A new assessment determined that X, the platform once known as Twitter, is worth a mere fraction of the value it had when Elon Musk bought it for $44 billion.
He named it X because he’s a puerile man child that wanted PayPal to be X.com before Peter Thiel forced him into being a billionaire, kicking and screaming, and he’s never really gotten over it.
What’s easier to believe? He made a terrible financial decision and consistently made worse decisions to make one of the worlds largest social media platforms into the ground or he just an immature man child that has no goal other than to be edgy?
I think it’s easier to believe that powerful people saw it as an opportunity to control a popular social space for controlling discourse and dissent. Western folks might not think of it much, but social media did some good before. One Egyptian dude even named his daughter Facebook. Some of these places still have literal kings.
I think there’s a 3rd option that he knows he’s making it shitty and horrible and it is on purpose and was the goal. Maybe not always. It might have started as stupid posturing, but it seems like there’s goals now and there’s buy in from authoritarian parties.
He named it X because he’s a puerile man child that wanted PayPal to be X.com before Peter Thiel forced him into being a billionaire, kicking and screaming, and he’s never really gotten over it.
What’s easier to believe? He made a terrible financial decision and consistently made worse decisions to make one of the worlds largest social media platforms into the ground or he just an immature man child that has no goal other than to be edgy?
I think it’s easier to believe that powerful people saw it as an opportunity to control a popular social space for controlling discourse and dissent. Western folks might not think of it much, but social media did some good before. One Egyptian dude even named his daughter Facebook. Some of these places still have literal kings.
I think there’s a 3rd option that he knows he’s making it shitty and horrible and it is on purpose and was the goal. Maybe not always. It might have started as stupid posturing, but it seems like there’s goals now and there’s buy in from authoritarian parties.
Both?
If you ask “why though?”, you arrive at your second hypothesis. There’s no “or” between them.
Musk reminds me of my favourite Shel Silverstein book