Elon Musk: Officially a fraud and piece of shit. Official or unofficial war criminal?

[atomheartbevo 89,666]

Would be hilarious if this was the actual email he sent out

 

[Firemans4Horn 18,049]

 

😂 😂 😂 

[F250 28,775]

5 hours ago, NoName said:

Roth leaving is a real holy shit moment.

this is *never* good:

Robin Wheeler and Yoel Roth are the two people who hosted that Twitter Spaces event *yesterday* that was supposed to calm down advertisers.

how fast can you burn $44b to the ground? Elon is showing us in real time!

 

 

[Chopper 17,235]

1 hour ago, Post Oak said:

May be nothing.  May be something.

Tesla cancels solar projects in mass, scales back solar division

https://electrek.co/2022/11/10/tesla-cancels-solar-projects-scales-back-division/

 

He owned Solar City as a separate entity at one time but when it couldn't sustain itself any longer he sold it to Tesla before it went into bankruptcy. (Self-dealing, eh, no problemo!) I'm guessing as a division of Tesla it's still losing money but now that the stock price is headed back toward earth, he's desperate to cut costs and boost Tesla earnings. Also they've suffered significant quality and productions problems so I wonder what they're sticking their customers with...Both of my houses have tesla/solar city panels, inherited from their previous owners. Hopefully they're not ticking time bombs.

[Chopper 17,235]

 

[Fudge Nuggets 19,190]

7 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

 

How has no one come up with a fake "verified" account from Durex condoms claiming "NOT the official condom of Elon Musk"?

[Francisco 2.0 32,393]

Look everyone; Twitter is not allowing blue checks for cash now.

Until noon or so, when Elon will reverse this:

 

https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/11/23452985/twitter-blue-subscription-service-unavailable-error-message

 

Quote

Twitter users are reporting that the option to sign up for the company’s new $7.99 subscription service, Twitter Blue, has disappeared from the platform’s iOS app just days after the service launched.

You could previously subscribe to Twitter Blue from the sidebar in the iOS app (the service has yet to launch for Android users), but users this morning reported that the option has disappeared. For those for whom the link is still available, trying to sign up only returns an error message. “Thank you for your interest!” it reads. “Twitter Blue will be available in your country in the future. Please check back later.”

 

Quote

It’s not clear why users aren’t able to sign up for Twitter Blue. Twitter could be intentionally pausing access to the service while it deals with the chaos its launch has caused (countless users have been buying verification in order to impersonate brands and celebrities). Or, the system could have unintentionally collapsed. 

Since Elon Musk’s mass-firing of Twitter’s work force earlier this week, many people — including current employees — have predicted that the service is in increasing danger of breakdown, as small errors pile-up un-addressed and the company’s remaining staff are pushed to their limit by stress, overwork, and a mandate to return to the office in person.

 

Quote

The launch itself of Twitter Blue has been incredibly chaotic, with Twitter trying to compensate for the confusing surge in fakes with the launch of another verification badge — a gray tick marking accounts as “official.” The company launched this feature, removed it, then launched it again, all in the space of a few days. In this context, the fact that Twitter Blue signups have disappeared from the company’s iOS app is merely par for the course — most things happening to Twitter right now are out of the blue.

 

 

 

Edited November 11, 2022 by Francisco 2.0

[Francisco 2.0 32,393]

https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/11/23451931/elon-musk-twitter-bankrupt-verification-ftc

 

Quote

I honestly did not think chaos would engulf Twitter so quickly, but I must admit: this rules. This owns so hard. Awoooou (wolf howl), Twitter is good again. We’re no longer locked in here with Elon Musk — Elon Musk has locked himself in here with us.

Musk took control of Twitter on October 27th. Since then:

 

Quote

• Twitter Blue got rid of ad-free articles for its subscribers
• Major advertisers paused their spending
• The lady in charge of advertiser relationships quit
• Musk fired half the workforce
• Musk discovered he needed to rehire some of the workforce
• Musk noted there’s been a major drop in revenue
• Twitter planned to charge $20 / month for Twitter Blue
• Musk then revised that to $8 / month after Stephen King complained
• A bunch of people, including celebrities, impersonated Musk on Twitter and got booted
• Twitter briefly disabled letting verified users change their display names
• Twitter said user growth is at its all-time highs under Musk
• Musk sold another $4 billion in Tesla shares
• Twitter rolled out gray checks for “official” accounts
• The same day, Musk killed the gray checks 
• Musk’s first emails to employees: “Sorry that this is my first email to the company, but there is no way to sugarcoat the message. The economic picture ahead is dire.”
• “Elon puts rockets into space, he’s not afraid of the FTC.”
• Musk warns it’s possible Twitter will go bankrupt

 

 

 

Quote

Okay! So I have some thoughts about what the fuck is going on. First of all, Musk often changed his mind at Tesla, like when he decided he was going to close all the brick-and-mortar Tesla stores, then reversed himself, or the time he decided that Tesla was going to accept Bitcoinuntil, uh, it didn’t. Teslas were going to be built by an “alien dreadnought,” which didn’t work. The quick reversals are not unusual for Musk. It’s just that Tesla is a business Musk built around his fandom, who are more understanding of this kind of behavior. 

 

Spoiler

Twitter, however, is an acquisition and is not necessarily full of Musk fans. That means it’s a much less forgiving environment for Musk. Like, an early subset of Twitter users are Something Awful forum goons— the most prominent of whom is Dril — and they love fucking with people. Plus, Musk’s Twitter Blue plan to devalue verification check marks motivated a bunch of people who didn’t like Musk to go out with a bang by impersonating him, largely because they knew it would make him mad. And it probably did! Certainly, that would explain why his very first policy change was to increase punishment for impersonation.

Shenanigans are fun, but here’s the thing to keep in mind: Twitter is loaded with debt from the acquisition and needs to pay roughly $1 billion a year on it. In 2021, Twitter made $5 billion in revenue and did not turn a profit. “This isn’t complicated,” says Mike Roberts, a professor at the Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania. “He owes a bunch of money, and he’s gotta raise money somewhere, somehow. What I wonder is about the ability of Twitter to pay this debt.”

So Musk has to figure out how to make money while people scream at him and impersonate him. Fun job!

Now, one way to free up cash is to fire a lot of people. The problem with doing that, though, is that you lose a bunch of the engineers who could build cool shit to make Twitter more attractive. This is maybe not a major problem, as all tech companies are cutting people loose right now, so Musk can hire new talent on the cheap if he has to.

 

But this does not solve a bigger problem, which is revenue. Last year, 89 percent of Twitter’s revenue — about $4.5 billion — came from advertising. The rest of the company’s income came from other streams, such as data licensing. 

Let’s focus on the advertising problem for a minute. A lot of brands have paused their spending, and one ad exec who was on a call with Musk called his behavior “petulant and thoughtless.” This is an immediate problem because the fourth quarter is the most important one for any business that relies on advertising — including this here website. So a lot of major advertisers are pulling out of Twitter during a crucial period for the company to make money, something Musk himself has acknowledged. “Twitter has had a massive drop in revenue,” he tweeted.

It does get worse, and this part isn’t Musk’s fault. When the economy slows down, companies spend less money on advertising. So even if Musk weren’t doing wild stuff to alienate advertisers, such as tweeting conspiracy theories about Paul Pelosi, Twitter might have been in trouble anyway. But Musk has essentially identified himself and his company as a loose canon, which means that anyone looking to trim advertising spend might be inclined to cut Twitter first.

Now, Twitter did set up Tips — a way to send cash to people you like — but it doesn’t take a cut of that money. It does take a cut of the revenue from Super Follows, a way to make your tweets a subscription service, but Twitter’s share is dwarfed by the fees taken by Apple for in-app purchases.

 

So in terms of revenue, the action, at least right now, is mostly around Twitter Blue, a premium-tier version of Twitter that lets users, among other things, edit their tweets. Musk raised the price of that product to $8, which may not be enough to cover its costs. Let’s do some back-of-the-envelope math, shall we? A year of Twitter blue is $96, which I am going to round to $100 for the purposes of simpler math. If 10 million people sign up for a year, that’s $1 billion in revenue right there. Easy, right?

Well, no, because this is the internet, and there’s forum drama.  Blue users get a blue check mark, which looks exactly like the check mark verified users get — but Twitter Blue customers don’t have to verify their identity, which is how an account with a blue check mark and the display name “Nintendo of America” managed to put up a tweet of Mario flipping the bird. To an unwary user, that might look sufficiently like the actual Nintendo account to do brand damage.

But Musk doesn’t mind. When our own Tom Warren took a screenshot of the tweet, a user replied, “The beauty of this is each account that gets verified paid $8. Twitter keeps the money and suspends the account. It’s genius and I hope more folks do this. It’s free money for Twitter.” Musk himself replied to that user with a bullseye emoji, a smiley face wearing sunglasses, and a bag of money emoji.

I don’t think a lot of advertisers would want to come back to someone with that attitude toward impersonation, even without an economic downturn. The open question to me is whether users want to stay in that environment — one that’s just gotten a new layer of hoaxing and scammers. Billionaire Mark Cuban has already complained that the influx of new checkmarked users has made his mentions miserable. Cuban’s thoughts are one reason people stay on the platform — drive him off, and Twitter is less valuable.

You can see how that turns into a death spiral pretty quickly

Incidentally, Twitter is under a consent decree with the federal government requiring full documentation, in writing, of any foreseeable risks of “any product or service affecting commerce.” The changes to Twitter Blue rolled out less than two weeks after Musk bought Twitter. Do you think there’s full documentation about its risks? Sounds like Twitter’s lawyers are worried!

And that’s before we get to Musk’s paywall ambitions. Essentially, he’s told advertisers he wants to de-rank people using Twitter’s free product and make users pay for reach. Your average person won’t pay for reach, but people shilling newsletters, crypto scams, and other annoyances will. That might get Musk the revenue he wants, but it also degrades the site and potentially means fewer users stick around, making it less valuable for marketers, making them less likely to pay their $8… You can see how that turns into a death spiral pretty quickly.

But I don’t know that he’ll stick to that plan because he’s not especially known for sticking to plans. What I do know is that Musk has a lot of money, and he can give himself some runway to turn Twitter around by simply paying Twitter’s debt himself. So when Musk offloaded $3.9 billion of Tesla shares this week, I figure he was putting aside some cash for Twitter’s loans.

There’s a plausible world in which Musk just continues to offload Tesla shares to fund his Twitter experiments. (This is maybe not a great outcome for Tesla shareholders.) After all, he doesn’t have to keep advertisers happy, and as long as he’s paying interest, no one particularly cares where the money comes from. As long as he’s got the billions to pay off Twitter’s loans and whatever else, he’s got runway to remake the app into what he wants it to be — whatever that is. 

 

Let’s talk about the loans for a hot minute. The Twitter debt is currently held by the banks that helped facilitate this deal — unusual since, generally, they try to find buyers for the debt. But Musk’s lawsuit and delayed closing made that harder, and they’re stuck with the loans on their balance sheets. When they got into this situation, interest rates were lower. By the time the deal closed, though, the appetite for debt had changed, says Anant Sundaram, a professor at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business.

And it’s risky debt to boot, B1 rated, which is “on the lower end of the junk rating spectrum,” says Wharton’s Roberts. “Investor appetite for this debt clearly isn’t as large as it was four months ago.” And when Moody’s rated Twitter’s debt, it cited Twitter’s governance — i.e., Elon Musk — as a major driver of risk.

So for the banks, offloading Twitter’s debt now means taking an immediate loss. Banks may choose to hang on to the debt for a while to see whether the market conditions change. But if Twitter is obviously shitting the bed, unloading that debt gets even harder. Now, Musk is the richest guy in the world, so banks might be willing to negotiate terms with him about debt repayment. But I do wonder how long they want to hold these loans and who might buy them. If banks can’t place the debt, that probably does make it difficult for any other leveraged buy-outs in tech to get done.

“I sometimes get the feeling that people underestimate him, and maybe some of it is deserved because he always seems to live on the financial edge with every business he gets involved in,” says Sundaram. “But I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.” Sundaram notes that none of us know what Musk’s financial model for Twitter is; perhaps he factored in losing a third or more of his users. Moderation problems that make Twitter a ghost town, like Truth Social or Parler, are the worst-case scenario, Sundaram says. “Then he’s finished.”

Look, I’m sorry, but this is extremely personal as someone who loves Twitter. It is the funniest possible thing, and it is perfect for Twitter. Musk owns the hellsite and has been giving its rather hostile user base the tools for effectively trolling him out of billions of dollars. As much as users disliked Jack Dorsey, he was not the kind of person you could effectively troll — and his slow approach to product rollout made it a lot harder to tank the site by shitposting alone. Elon Musk’s Twitter, on the other hand, might just be the greatest show on earth, not least because every poster knows it is totally possible to make him mad online.

 

[Post Oak 20,213]

I feel like Surly could pool some money and make him an offer he couldn't refuse.

[Neonmoon 38,129]

Lol my company is burning 

 

[Post Oak 20,213]

8 minutes ago, Neonmoon said:

Lol my company is burning 

 

He's really not very good at this. Twitterly awkward 

[CooterBrown 18,012]

Didn’t Twitter get rid of most of their office space and convert the remaining space to hotel style open desk space? Where is everyone going to sit when they come back to the office?

[Bookman 4,639]

I just saw the picture of Mario flipping the bird and I can't fucking stop laughing. Help I can't breathe.

[Surly Bevo 24,908]

Didn’t Twitter get rid of most of their office space and convert the remaining space to hotel style open desk space? Where is everyone going to sit when they come back to the office?

Well when you lay off half the staff

[NoName 16,351]

this is real. https://twitter.com/TwitterSupport

 

they said we aren't adding "official" labels and then turned around ~2 days later and said we are adding official labels lol

[Nivek 16,930]

12 hours ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

 

We know now without a doubt Elon is a dumbass.

The easiest, most simple thing he could have done when he took ownership was to have a 60 day or so moratorium on everything: hiring, firing, content moderation, verification, the works.  Give people enough time to prove their worth, get a grasp on the situation internally, reach out to advertisers, make sure the outgoing board and whatnot left everything buttoned up, everything.

The absolute worst, hardest and stupidest thing to have done is...what he's currently doing.  And to be honest, I'm baffled at the absolute lunacy of some of the things that have transpired. If we as outsiders, having only what media reports and others have reported believe it is a dumpster fire, what the hell are conditions like inside their offices? If the first 10 days or so were hectic and head scratching, the last 2-3 have been downright stupifying.

Elon has done a lot of damage to his reputation.  Not to the fanbois, because he can do no wrong. But to the neutral observers?  Incalculable.

 

 

The prove their worth part is what every middling dumbshit new owner/manager does.  

[Kermit 3,156]

16 minutes ago, NoName said:

this is real. https://twitter.com/TwitterSupport

 

they said we aren't adding "official" labels and then turned around ~2 days later and said we are adding official labels lol

Twitter is being run by the emotions from Inside Out. 

[Francisco 2.0 32,393]

8 minutes ago, Nivek said:

The prove their worth part is what every middling dumbshit new owner/manager does.  

Well, for sure.  And perhaps I misworded it. But in this case, Elon didn't give half of the staff a chance to do even that.  He, and he alone had decided before he walked in the door carrying that stupid sink (and the parallels of coming down a gold escalator!) that he was going to fire a bunch of people, because by God, that's what a businessman does!

Look, I'm not an insider or know anything more than what I read.  Twitter's past economics suggest that they were overstaffed, among other things.  But laying off half of the staff without knowing exactly what they do for something as global as Twitter is just courting disaster.

Edited November 11, 2022 by Francisco 2.0

[Goredho 17,406]

1 hour ago, CooterBrown said:

Didn’t Twitter get rid of most of their office space and convert the remaining space to hotel style open desk space? Where is everyone going to sit when they come back to the office?

He wants only a small fraction to come back. This is a massive, very public managing-out.

[Captainant 27,667]

8 minutes ago, Nivek said:

The prove their worth part is what every middling dumbshit new owner/manager does.  

It's some bush league MBA idiocy to come in and radically change an organization to """leave your mark""". Couldn't happen to a nicer company lol, it's been pretty fun watching the myth of elon tarnish and crumble in realtime 

[Celery Man 20,949]

It’s hubris to come in to a complicated situation you can’t possibly understand and do anything but observe and learn for some reasonable period of time. And hubris/loss of the ability to self doubt and think critically is the most rational explanation for how someone who is the richest person on the planet can be this much of a fucking moron.

[G650 14,256]

I feel sorry for anyone who isn't on Twitter the past few weeks.

[G650 14,256]

15 minutes ago, Kermit said:

Twitter is being run by the emotions from Inside Out. 

[SydneyCarton 48,106]

2 minutes ago, G650 said:

I feel sorry for anyone who isn't on Twitter the past few weeks.

Why? I feel like I've got the best of both worlds over here, reading the summaries and not having to actually be on Twitter. Except when I'm in the mood to make jokes about bacon fat IVs and using a power washer as some fat fuck's bidet. 

[Goredho 17,406]

I still wouldn’t discount there being some hidden motivations that would make this all more sensical, though I don’t know what they might be.  I just find it hard to believe Elon became the richest man in the world shepherding Tesla and SpaceX while being this inept as a leader.

[G650 14,256]

2 minutes ago, SydneyCarton said:

Why? I feel like I've got the best of both worlds over here, reading the summaries and not having to actually be on Twitter. Except when I'm in the mood to make jokes about bacon fat IVs and using a power washer as some fat fuck's bidet. 

I've spent a solid 30% of my waking hours this month crying laughing. The summaries don't even come close to doing it justice.

[Texas St. Armadillos 1,381]

10 hours ago, DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt said:

Wut 

Forget it.  He's rolling.

[G650 14,256]

3 minutes ago, Goredho said:

I still wouldn’t discount there being some hidden motivations that would make this all more sensical, though I don’t know what they might be.  I just find it hard to believe Elon became the richest man in the world shepherding Tesla and SpaceX while being this inept as a leader.

I was going to post this standalone, but this is actually good to reply to. The thing people seem to be glossing over is that Elon Musk and Twitter are a spectacularly bad match. I honestly struggle to find a worse one to be honest. Musk has demonstrated over his entire career an almost infantile socio emotional level of development. Taking over not just a social network, but the wildest and wooliest one, is just staggeringly insane. He is not in any shape or form equipped to deal with peoples behaviors. His business success was by using his intelligence in technical arenas and marketing to generally out of mainstream people, or less charitably, weirdos like him. This is the antithesis of that.

[Francisco 2.0 32,393]

https://gizmodo.com/15-fake-twitter-accounts-elon-musk-chaos-verification-1849771209

 

Quote

Today, we have a collection of 15 fake accounts that have spent their $8 to get verified and have been causing chaos on Twitter. But we can say with some confidence there are way more fake accounts than the ones we’ve identified here. And it’s unlikely to stop until Musk abandons his plan to give anyone with $8 a checkmark.

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Fudge Nuggets 19,190]

13 minutes ago, G650 said:

The thing people seem to be glossing over is that Elon Musk and Twitter are a spectacularly bad match. I honestly struggle to find a worse one to be honest.

Bryan Harsin and Auburn comes to mind.

14 minutes ago, G650 said:

His business success was by using his intelligence in technical arenas and marketing to generally out of mainstream people, or less charitably, weirdos like him.

And sucking off free government subsidies.  Don't forget that.

[Goredho 17,406]

4 minutes ago, G650 said:

I was going to post this standalone, but this is actually good to reply to. The thing people seem to be glossing over is that Elon Musk and Twitter are a spectacularly bad match. I honestly struggle to find a worse one to be honest. Musk has demonstrated over his entire career an almost infantile socio emotional level of development. Taking over not just a social network, but the wildest and wooliest one, is just staggeringly insane. He is not in any shape or form equipped to deal with peoples behaviors. His business success was by using his intelligence in technical arenas and marketing to generally out of mainstream people, or less charitably, weirdos like him. This is the antithesis of that.

You aren’t wrong at all, but a lot of these mistakes aren’t in that area.  They are in basic leadership.  Mistakes you might see in my 12 year old when left in charge of my 10 year old.  And Elon has done everything he can to make it all as public as possible.

Lots of companies contract, downsize and manage people out of the org.  But only Elon is going out of his way to make it a public spectacle. He is broadcasting far and wide that this company under his leadership is toxic, dysfunctional and quite likely to fail. No other company or CEO does that, even if out of their element, even if they want some attrition.  It will keep Twitter from retaining or acquiring any talent to make a vision of success possible.  These are not the actions of someone who wants to take Twitter to new heights.

[Cheeseweasel 26,438]

Everyone needs to chill, sit back, and enjoy the dismantling of 'trusting information posted on the internet".

Return it to dancing babies and cat memes like it was designed.

[atomheartbevo 89,666]

2 hours ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

That means it’s a much less forgiving environment for Musk. Like, an early subset of Twitter users are Something Awful forum goons— the most prominent of whom is Dril — and they love fucking with people.

Edited November 11, 2022 by atomheartbevo

[atomheartbevo 89,666]

19 minutes ago, Goredho said:

Lots of companies contract, downsize and manage people out of the org.  But only Elon is going out of his way to make it a public spectacle. He is broadcasting far and wide that this company under his leadership is toxic, dysfunctional and quite likely to fail. No other company or CEO does that, even if out of their element, even if they want some attrition.  It will keep Twitter from retaining or acquiring any talent to make a vision of success possible.  These are not the actions of someone who wants to take Twitter to new heights.

Could be the actions of somebody who thinks he can make people like him by buying something he and they like.

[Cheeseweasel 26,438]

1 minute ago, atomheartbevo said:

Could be the actions of somebody who thinks he can make people like him by buying something he and they like.

Then he should have bought Pornhub.

[atomheartbevo 89,666]

1 hour ago, Bookman said:

I just saw the picture of Mario flipping the bird and I can't fucking stop laughing. Help I can't breathe.

[Cheeseweasel 26,438]

"trusted brands" can get fucked. YOU ARE A MEME NOW

[Reagan1k 3,024]

19 minutes ago, Goredho said:

You aren’t wrong at all, but a lot of these mistakes aren’t in that area.  They are in basic leadership.  Mistakes you might see in my 12 year old when left in charge of my 10 year old.  And Elon has done everything he can to make it all as public as possible.

Agreed - But I think that reinforces @G650 's point.  Elon is arguably very good at working with and for the benefit of engineered type products, but Twitter isn't a widget. It's a compilation of feelings, thoughts, and ideas.  Even the engineers working on it are dealing in the abstract and he has zero skill set for the functioning in the abstract, where emotional maturity and nuance are required.

It's not what he doesn't know that will destroy this...it's what he knows for sure....that just isn't so that'll kill it.

[Captainant 27,667]

25 minutes ago, Cheeseweasel said:

Everyone needs to chill, sit back, and enjoy the dismantling of 'trusting information posted on the internet".

Return it to dancing babies and cat memes like it was designed.

I knew we had crossed the rubicon when people were coming to surly fucking horns for authoritative news updates lol. Hopefully this bender snaps us out of our shared fever dream. There are good information sources on the internet, but they are equal citizens with the infowars and OANN and 8chan's out there too. It's possible to separate the wheat from the chaff, but most people either can't or won't take the time to double check what they're reading before they react to it and propagate it.

It's the same problem as before, it's just that the internet turbocharged it

Edited November 11, 2022 by Captainant

[G650 14,256]

1 minute ago, Reagan1k said:

Agreed - But I think that reinforces @G650 's point.  Elon is arguably very good at working with and for the benefit of engineered type products, but Twitter isn't a widget. It's a compilation of feelings, thoughts, and ideas.  Even the engineers working on it are dealing in the abstract and he has zero skill set for the functioning in the abstract, where emotional maturity and nuance are required.

It's not what he doesn't know that will destroy this...it's what he knows for sure....that just isn't so that'll kill it.

Precisely.

[Cheeseweasel 26,438]

8 minutes ago, Captainant said:

There are good information sources on the internet,

I'm not convinced anymore. We live in a world where aggy is giving themselves rings for fake championships. Everything is slanted. 

Unless I here it straight from the source, I don't believe it any more. Let's just elect President Camacho and be done with it.

[DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt 12,301]

14 minutes ago, Cheeseweasel said:

"trusted brands" can get fucked. YOU ARE A MEME NOW

Elon is the meme.

[DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt 12,301]

4 minutes ago, Cheeseweasel said:

I'm not convinced anymore. We live in a world where aggy is giving themselves rings for fake championships. Everything is slanted. 

Unless I here it straight from the source, I don't believe it any more. Let's just elect President Camacho and be done with it.

We live in a world where truth doesn’t exist. Absent a notion of truth, there can’t be a shared reality. So yeah, nothing is real anymore.

 

[Cheeseweasel 26,438]

3 minutes ago, DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt said:

Elon is the meme.

THE CALL IS COMING FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE

[DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt 12,301]

1 minute ago, Cheeseweasel said:

THE CALL IS COMING FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE

I mean, it’s nuts, right? The dude went from straight up trolling Twitter, then buying it and unleashing an army of trolls that are now destroying his $44 BILLION new toy.

Hello, simulation.

[Brisketexan 105,139]

22 minutes ago, Reagan1k said:

Agreed - But I think that reinforces @G650 's point.  Elon is arguably very good at working with and for the benefit of engineered type products, but Twitter isn't a widget. It's a compilation of feelings, thoughts, and ideas.  Even the engineers working on it are dealing in the abstract and he has zero skill set for the functioning in the abstract, where emotional maturity and nuance are required.

It's not what he doesn't know that will destroy this...it's what he knows for sure....that just isn't so that'll kill it.

Summary: Elon may be the single worst-equipped human on the planet to choose to run Twitter.

None of us have ever seen something like this, or at least seen it displayed so openly and publicly.  It's objectively fascinating to watch.  

[GenXer 2,877]

Feels like I’m watching the series finale of Silicon Valley

[Captainant 27,667]

Reuters: Elon Musk braces for $56 billion battle with heavy metal drummer

Quote

WILMINGTON, Del, Nov 11 (Reuters) - Elon Musk has taken on Detroit's automakers, short-sellers and securities regulators. Next week, the Tesla (TSLA.O) chief executive is set to square off in court against an unlikely foe - a thrash metal drummer who hopes to strip Musk of his $56 billion pay.

The trial will pit the world's richest person against one of the electric carmaker's smallest investors, Richard Tornetta, who held just nine shares when he sued in 2018.

Tornetta sued Musk and the Tesla board on behalf of the company in what is known as a shareholder derivative lawsuit. If successful, Musk's 2018 package of stock grants will be rescinded, benefiting Tesla. Tornetta is not seeking damages for himself.

Historically, cases brought by investors with a near-meaningless economic stake in the litigation have been criticized by business groups as "nuisance suits." Such lawsuits often end quickly in a non-monetary settlement and a payment to the attorneys representing the plaintiff.

"This case looks different," said Jessica Erickson, a professor at University of Richmond School of Law who has specialized in shareholder litigation.

Tornetta's case survived a motion to dismiss in 2019 and is heading to a week-long trial beginning on Monday in Wilmington, Delaware that will feature live testimony from Musk, who last month bought Twitter for $44 billion.

The pay package was widely criticized and California's teachers retirement system known as CalSTRS was among the investors who voted against it.

...

10-FOLD RISE IN STOCK PRICE

Tornetta's lawsuit alleges Musk dictated the pay package's terms to a board of directors beholden to the billionaire and claims it was then put to a vote of shareholders who were misled about the difficulty of reaching certain targets.

The disputed pay package allows Musk to buy 1% of Tesla's stock at a deep discount each time escalating performance and financial targets are met; otherwise Musk gets nothing. Tesla has hit 11 of the 12 targets as its value ballooned briefly to more than $1 trillion from $50 billion, according to court papers.

Musk and the directors argue in court filings that the package kept Musk focused on Tesla during a difficult period and led to a 10-fold rise in the stock price.

 

[Cheeseweasel 26,438]

9 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Summary: Elon may be the single worst-equipped human on the planet to choose to run Twitter.

He's turned it into memes and shitposting.

I'd argue he's the BEST equipped human on the planet to run Twitter.

[G650 14,256]

17 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

  It's objectively fascinating to watch.  

I feel terrible but I can't stop watching.