anyway. Musk insisted  he was being completely serious, and the Tweet   has since been deleted. In case you attempted to  think for even a second that musk gives even a   single solitary shit about the unhoused, it seems  this particular idea is motivated more by spite.  

As we will see Elon seems to have a particular  dislike for Twitter's work from home polic,y   instated during the beginning of the enormous  plague currently killing millions of people, he has   routinely downplayed and tweeted misinformation  about. Which shouldn't be surprising given that   he vigorously campaigned to have a Tesla Factory  reopened before it was legal for them to do so   in Alameda County. Predictably this resulted in  hundreds of cases of covid-19 being reported at   that plant. He just fucking hates work from home  policies in general, I'm not really sure why,   I think just because it provides any sort of comfort  to workers. On April 15th Twitter instituted a   poison pill provision that would be triggered if  any shareholder holds 15 percent or more of the   shares. From what I understand, which is not a lot,  that's business boy talk designed to make Elon put   up or shut up. On April 25th, Twitter accepts Elon's  bid, which is of course provisional on the basis  

that he can actually raise the funds to do it. Also  in the event that for whatever reason either party   fails to complete the deal a one billion dollar  cancellation fee is owed to the other party. Which   would become relevant later, if say, one party tried  to back out on really spurious grounds. We in the   biz call that foreshadowing. Over the next few days,  Musk sells 8.5 billion dollars of Tesla stock.    Over the next few weeks, he acquires 46 billion in  commitments from like... I don't know, random crypto  

guys and hedge funds or whatever, and he does so  by claiming he'll quintuple Twitter's Revenue by   2028. Using such cutting-edge business strategies  as somehow getting 69 million people (epic) to   subscribe to Twitter Blue by 2025 at a price point  of three dollars a month. Twitter blue is a service   that, at the time, allowed you to not get ads on  Twitter and threw in some like subscriptions to   newspapers and shit. He gets rid of both of those  features when he takes over. He also planned to   somehow bring Twitter's payment service (which I  did not know existed) from a projected 12 million   in 2023, to 1.3 billion in 2028. He also claims to  want to reduce Twitter's Reliance on Advertising.   As the story develops, we'll check  back in on how these goals are progressing.   On May 13th Musk tweets that his purchase of  Twitter is on hold pending an investigation into   the amount of bots and fake accounts on the site,  which Twitter estimated at less than five percent.  

Now this is strange for two reasons: Firstly, one  of Elon Musk's stated motivations for buying the   site in the first place was to get rid of the Bots  and spam accounts, so it does seem like if there's   more of them than he thought that would be all the  more reason for him to buy it. And secondly, Twitter   didn't hide the information from him at all. If  indeed he had not known about this calculation,   or truly had not believed it, the time to work  out that understanding would have been before   agreeing to buy it. Two hours later he reaffirmed  his commitment to the acquisition in a follow-up   tweet. On May 16, Twitter's CEO detailed a long Thread  about Twitter's methodology with regards to spam   and Bot accounts,. to which Musk responded with  an epic poop emoji. On May 17th musk claims that   Twitter most likely has at least 20% or more fake  or spam accounts, which is pretty big if true.  

I mean, that's four times the amount that Twitter  claims! Elon arrived at this figure (and a number   of other more outlandish figures depending on who  he's talking to) using a tool called Botometer.   A free public tool developed at Indiana University,  which essentially plugs into Twitter's public API   of available tweets, and attempts to determine  how likely each account tweeting is to be a bot   on a scale of one to five. According to one of  Botometer's devs "The tool does not show whether   an account is fake or spam, nor does it attempt  to make any other judgment about the account's   intent. Instead it shows how likely an account  is to be automated, or managed using software,   using various considerations such as the time  of day it tweets, or whether itself declared to be   a bot." Twitter responded that it would actually  be impossible to calculate the amount of bots   using this methodology, and without sufficient  access to private Twitter data. Botometer for  

example can only assess accounts that tweet, and  not accounts which don't actively post anything.   And also that Botometer had earlier that year  designated musk himself to be likely a bot.   It doesn't anymore, it's worth pointing out, but they  say it did at one point. Essentially Elon is basing   his attempt to back out of a 43 billion dollar  business deal, contesting the internal findings   of the company that he is attempting to buy, based  on an estimate from a free tool he found online,   and did not consult with anyone involved in the  making of, who are quite clear that it should not   be used to create these kind of estimates. As  far as I can tell, that is the entire basis for   his claim that Twitter's activity is most likely  20% or more generated by Bots or spam. An May 26th  

Twitter shareholders brought forth a class  action lawsuit against Musk, claiming that he   had deliberately manipulated the company's  stock prices. CNBC reports that during this   period between Musk's acquisition bid and this  lawsuit being launched, Twitter stock had dropped   12 percent. Note also that Tesla stock, which most  of Elon musk's personal Fortune is tied up in, had   dropped more than 40 percent. Some of that was due  to just a general dip in the market, but a lot of  

it was because he was acting like such a dipshit.  The lawsuit alleged that Musk had broken several   laws, including that quote "Musk had financially  benefited by delaying required disclosures about   his stake in Twitter, and by temporarily concealing  his plan in early April to become a board member   at The Social Network. ...Musk also snapped up  shares in Twitter, the complaint says, while he   knew Insider information about the company based  on private conversations with board members and   executives, including former CEO Jack Dorsey, a  longtime friend of Musk's. The proposed lawsuit   also contends that musk broke California laws by  sowing doubt about whether he would complete the   deal after signing the contract to buy it. The  shareholders complaint added that his gripes  

about Bots were part of his scheme to negotiate  a better price or kill the deal. ...Musk proceeded to   make statements, send tweets, and engage in conduct  designed to create doubt about the deal and drive   Twitter stock down substantially in order to  create leverage that Musk could use to either   back out of the purchase or to renegotiate the  price." So essentially, they're arguing that Elon   is deliberately sowing misinformation about the  company in order to drive down its stock prices   so that he can get a better price when he goes  by the site. Which wouldn't be all that surprising,   given that Elon has used Twitter specifically  to deliberately deflate stock prices in the past.  

It also seems like they're insinuating some  insider trading here, which is very funny to   me, because it implies this ruinous business deal  was made with an unfair advantage on Elon Musk's   part. They're saying he not only had Insider  knowledge that he shouldn't have had, but also   acted illegally and unethically to defraud the  company of money, and given all of these things   this is the result. This incredibly disastrous  thing for him. Just a powerful business mind.    On July 8th Elon announced that he was terminating  the deal, claiming that Twitter had not agreed   to his request to share information about user  data, and had fired top executives in breach of   a provision in their agreement. Twitter's chairman  Brett Taylor responded that Twitter intended to   enforce the deal at the agreed upon price. On  July 12th, they did that, and they sued Elon to  

force him to complete the purchase. On July 19th  Judge Chancellor Kathleen Saint Jude McCormick...   woof, okay, granted Twitter's request for an  expediated trial. Musk's team had argued for   a delayed trial, which you know, if the complaint  is that they're trying to drive down the stock   prices, it does seem like it would be in line with  that, because the longer the trial goes the the   more chaos there's going to be, the lower the  stock price goes. AP news reports "Twitter argues   that Musk's reasons for backing out are just a cover  for buyer's remorse after agreeing to pay 38% above   Twitter's stock price, shortly before the stock  market stumbled and shares of the electric car   maker Tesla where most of us personal wealth resides  lost more than 100 billion dollars of their value."  

Just a powerful business mind. After months of  back and forth subpoenas, on October 4th Musk   agreed to buy the site at the agreed upon price.  Twitter didn't have to agree to shiiiiiit. So if these   allegations are true, that he was attempting to  sabotage Twitter stock prices (and given that he   folded like a paper airplane in court, I'll leave  that up to you to decide) what he has done here...   Is agree to buy something for much more than it's  worth, panic, illegally manipulate its value to   negotiate for a better deal, only to be forced  to buy the product he has made less valuable   in the process. Which allegedly, would make him a  profoundly bad businessman. On October 26th, Elon   posted a frankly epic video on Twitter saying  "Entering Twitter HQ, let that sink in!" and he was   holding a sink! Fe's so fucking funny is the  thing. He later said "Meeting a lot of cool  

people at Twitter!" Just met a lot of cool people,  that he likes, and I bet will treat very well.    We in the biz call that foreshadowing. And finally, on  October 28th, Musk closes the deal to buy Twitter.   So everything we have seen so far, all of the ways  he has already fucked this up, happened before he   owned the goddamn website. Buckle up now, because  from this point forward shit is about to go nuts.   Elon's first act as "Chief twit", epic, was firing a  bunch of top executives. Including the CEO.  

Comedy is then made legal on Twitter, and at first I  didn't know what he meant by that. Because you'd   think it's some kind of statement about how PC  culture wouldn't be censoring comedy anymore, but   also he said the same day that Twitter wasn't  going to make any changes to content moderation   until they'd had time to build a diverse panel  of experts to look it over. But to his credit,   I have to admit, Twitter has been very funny ever  since he took it over. It's been extremely funny! Take for example, the very next thing that  he tweeted "Twitter's commitment to Brand safety   is unchanged" You'll understand why that's funny  later. Foreshadow- Within 12 hours of the purchase,   use of the n-word on Twitter shot up 500 percent.  In fairness, a follow-up report actually found that   Twitter's response to this was better than it had  been in the past, a damning indictment of Twitter's   uneven history of dealing with these types of hate  raids. So I guess... you could say... What Elon's Twitter  

is doing is actually centering hate speech MORE  aggressively. Pretty strange for a self-identified   "free speech absolutist." It's almost like  Twitter's content moderation was never actually   ideologically motivated, but rather the inescapable  result of trying to run a social media platform   for profit. Huh. Wonder if that'll be relevant  at all. A number of high-profile advertisers   immediately pull ads from Twitter, including GM  Pfizer, and Mondelez. In a roundabout kind of way,   I suppose he has reduced Twitter's dependency on  advertisers... He just hasn't replaced it with a new   source of revenue at all. On October 29th, word gets  out that Elon's new plan to get some revenue for  

Twitter is to bump up the price of Twitter blue  to $20 a month from $4.99 a month, and include Blue   Tick verification with the subscription. The Blue  Tick is meant to signify that the person holding   it is a notable public figure. Having it means  they've been verified to be who they claim to  

be. It's meant to allow people like celebrities, and  politicians, or brands to post on Twitter without   the fear that they'll be impersonated and defamed.  So the first question on everyone's mind is, well,   how do you prevent people from being impersonated  and defamed? Musk is cagey about the details,   instead choosing to focus on how this will somehow  act as some sort of power balancing effect, and how   it will democratize journalism and empower people...  provided that they pay him. Also that day, Elon has   some Tesla Engineers review Twitter's code base,  and um... this part is going to sound like I'm  

making it up, like I'm making a joke about him, but  this is true... He requested that some of Twitter's   engineers print off code they had written in  the last two months for him to read... on paper.   And there are many reasons why that request makes  no sense, that's just not how computers work.    Anyone who is remotely familiar with modern computer  programming would know that you could just log   onto GitHub for that information, but even if you  stopped programming decades ago (like Musk did   probably), printing computer code to read on paper  is gibberish. That would be like trying to read a   novel with all of the words in alphabetical order.  It just... it's nonsense. That doesn't mean anything!   On October 31st, Musk responds to Stephen King  complaining about the proposed cost of Twitter   Blue by suggesting a new price point of eight  dollars a month, and that becomes the new price   point going forward, seemingly arbitrarily. Mashable  calculated that at this price point, to meet his  

goal of half of Twitter's Revenue coming from  Twitter blue subscriptions, Musk would need 26   million users a month to sign up for the service.  Which is 10 percent of Twitter's user base. Just a   genius business mind is the thing. On November  4th, Twitter laid off roughly half of the very   cool people that Elon had met when he visited  Twitter. As a result, several employees file a   class action lawsuit accusing Twitter of violating  federal labor law for not giving them the required   60 days notice. Musk disputes this, claiming the  employees were given three months of severance in   lieu of notice, and that Twitter had to lay people  off because it was hemorrhaging four million   dollars a day. A thing nobody made him admit! He  placed the blame squarely on advertisers fleeing  

the site en masse, due to fears about changes  to Twitter's content moderation policy.   It should be noted that among the thousands of  people laid off were most of, if not the entire   content moderation team. Leaving only 15 people  with access to content moderation tools. And when   I say that, I don't mean 15 dedicated moderators,  I mean 15 people who can even access the tools to   moderate a quarter of a billion people. Also,  the entire team responsible for verifying   users, something that advertisers are becoming  increasingly concerned about. He then threatened   to name and shame advertisers who have pulled  out of Twitter, so that they'd get in trouble   with his conservative fan base, and that ought to  convince people to do more business with you in   the future. On November 6th several employees who  were laid off two days prior are asked to come  

back, and told that their firing was in error,  and rehired. Boy what a happy ending after all! Musk finally explained how he intended to  deal with people taking advantage of the new   verification system to impersonate people  or brands. His plan... was to let them do that...   And then ban them and keep the money. And that  answer was not reassuring to advertisers, as you   can imagine. Especially since Twitter's reduced  staff would have a great deal of difficulty  

moderating the site to ban fake accounts. So  Musk pivoted, and said anyone impersonating   anyone without saying directly that they were a parody  account will be suspended. I remind you, Musk refers   to himself as a free speech absolutist. This  solution has the same problem of enforceability,  

but even more so because Musk doesn't specify how  or where people are to label themselves parody  accounts. Meaning before you can ban someone for  impersonation, you'd need to not only verify that   they are impersonating someone, but also check  their entire post history and bio to see whether   or not they had specified that they are parody. So  on November 9th, Twitter launched the new "Official tag", a tag which would serve the same purpose as  the old verified tag, but wouldn't be purchasable.   Which would make the verified tag mean nothing  except that you spent eight dollars to get it.   Thereby making the thing which he has staked the  company's entire financial future on, completely   pointless, and undoing all of his populist rhetoric  about Twitter's serfs and peasant system... and just  

it just doesn't make any sense. So the same day it  launched, Elon removed the official tag. Personally.   Then verified badges start to appear on Twitter  Blue subscribers handles, and I now present a   montage of brands, celebrities, and politicians  being impersonated by verified accounts. [Music] And also here's a montage of a whole lot of   verified users impersonating Elon  Musk and his companies specifically! Now, if you're the CEO of a company currently  facing a crisis (or several crises) most of which   are the direct results of your personal Behavior,  it's very important to reassure your customer base   that you're not only taking the problem seriously,  but doing everything in your power to fix it.   Elon chose instead to laugh about it, and thank the fake  accounts for the money. Now that'd be ballin' if   he was making enough money through these fake  accounts that he no longer needed advertisers,   right? Because it's like what are they going to  do about it? Haha! But that's not the case, because   during the two days the feature was available  (Spoiler alert: they take the feature down on the   11th to re-tool it, and it is yet to come back online) it  reportedly made less than half a million dollars.  

On launch. During the time when most people should  in theory be most excited to get it. Remember,   by Musk's own calculations, Twitter is losing 4  million dollars a day. But he thinks it's going   fine! Just needs a few tweaks! November 10th, the  pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly loses billions   in stock prices after a verified impersonator  claimed they would be giving away insulin for   free. Similarly, Lockheed Martin lost billions when  a verified impersonator claimed they would halt   sales to the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Israel  due to their respect of human rights records.  

This may be the funniest single moment in human  history. When two random Twitter users paid eight   dollars each to cost these enormous monolithic  corporations astronomical sums of money, because   an unrelated monolithic corporation allowed them  to pretend that they might do something kind.    The layers of indictment of capitalism here boggle  the mind. It's worth noting that it's not just   impersonators getting verified at this point!   There's also some Nazis! Including some big names   you might have heard of, like Richard Spencer,  Amy Meck, and apparently, big get, the real Adolf Hitler. 

These fine folks used Twitter to buy some  credibility. Can you imagine these activist   advertiser snowflakes having some problem with  their brand being associated with Hitler? Now at   this point, I pause to ask, does it seem to you  as though Twitter's commitment to brand safety   has remained unchanged? Also this day, Twitter's CISO,  Chief privacy officer, and chief compliance officer   all resign. Which not only puts all of Twitter's  users at risk of data breaches (which may have   already happened at time of recording) and other  security threats, but also potentially violates an   agreement Twitter made with the Federal Trade  Commission. Which could result in billions of  

dollars in fines. The FTC might also name Elon  Musk personally liable. Also on November 10th, Musk   tells Twitter staff that the company's financial  situation is so dire, that bankruptcy is likely.   You know, the company he just spent 43 billion dollars  to buy. Just a business genius is the thing about him.   On November 11th, as I alluded to earlier, Twitter  suspends all Twitter blue subscriptions, and also   announces that the official tag will come back  at some point in some unspecified capacity, but   only for advertisers. We are now at two weeks  since Elon took over, how do you think he's   doing so far? November 14th, Elon tweets that  he'll be shutting down Twitter microservices   which he deems "bloatware." Microservices are like  little bits of software that run independently,   and contribute to a larger software ecosystem,  so they're like little things that run and they   do some service for Twitter, right? Essentially.  More or less. I don't know. Computer nerds, don't @ me.

The important part here, is that among the  "bloatware" that is disabled is the ability for   users with two-factor authorization to log in.  So if you log out, you just can't log back in,   because there's no way for it to send like a text  message to your phone or whatever. Messages from   an internal Twitter slack Channel show Twitter  senior director of engineering admitting that   employees who had been rehired after being fired  on November 6, were not in fact fired in error, and   that they should be thought of as temporary staff  who would need to be removed once it was possible   to do so. So I guess that wasn't really a happy  ending for them. Oops! That feels weirdly cruel.   November 15th, Elon announced that the relaunch of  Twitter blue would be pushed back to November 29th.   When asked how we would prevent the same problem  of rampant impersonation, Elon responded, "Eh... it's   hard to say, you know? So I figure we got to know  who everybody is, that's the thing we should do,   so we'll do that." November 16th, Musk sends out an  ominous email to all Twitter staff titled "A fork  

in the road", in which he demands that they commit  to quote "high intensity work" for quote "long hours"   and be quote "extremely hardcore", potentially  working 24/7 in order to bring to life Elon's   vision of Twitter 2.0. He offers an ultimatum,  in which employees have until 5 PM the next   day to accept the new working conditions, or de  facto resign. Some disabled workers immediately   launch ANOTHER class action lawsuit, claiming  that the demand to work overtime, and also his   ending of remote work policies is discriminatory  and violates the Americans with Disabilities Act.   It's worth stopping here and examining this  offer. The right-wing media had a kind of take   on it, which is like, he just asked engineers  to work harder and they had a meltdown because   they just want to drink lattes. Imagine you're in a  situation where your company is bought by by a new  

boss, and that boss fires half of the employees,  and then asks you to continue working twice as   hard for the same amount of money, and also that  the company might go bankrupt pretty soon, so if   you do decide to stay you might just lose your job  anyway, and also if you leave he he has to give you   three months severance. Which of these options do  you take? The next day, at least a thousand people   resign. It's unclear how many people remain,  and Twitter hasn't commented on it publicly...   because their entire Communications team resigned.  But according to polls in the company slack   before the deadline hit, only seven percent of  remaining employees reported intending to stay.  

Former Twitter Engineers start warning that there  are no longer enough staff to maintain critical   infrastructure, and that Twitter is likely to  stop working relatively soon, but as of this   writing Twitter's still up and running. So we'll  see, I suppose. Panicked, and seemingly surprised   at the mass resignation, Elon closes all Twitter  offices and revokes key card access to all staff.   Disgruntled former employees set up a projector  at Twitter headquarters, which scrolls through a   bunch of nasty messages about Elon, calling him an  "apartheid profiteer" among other accurate insults.   Side note, not really related to the Twitter thing,  but funny story. That same day, Elon is on trial for   a lawsuit about whether he his compensation at  Tesla constituted unjust enrichment, essentially   whether or not he ripped off shareholders (and you  know, haven't really looked into it, and I don't   know much about the law, but seems like there's a  precedent there) Musk objected to a question about   how in 2018 he had signed a consent degree with  the SEC, after that they had found he was lying   about having secured the funding to take Tesla  private at 420 a share, epic. Musk argued that the   decree was invalid because it was quote "signed  under duress"... because if he had not signed it,  

the company would have lost money. Opposing  council explained that actually Musk's lawyer   had the right to object to this question, but he  personally did not, and when Musk refused to shut   up they then asked if Musk had any legal training  and Elon Musk responded... And again, this is a direct   quote, I'm not making this up as a joke to make  fun of him... "If you're in enough lawsuits, you pick   up a few things along the way." Yeah man, you're  basically a lawyer. You basically went to law school,  because of how many times you've been sued.  November 17th, #RIPTwitter is trending, Elon acts  

quickly to quell fears of the company's demise by...  bragging about having killed the company.    November 18th, Elon elaborates his vision for Twitter's new  moderation policy. Hate speech will be permitted on   Twitter, but suppressed by the algorithm. He calls  this "freedom of speech but not freedom of reach."   And it's the exact policy that conservatives have  been complaining about for years. It's literally   shadow banning. That's what shadow banning is.  Speaking of bans, he reverses bans on a number  

of controversial figures, like alleged human  trafficker and open misogynist Andrew Tate, Jordan   Peterson (who wasn't actually banned, just suspended  for violating the rules against hate speech),   The Babylon Bee, and I guess... Kathy Griffin? A  token liberal to fake neutrality. And of course, Yee. Yeah? Ye? I've never because it's KanYE but it's YEezy I've  never said it out loud before. I don't know.    Anyway, he unbans that guy, and he responds "Shalom," as if  to signal that his anti-semitic statements on   the platform will continue. Elon then runs a poll  to see if he should unban president Trump, despite   previously stating many times he would wait for  the advice of a diverse panel of experts on the   subject, and yes narrowly wins, marking the first  and probably last time that President Trump would   ever win the popular vote. Trump would go on to  claim that he won't be coming back to Twitter,   making the whole thing pointless, but frankly I  don't believe him about that for even one goddamn second.  

People started asking Musk to unban Alex  Jones, which he refused to do. He took a principled   stance, that having watched his own child die in  his arms he didn't approve of what Alex Jones   had said about Sandy Hook victims. Which I think  is is totally the right call, but does kind of   call into question his commitment to free speech  absolutism. I don't think you should unban Alex  

Jones, good job! But that is... you know, seems  like it's arbitrary and personal given the people   you did choose to unban. On November 23rd, the day  before American Thanksgiving, Elon demonstrated his   gratitude to a number of engineers who had chosen  to stay after his ultimatum with further layoffs.   And it's worth noting at this point, that many of  the remaining Engineers are H-1B visa holders, who   could potentially now be at risk of deportation.  All of whom chose to stay after his egregious   ultimatum, many of whom had been fired and then  rehired, told to comeback and did, and there's   speculation that now they might actually get less  severance... And look... Like, I gotta cut it off here.   I'm sure some extremely funny stuff has happened  in between me writing this and posting it. I know that

that has happened. But I can't wait forever,  so I just I don't know, I'll do a follow-up at some   point if there's interest. But I want to address  the elephant in the room here, because obviously   Elon Musk is going to be fine. He's too rich to  ever suffer the type of consequences a human   being might face from a bad business deal. He's not  going to be in the poor house ever. That being said ,  there is a tendency to assign to Musk, and people  like him a sort of Machiavellian genius.

What seems to you like they're losing, because you don't  understand the genius of the move he's making. i Four-dimensional chess baby, he's going to come out  on top! This is somewhat because we have trouble   accepting that someone with so many resources  could be foolish enough to make so many mistakes.   That nobody who works for him would point out the  problems he is creating for himself, or advise a   wiser course of action. We would all prefer that  there are evil masterminds at the wheel. than   dummies at the wheel. And no matter how he tries to  spin this in the future, this has been personally   disastrous for Elon Musk. He's lost at least 100  billion dollars of his personal Fortune. To put   that number in perspective, think of a dollar. A hundred billion dollars would be a hundred billion  

of those. Not only has he tanked the stock price  of his most valuable asset, Tesla, he's also done   irreparable harm to his greatest intangible asset,  his reputation. He's become a laughing stock, and   it's not likely he'll be able to sucker investors  like he has in the past. They've already grown more   skeptical of the tech industry in the past few  months, and he's fallen on his ass harder than any   of these Tech Giants. I think to assume that  there's some secret master plan is to buy into   his myth-making. That he's some renegade genius who  sees things at such a high level, that the average  

person could never understand the mysteries  he grapples with. I think the reality is pretty   clear though, he just assumed he could do this. He  assumed he could run Twitter, just like he assumes   he could be a lawyer despite not knowing anything  about the law, or assumes he can judge people's   coding by reading it on a piece of paper. He is a  petty tyrant who refuses to listen to the legions   of people more capable than him in every regard,  because the enormous wealth he pilfered through   quasi-legal schemes and unethical cons means that  he doesn't have to. Ever. Ever again in his life.  

He can just bully everyone around him, and there's  nothing they can do to get back at him, because he   has more money than it should be possible to have.  There is no greater logic to his actions, there is   no secret master plan. The emperor has no clothes.  Even if it later turns out that he bounces back   and makes a shitload of money, it's not because  he's a secret genius, it's because when you have   billions of dollars you can't do anything  to fail. You will just remain rich forever.   These people, these ultra rich jackoffs, who own  more wealth than some nations, they're not smarter   than you. They don't provide benefits to these  companies in proportion to their compensation,  

to justify the obscene hordes they possess. All  of these companies would be better off if they   were prevented from making any major decisions.  They would literally be better off if a rock   with googly eyes were made CEO. Elon Musk is  a buffoon, and I think I've demonstrated that   quite conclusively. I could personally do a better  job as CEO of Twitter, despite knowing absolutely   nothing about business or Tech because, all I'd  have to do is not do anything. Doing nothing, and  

letting Twitter employees just do whatever the  fuck they want, would be a significant Improvement   in management. In fact, I can prove that. I have  been more successful than Elon Musk in business   this year. My fair trade, union made t-shirts from  thoughtslimeshop.com have, at this point, not lost a   hundred billion dollars. Let that sink in. Hello and welcome to the Eyeball Zone! Here in the Eyeball   Zone we're a microblogging social networking  service on which users post and interact with   messages known as "eyeballs." To put that another way,  we help at small leftist creators put eyeballs on   their work. Here's a dirty little secret, I have a  lot of warm feelings about Top Gear, the television   program, and I don't just mean anger. Despite  the fact that the hosts are pretty fucking  

terrible dudes, I just can't help it ,I grew up  watching the show with my parents, and I have a   lot of good memories. Luckily for me, Edmund Hyde is  here to explain away this cognitive dissonance,   by carefully demonstrating the ways in which  Top Gear has begun to more and more continue   the tradition of soft imperialist control in a  surprising number of ways. Like seriously, there's...   there's just so much to criticize about Jeremy  Clarkson that you'd assume nobody would be able   to think of something new, but it's actually  patently obvious how much later seasons of   Top Gear reproduce imperialist ideology... And  when I say that, I don't just mean in, like, the   kind of soft wishy-washy way that everything  kind of does within former imperialist nations.   You know, just the unspoken presumption of  of superiority, I mean the actual idea that we   should be out there colonizing other countries.  Or, I guess the British should be, but you know,   same difference. You wouldn't think that there'd  be this much evidence that a comedy show about  

automobiles was advocating this, but it is  actually shocking to see when Ed lays it all out.   Do you have a small leftist project on which the  eyeballs might feast? Send no more than one email   to thoughtslimeeditor@gmail.com, with pertinent  details such as your pronouns, and perhaps you too   shall face the wrath of the eyeball Zone! Thank  you for watching my video, I would ask now that   you like it, like the video, and also subscribe to  this YouTube channel for more videos just like it.   Uh hey also patreon me. Please patreon me some  dollars, to me, thought slime. Buy a t-shirt also, is   um, would be good. Mastodon seems like a bad  website, I'm not going to learn to use it.

2022-12-05

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