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

[hitmouse]

I think I was away or something that day so never actually got to attend, but definitely remember hearing about some work away day that was meant to be taking place at the Morrissey Suite of a hotel (in Manchester). I imagine the rest of the suites were presumably named the Bez Suite, Ian Curtis Suite, and so on, but maybe it was a hotel where they named all the suites after beloved pop culture figures who went a bit UKIPpy, who knows?

 

[pbsmooth]

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.

Engagement on his platform. More the better.
But I was more referring to the people he no doubt follows/sees who post that stuff. Who are full time grifters. And he is monetising the fact they use his platform to find an audience.

 

[weltweit]

I haven't seen much evidence of his new CEO, has she started work yet?

 

[JimW]

Locked herself in eXposure and is refusing to come out. Knocks on the door are met with sobs and a desperate muttering.

 

[mwgdrwg]

Meanwhile the old Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is retweeting this sort of nonsense. Fuck these tech bros.

The astounding miracle here is that they actually make mark Zuckerberg seem ok.

 

[weltweit]

Locked herself in eXposure and is refusing to come out. Knocks on the door are met with sobs and a desperate muttering.

Actually she has been busy

https://twitter.com/lindayacc

 

[Dystopiary]

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.

I just searched for [young basketball star who had a cardiac arrest]. Fortunately he's out of intensive care and reportedly in a stable condition. But one of the top results was the Daily Mail saying Musk had said v*****e might be the cause of young guy's collapse. This crap Musk says gets him attention from various outlets and fuels twitter engagement.

 

[DaveCinzano]

That seems like a workable system as long as you only have one meeting room and no possibility of more than one meeting needing to happen at the same time?

If you need to have more than one meeting at the same time, I think I may have identified one of the reasons for your organisation's dysfunction

 

[mojo pixy]

Our meeting rooms are called things like “3.2” and “5.6” and “LG.1”. And I bet you can guess where room 7.4 is likely to be.

(a day late and ruined by a proper explanation, oh well)

 

[magneze]

The astounding miracle here is that they actually make mark Zuckerberg seem ok.

Quietly destroying the fabric of societies around the world. "Ok"

 

[Cloo]

Yeah - I seem to be switching to Threads although not under any illusion Zuckerberg is a 'good guy'. But that it'd really piss off Musk is a plus. I have to admire Zuckerberg just going 'Fuck it, let's copy twitter with a minimum viable product and put it out there, people will probably go for it then we can work on it as we go along'

 

[Shippou-Sensei]

At this point the thread title maybe needs "or just a fucking idiot" appending.

I think the question should just be crossed out and 'nevermind' be added at the end.

 

[Shippou-Sensei]

What are tweets called? Exes?

Xzibits

 

[jeff_leigh]

I mean, @jack was always a @dick, so,

Even back when he was banning Donald Trump or only recently?

 

[PR1Berske]

I'm no expert. But..... I know that many of these techbro types are swimming in the same pool. They don't believe in government regulation, or perhaps in government at all, they don't believe in checks and balances, they don't believe in either freedom of speech or freedom from consequence of freedom of speech. They'd be happy if Silicon Valley was not just an autonomous region, they'd prefer it to be self governing.

All we've seen from the COVID reactions, the Trump support, the "X" thing, it's all part of this journey. They want to "own" an independent Internet. It's anarchy, of a sort. Musk doesn't care if you dislike him, he doesn't want the likes of you or me living on his planet.

 

[Shippou-Sensei]

I'm no expert. But..... I know that many of these techbro types are swimming in the same pool. They don't believe in government regulation, or perhaps in government at all, they don't believe in checks and balances, they don't believe in either freedom of speech or freedom from consequence of freedom of speech.

Let's hope they swim deep enough because they also don't believe in water pressure.

 

[Yossarian]

Xzibits

View attachment 384618

"You said you liked X so now your company's called X and you can use it to send Xs to your exes! This has cost you $44 billion."

 

[Flavour]

Let's hope they swim deep enough because they also don't believe in water pressure.

Little bit late but very good

 

[Shippou-Sensei]

(X) Rearrange the whole game with my billion pounds
(X) Kids won't say my name coz I don't come around
(X) Stocks went from the top to the underground
(X) to the Z is how I rebrand my family

 

[Jeff Robinson]

Meanwhile the old Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is retweeting this sort of nonsense. Fuck these tech bros.

I mean, @jack was always a @dick, so,

Dorsey is the worst sort of silicone valley, cyber-libertarian, crypto-bro cunt imaginable. The freak’s only redeeming feature compared to Musk really was that he didn’t permanently try to make himself the centre of attention and at least didn’t violate the ‘if it isn’t broken…’ mantra. It was easy to use Twitter and forget he was CEO. With Musk that’s impossible, every week there’s a new awful publicity stunt or awful new policy implemented. Promoting and bankrolling Tate’s sex-trafficking crime gang is probably the lowest moment yet.

 

[BigMoaner]

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.

He doesn't, but he probably has a hard on for so many awful enlightened centrists, crypto cunts, "real men", shameless quack grifters, and alt right lunatics that he THINKS he does which is so strangely modern. He's probably pleasing his feed, and has lost touch with wider humanity. So in musks world he probably does go to sleep each night thinking he's winning. The "other", i.e. the rest of the world laughing at him is probably not even encountered by him that much, as he scrolls through his feed for 11087 time that day.

 

[bimble]

He doesn't, but he probably has a hard on for so many awful enlightened centrists, crypto cunts, "real men", shameless quack grifters, and alt right lunatics that he THINKS he does which is so strangely modern. He's probably pleasing his feed, and has lost touch with wider humanity. So in musks world he probably does go to sleep each night thinking he's winning. The "other", i.e. the rest of the world laughing at him is probably not even encountered by him that much, as he scrolls through his feed for 11087 time that day.

Maybe all of that but he will no doubt be aware of what his antics have done to both advertising revenue & valuation of the company that he paid 44 billion for. That’s what makes it such a compelling spectacle, I think.

 

[BigMoaner]

Maybe all of that but he will no doubt be aware of what his antics have done to both advertising revenue & valuation of the company that he paid 44 billion for. That’s what makes it such a compelling spectacle, I think.

Yes, it's true. There's IRL damage occuring and agree it's fascinating.

 

[a_chap]

I suspect there's been another change to the twitter* algorithm.

Usually posting any tweet with swear words (even mild terms like "idiot") I'd would be prompted with an inane message like "People don't like tweets with words like that. Do you want to reword it?" or something equally nannyish.

Firstly, today my twitter feed is full of right-wing nut jobs, climate deniers, etc. Much more than I've ever seen before.
Secondly, because one of those was a tweet from Nigel Farage I replied with "Fuck off. Keeping fucking off. Then fuck off some more" (and so on) but... no nagging prompt

*no fucking way am I calling it "X"

 

[bimble]

This looks like him explaining the thinking behind the X thing. Which is that he really imagines that people will trust his chaotic imploding troll-infested app with their financial information. Boggling.

 

[kabbes]

Why does he even think I would want to do everything from banking to anonymous shitposting on the same app?

 

[Cid]

Engagement on his platform. More the better.
But I was more referring to the people he no doubt follows/sees who post that stuff. Who are full time grifters. And he is monetising the fact they use his platform to find an audience.

He can't make twitter profitable off the back of a few million grifters. What he had was a platform with incredible reach across a wide range of demographics. What he has is a platform that a significant proportion of those who made that viable want to leave, or have left. What his expansion ideas required above all else was trust and broad adoption. That ain't happening.

 

[Cid]

Why does he even think I would want to do everything from banking to anonymous shitposting on the same app?

It works tbf, go to China and use wechat.

 

[BigMoaner]

This looks like him explaining the thinking behind the X thing. Which is that he really imagines that people will trust his chaotic imploding troll-infested app with their financial information. Boggling.
View attachment 384638

He's clearly trying to win the internet. He's either an evil genius and it'll work or he's one of the dumbest people I have ever seen.

 

[bimble]

Ha. The monthly subscription service is now called XBlue. If the sort of people who pay him $8 a month were likely to have partners who look at their bank statements that might be an awkward conversation but they probably don’t so it’s fine.