“Can we stop twittering like fishwives?” – The Death of Stalin
The new Cybertruck© won’t have a new car smell, it will have an Elon musk.
Elon Musk started a war.
In this case, for Twitter®.
I was fairly amused when I heard his offer per share ($54.20) included a marijuana joke. That’s like him, though. When Bernie Sanders called him out on Twitter™ for some trivial violation of Leftist badthink, Elon’s Twitter© response was simple:
“Oh, I forgot you were alive.”
Elon Musk is what happens when you give a 12-year-old several hundred billion dollars.
There is a freedom that comes with several hundred billion. For the most part that freedom extends to not really needing to follow any of the laws of mortal men. That is, of course, until you start questioning the toys of the Left.
Twitter© had started out as an interesting startup – short strings of words, maybe a picture. I got on for a while. In 2012 it wasn’t all that interesting to me. I gave it up for about six years.
By then, the landscape had changed immensely. Twitter® had become (at some point) one of the leading methods of idea communication, especially for politics. All in 280 characters per Tweet©.
When the Lincoln-Douglas debates were staged back in 1858, the format was that one or the other would start with an hour of oration. Then, the respondent would get ninety minutes. Then, the original speaker would get thirty minutes to rebut. Sure, this is shorter than the average Lord of the Rings movie, but it was three hours talking about politics.
Three.
Hours.
Okay, I’ll admit that this was an interesting three hours.
I don’t like to do things I like doing for three hours. Yet here two men were able to talk coherently and keep an audience interested for that time. I would bet that we don’t have the politicians that can do that anymore, nor do we have audiences that can sustain that level of interest.
Now, we’re 164 years past those debates.
What do we get instead? The main political debates, the main political points all show up first on Twitter®. Sure, I’m not an active user – but Twitter™ is still driving the debate. I was watching a documentary tonight and to prove a point of an idea going viral, they showed the Tweets© in fast succession showing the spread of the idea. Twitter® has a reach far beyond the number of users.
And far beyond newspapers . . .
You know it’s a bad day when Bezos says he feels like a million bucks.
One of the reasons that I stopped going to Twitter© was that (I noticed) as my content got more political, my Tweets™ had a much smaller reach. I had been de-tuned. I am nearly certain that it wasn’t personal, but I had some very timely responses to big stories that were on point . . . that died.
The techs at Twitter® kept fine-tuning the algorithm to remove the voices and ideas that they didn’t like, and amplify those that they did. The same thing was going on at Google® and YouTube™. Virally spreading ideas had gone under lock and key, unless you were a member of the inner club. Or two big to ignore. Here are some sample things that Twitter™ had no problem with:
I trust Twitter® to make sure that conversations are civil and safe.
Elon Musk is in that category, but from the moment he began talking about “free speech” and then offered nearly twice what the stock had been trading at if he could have it.
The response to this generous offer? Well, I’ll just let the Leftists of Twitter® tell you in no particular order as they have mental breakdowns that someone might steal their toy:
Does this seem like the response of people who are secure in their ideas? Certainly not. This is the response of a group of people that want you to allow them to talk to five-year-olds about gay sex and expect you to believe a dude is the woman’s NCAA swimming champ. The only way that their ideas don’t seem to be insane is if they control the context of every conversation. Don’t believe me? Check out this conversation:
They certainly don’t want you to know that the Emperor not only has no clothes, he has no castle, no empire, and tries to shake hands with invisible people. The only way that they can do that is to control speech, to drown out the voices of rationality, tradition, virtue, and morality. Oh, and let’s term any idea that doesn’t support The Narrative.
How serious are they about protecting The Narrative?
Within hours of Elon’s bid to buy Twitter©, the poorly named Department of Justice announced that they were investigating everything up to and including how often Elon launders his underwear.
Elon has started a war. He’s beaten the odds again and again. Here’s hoping he figures out how to shut down the censorship of all things outside of the Leftist Narrative. If there’s someone with 300 billion ways to do it, it’s Elon. And I hope they don’t call the DOJ investigation “Elongate”.
That would be a stretch.
Im thinking I’ll start calling Elon, Hank Reardon. I hope he has a valley to flee to when the quangocrats get all the government agencies on him.
I’d like that, but I don’t think you get to where he is without compromises. And a file. I could be wrong, in fact I hope I am . . . .
Easy column for you today, John – just post screencaps. You coulda made me scroll for miles.
Everybody’s got a take on this Musk vs. Twitter war, here’s mine. Elon’s way ahead of everybody – he’s playing 6 dimensional backgammon. Consider.
Elon wants to go to Mars. That’s gonna take a lot of money. He expects to get that money from Starlink.
https://www.inverse.com/innovation/spacex-starlink-cost-of-mars-city
Elon has a rival named Jeff. On April 5, Jeff announced that he’s bought 83 rockets to launch Project Kupier, which is out to outdo Starlink.
https://spacenews.com/amazon-signs-multibillion-dollar-project-kuiper-launch-contracts/
This Is A Big Deal. Jeff basically just bought up every non-SpaceX rocket worldwide that can get a satellite to orbit for the rest of the 2020s.
This all puts Elon in a bind. I’ll spare you the links – Elon has said that his current Falcon 9 boosters / Starlink 1.0 satellites aren’t gonna be economical enough to fund Mars. The plan is to let the existing 3000 satellite constellation of Starlink 1.0 reenter and burn up – this was only a test (!?!) He’s already moved on conceptually to Starship booster (which has yet to reach orbit) / Starlink 2.0 (which has yet to fly but will use frickin’ lasers!).
But even if he overcomes incredible technological and engineering hurdles to get Starlink 2.0 up and running, he still has to compete with – and win against! – Jeff and Kupier. There Will Be Only One Winner.
So after Jeff’s blockbuster April 5 announcement grounding every other satcom vendor but Spacelink, Elon comes out on April 14 and says he wants to take Twitter private. You think this is a coincidence?
Sure, he has a passing interest in Free Speech. But if he can somehow tie-in and make Twitter the Killer App for Starlink…then Elon is gonna make enough money to go to Mars. And become the first trillionaire in the process.
Two people that I’d never bet against in a race? Hmm. I’ll go with Elon. He actually has rockets. . . .
John, I have been watching the Musk/Twitter war with a bemused eye – I am not a Twitter user or even follower and found the whole thing rather silly before, let alone now.
That said, the Twitter Board has left themselves very open to a lawsuit for a failure in their fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders. One would assume that smart legal types have already figured this out and are preparing briefs. Maybe they do not win, but dragging Twitter into court will not only continue to provide an interesting conversation on the nature of free speech but will also will continue to drag down the value of Twitter, thus furthering the fiduciary failure.
I think the lawsuits would be so big that the board would never recover. They may be attempting to find someone to outbid Elon . . . .
“That would be a stretch.”
John, looking at the tweets that had head shots, I had one short, non-elongated thought.
Chai tea. Oh, with soy latte.
A fascinating bunch. Most have blue checkmarks.
I don’t know who the shareholders are, but there is the possibility those with the investment will dump it, if they feel Twitter will take a loss due to a reduction of those using the service. That, and the insanity of the board doesn’t give a huge boost to confidence. If Twitter starts losing value, Musk might get his wish at a much lower price. I hope he does, and thumbs his nose at those that will continue on the site; even if they hate him.
But big institutions are moving in. Perhaps to curry political favor?
Elongate?!?!? Bwahahahaha. That’s a keeper, John.
I’ve been waiting to use that for a while. Stars needed to be right, and all.
It is fun watching the left melt down over this, but you have to remember Musk is a graduate of the WEF Young Leader’s Forum and should be considered controlled opposition. I have found GAB is a pretty good site for free speech compared to popular social media sites operated by our comrades controlling the rest of internet. Don’t want us rubes in fly over country having too much free thought.
I have always thought Tesla was a way over valued house of cards. You could not give me any of his poorly constructed EVs or any other as I really don’t want to lose my home due to spontaneous combustion of the EV battery pack starting in the garage. Until real science can come up with a better storage device than Lithium battery packs, I chose to stick with the old reliable combustion engine equipped vehicles until those controlling the meat puppet in Mordor on the Potomac completely turn off the fossil fuels spigot.
Tesla is very overvalued. But SpaceX isn’t.
And, you’re right. I think he’s better than some, but still don’t trust him.
Funny how the censorious Left is all of a sudden concerned about free speech now that someone who isn’t one of their acolytes may be at the helm of a major social platform soon.
The Left is always concerned about power.
It was never about freedom.
I laughed out loud. Perfection.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/FREEDOM%20OF%20SPEECH.jpg?itok=AMJMaYRk
The rule is simple – once you have power, stifle the speech of your opponents.
So, if Mr. Musk buys Twitter, and the ‘Lefties’ don’t like it, they can go start up a social media company that represents themselves. Seems I have heard that logic before….
Ha! Indeed! Maybe we should start our own central bank . . . .
The deep state honeypot known as TwitFaceGram?
I use Honk Honkler doing the log roll dance on the beach ball with bicycle horn sound effects for morale instead of IQ draining fed honey pots.
MIRC was the prototype and that was bad enough with your IP exposed.
Comrade kommissar Musk is another globalist puppet and not the savior.
Lithium batteries for an $80,000 car won’t be saving the earth, it will be here long after manboons are bleached bones in the sand but at least the laughter will be legendary when a city plugs in their Musk Vulvas for the night on a grid powered by unicorn flatulence.
Absolutely Twitter is a part of the info dragnet, along with Facebook, Amazon, Google . . . EV? Yup, a scam. And I hope we’re both wrong about Elon.
It’s hard not to notice so many of the Leftist speech haters appear to share something in common. (Weinstein, Rothschild, Reich, Rozsa, etc.)
Of course, we’re not supposed to talk about that.
If you’re saying they all shop at the same haberdashery that specializes in undersized hats, I agree!
It’s the blue checkmark?
I took out a Twitter account ‘way back in the day, when an early adopter that I knew urged me to do so. I never used it, and when Edward Snowden fingered Twitter as one of the eager cooperators with NSA, I trashed my account. I’m not an Elon Musk fan — he is, in my estimation, an EV-government subsidy whore — but if he gets control and actually makes it a free-speech zone, I think I’ll go back and make an account. I’ve been kind of envious of the fun some people have there, such as our friend Arthur (“The Rev. Dr. Arthur De Extra Large,” if I recall his latest account correctly).
Yup, the EV is a scam, but remember Heinlein’s “The Man Who Sold The Moon.”
We’ll see . . . I think it would be amusing if he did get it.
Great post. This is, by far, the most fun I’ve had in a long time. Knowing Elon is going to win this, yet not knowing how, is half the fun!
It is. Remember, there might be another bid!
Mr. Musk, in my opinion, is the product of the late stages of dying western imperialism. This is the beginning of the end for the selfish and greedy. The coming financial crash will be like nothing ever witnessed in history. The ultimate corporate cannibalism. A big, rolling pile of dookey, crumbling down from the upper levels of the pyramid.
And Tesla is the product not of a solid company, but of speculation.
Because Musk is a former associate of the WEF/Young Global Leaders club, all this “free speech” stuff must not be sitting well with Klaus Schwab. BTW, Maria Bartiromo of Faux Nooz is also a member of the YGL as is Trudeau & Macron.
Even weirder we have tow YGL fighting each other in Ukraine . . .
Gawd, enough with musk . I don’t twitter, I will never buy a ev from him or anyone else & don’t care about space x crap. I’d rather read about the art of hopscotch than anything else about that blowhard.
Considering that for all intents and purposes, he basically owns space, you might want to get over that problem.
When you can buy Twitter just to break it, and build EVs at a loss for twenty years out of petty cash, and still have enough money left over to outdo NASA, France, Russia, and China in the space race, you’re definitely working at a higher level than most of the planet.
If he jumps the shark now, I’m mainly wondering how they’re ever going to Epstein him.
But they inevitably will.
His real crown jewel is SpaceX. He can launch for nearly a tenth the cost of the other guys – reuse of rockets is a stunning achievement. I really, really, really hope that he’s on our side.
Well, he will be all over the news . . . forever.