Spot on, Pornhubby. I'm one of the old guard Twitter users. I signed up during the private beta, and was an on-again, off-again user for a long time. I survived the Russian Bot attacks, engaged in information wars. Hell, I had a daily alarm set to send a tweet to Ted Cruz to tell him to go fuck himself with a link to the MILF porn he accidentally tweeted out years ago just because he wasn't allowed to block me.But ever since Musk started dicking around with Twitter, I knew the time to leave was coming up. Twitter is like a modern newspaper. It's hemorrhaging money left and right but it is vital for following journalists and instantly breaking news. And since I don't have a face for video nor do I want my face out there with TikTok, I keep using Twitter until I find a better alternative. I've heard some interesting things about Mastodon, might check that out this weekend.
The Twitter fiasco has pulled the mask off of Elon Musk. He's not some brilliant engineer, he's not some great programmer. Hell, he's not even remotely smart. He's a smarmy conman who was in the right place at the right time with x.com and PayPal. He's showing the world that he's nothing more than a whiny man-child, a narcissistic little shit who doesn't have a clue about how to run a company that doesn't have a reputation in the field as being a great stepping stone. I've talked to more than a few people that have worked for Elon at SpaceX and Tesla. The average stay is just long enough for the first set of stock options to get vested, cash out, and look for another job.
Elon Musk is doing a speed run on destroying Twitter. I'm trying to figure out if this was intentional or accidental. Hate Twitter as much as it deserves, it has been at the forefront of many conflicts helping people coordinate and communicate. When I need news in 10 seconds, I'm on Twitter. I can see in realtime missiles hitting Russian convoys or watch as a hurricane barrels into Florida. When the Arab Spring happened, they used Twitter. When the BLM protests started, they used Twitter. When Iranian women started throwing off their hijabs, they used Twitter.
Musk is the kind of egotistical, narcissistic, sociopathic man-child who would buy the company on a whim to break it, but he overextended himself. His status as "world's wealthiest man" is a fabrication held up by Tesla stock, and that stock is so vastly overvalued that anyone caught holding it by the end of 2024 will be praying for the days of Lucent. And the Saudis are behind Musk's big deal. You know, the murderous regime that has a lot to worry about from popular uprisings. Combine that with Russian psyops using Twitter to great effect in the last decade against Americans and Europeans, and it becomes pretty obvious that Musk is the right kind of useful idiot they need.
Do I enjoy watching Musk burn his empire to the ground? Absolutely. 7 years ago the Tesla Model S was my dream car. It was the most perfect machine I ever drove. The Model X was amazing. The Model Y...meh. The Model 3 was the largest disappointment I've ever driven. It was an okay car, but had the most uncomfortable seats I've ever sat in, and I owned a Fiat and a Cavalier back in the day. I used to have Solar City, but when Tesla bought them out I couldn't wait to get away from their piss-poor service. See, we can blame Musk and his PayPal cronies for the modern state of customer "service" in Silicon Valley. They figured out there's no money to be made in providing good service, only in constant expansion. They view customer service as a waste of money. So instead of focusing on providing a good experience, they make it so miserable that no one ever wants to call them. It is why PayPal support sucks, why Tesla support sucks, and why Twitter support will suck.
Musk is going to lose not only the $44 billion he spent on this deal, but will tank Tesla's stock in the process. He's only rich now because of several pump&dumps he's done to inflate Tesla's stock. They were somehow valued at a $1.2 trillion market cap, even though they account for maybe 3% of the global new car sales. They're busiest year in the states so far is still less than what Ford makes of the F150, and their build quality sucks. What's worse, remember that rant about shitty service a paragraph ago? That's Tesla in a nutshell. They ship cars with missing parts, poor quality, non-existent QA, then tell their new customers to set up an appointment at a service center to get it fixed, maybe sometime in a few weeks. That's assuming they even deliver the right car. But a lot of people will put up with some bullshit if they think they're helping the planet or making a difference. But Tesla's aren't the only EV's on the market anymore. Hell, earlier this year I bought an F150 while I'm waiting for my spot in the Lightning queue to come up in the next year or two. Even with a long delay and wait, I will likely get an electric pickup truck from Ford long before the Cybertruck even hits the market, let alone when they churn through all of their "preorders." And aside from wanting a truck, the choice was either a used F150 that I knew was on the lot that day, or wait 6 months for an EV to get delivered. But out of all the cars I looked at, Tesla wasn't in that final list. Why? Because Musk is killing the brand. He's doing everything he can to court the right-wing, anti-vax, conspiracy nutter, racist, misogynist, bigoted knuckle draggers around the world as he cries about "free speech" while simultaneously banning anyone who disagrees with him. Tesla's are losing their cool because of Musk, terrible changes made to the vehicles, piss-poor service, and the brand losing what goodwill it had developed over the years.
It'll be interesting to see how long it takes Twitter to crash under Elon's leadership. He fired the people responsible for moderating content. Then cried when the advertisers raised concerns, calling it an attack by "activist journalists." No, McDonald's doesn't want their ads in the background of the screenshot of the next mass shooter's diatribes. Having "I'm Loving It" plastered all over a page of someone denying the holocaust or saying how he wants to shoot up his school is not good for their brand. And when the COO of the largest marketing conglomerate points this out to Elon, he does a smooth-brained move blocks him. This man is responsible for about half of the ad buys on Twitter and every major company that puts money into them. If Elon thought that Twitter was losing money before, wait until the advertising runs out by the end of the year.
By putting up his Tesla shares as collateral, he's standing to lose his fortune with at least 2 companies. And with how much he's screwing around with the US government over Ukraine and being Putin's mouthpiece, those SpaceX contracts have to be under review as well.
In the meantime, I'll look for a new place to take my Twitter time. As will thousands if not millions of us that count as the "core 10%."