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Is Elon Musk the greatest visionary or the greatest snake oil salesman of our age?


'Workers managed to take down most of the lettering before their efforts were paused, leaving the letters e and r in place.'



Inspector Fowler: "Well if you knew that this crest represented the authority of Her Majesty the Queen, what in the Devil's briefcase did you imagine 'E.R.' stood for?"

P.C. Goody: "'Er in the palace."
 
Honestly there was nothing in the show 'Succession' that was as ludicrous as this Musk fiasco at twitter. I mean 'X'?! Seriously what the fuck, what sort of fucking idiot would take something with such a well-established brand profile and replace it is with the most boring possible word (not even a word is it, just a letter) and logo imaginable. Every time people log on and see that shit fucking logo, it will remind them 'oh yeah, this site where I've connected with thousands of people around the world has been taken over a ruined by a fucking idiot and loser'.
 
I am looking at the odd tweet when twitter lets me do so and the website just feels like its part of some sort of farcial April fools logo change, it all just looks slightly cheap and weird.

I assume thats the vibe Musk is going for bit its given me some respect back for UI and site designers (they still have a long way to go)
Yeah, I don't have a login so going to see what the fuss was and got the 'Sign into Twitter" page with the X above it so already the first thing you see is two clashing bit of branding. Clearly they just straight swapped out with the old logo so the vertical alignment looks unbalanced. To make matters worse there is a slightly different white 'x' to the left of the logo - this one to signify closing the box. That is a bit confusing but also throws the whole look off as it clashes with the main logo so clearly.

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similar really. some people i used to follow on there have buggered off to various bits of mastodon, some to bluesky, some have just stopped.

meh.
People are looking for 'the new twitter' but I'm not convinced there ever will be one. Just like there wasn't a new Usenet, MySpace, Friends Reunited etc. Some people will migrate to different services or take it as an opportunity to take a step back but that community that took years to build is lost in the process. New stuff will come in it's place but it'll take time to develop and will have it's own identity.
 
& today musk's been Xweeting wild speculation about whether the vaccine is to blame for some famous sports person's health problems.
people like these two have collapsed my previous understanding of what makes some folk end up so drawn to conspiracy theories and i still don't know what to think about that.
 
& today musk's been Xweeting wild speculation about whether the vaccine is to blame for some famous sports person's health problems.
people like these two have collapsed my previous understanding of what makes some folk end up so drawn to conspiracy theories and i still don't know what to think about that.A
I'd think his feed is full of such theories and he is staring at them pretty much all day. Imagine this guy without his device. It's difficult to do. Imagine him chilling out at the beach, with his mind flowing here and there, from subject to subject. I'm a fan boy of Byung Chul Han, he said social media "can prevent pain becoming eloquent". I.e. you need to give space to thought (and pain) to allow itself to express itself, to find its way back to itself. Another way he puts it is if you go cycling you need to do it to find out if you like it or not - so you need the psyche to have space, even in the activity itself, to find out it prefers dancing over cycling. You need a measure of silence and space to do this, in my view. He's so online he can probably barely think at all, let alone the work of debunking the shit he is being fed.
 
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He hasn't quite caught up that most sensible together people find the idea of online culture war battles are one of the saddest, draining, and fruitless things to do with ones spare time.

Not saying horrible ideas should t be challenged, and it's good that people do but to make it am actual life style choice is beyond my comprehension.
 
He benefits from it. Most social media sites are built to reward it. The most divisive people on the site he paid billions for will also be some of his most valuable. And he's a sociopath so he doesn't really care about the real world effects.
How does he benefit from posting stuff like today’s “maybe it was the vaccine”? I don’t think he does, it’s not a strategic business move, that makes no sense. He’s not Russel brand. Maybe he thinks he is but that would be a mistake.
 
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