# Now that Elon Musk has bought Twitter - now the Pit edition (Part 1) **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [April 25, 2022, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442 "2022-04-25T22:50:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 43
**Author:** ![Maserschmidt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/maserschmidt/32/18829_2.png) [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2022, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/841 "2022-11-11T17:02:04Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > Not real ‘value’; at 84% of the pre-Twisaster value, Tesla is still overvalued by at least an order of magnitude. ^ (THIS.gif) ---
**Author:** ![ekedolphin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ekedolphin/32/10003_2.png) [@ekedolphin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ekedolphin)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2022, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/842 "2022-11-11T17:49:04Z")
I didn’t see this mentioned, so I’ll bring it up here. ESPN writer Adam Schefter had his account “parodied” by some college kid who spent $8 and sent news like the Raiders coach getting fired. Someone else made a fake LeBron James account in which he demanded a trade from the Lakers. And it’s impossible to tell if they’re real or not until they get banned, because they paid $8 for the blue checkmark. > **[Sports Twitter is now a verified hellhole thanks to Elon Musk](https://www.sbnation.com/2022/11/9/23450014/sports-twitter-parody-accounts-elon-musk)** > > We’re one day into the new Twitter verification, and it’s a mess. Elon Musk is _trying_ to fail. Unless he’s really that stupid. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2022, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/843 "2022-11-11T17:55:57Z")
> [@wguy123](#): > > It’s hard to wrap my head around the richest person in the world appearing to be so bad at business. Just because you were spectacularly successful at one thing doesn’t mean you have some kind of omnipotence or omniscience. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2022, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/844 "2022-11-11T17:59:46Z")
> [@ekedolphin](#): > > Elon Musk is _trying_ to fail. Unless he’s really that stupid. I’d say that trying to fail is usually a sign of somebody being really stupid. Of course, there are people who will refuse to accept this. They believe that billionaires are a higher form of life who are incapable of making a mistake. So when somebody like Elon Musk is publicly failing, they will say that ordinary grubs like us aren’t capable of understanding the genius of somebody like Musk, who is only choosing to appear to fail in order to go on to achieve higher levels of success as a result. ---
**Author:** ![suranyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2022, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/845 "2022-11-11T18:02:48Z")
This is really big because sports talk on Twitter is maybe a hundred times bigger than politics talk. I regularly check what’s trending there and there are many days where every single trending item is about sports. That’s rare for any other topic. ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2022, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/846 "2022-11-11T18:15:16Z")
> [@Maserschmidt](#): > > That whole time Dorsey was apparently urging Musk to buy the whole thing and take it private, as the only thing that could save Twitter, and I’m sure that played to Musk’s ego. That adds to the mystery, as one would assume Jack Dorsey has some degree of insight into the company he helped found and ran until recently. And he is supposedly Musk’s buddy. How, if he is advising Musk, is this going so disastrously? ---
**Author:** ![naita](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naita/32/5862_2.png) [@naita](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/naita)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2022, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/847 "2022-11-11T18:18:00Z")
> [@ekedolphin](#): > > And it’s impossible to tell if they’re real or not until they get banned, because they paid $8 for the blue checkmark. Well you can click through and it should tell you whether they bought a blue check or got it by being notable. There are some reports that this has occasional glitches, but I believe it mostly works. Not that this makes much of a difference to how dumb Elon’s move was. ---
**Author:** ![naita](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naita/32/5862_2.png) [@naita](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/naita)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2022, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/848 "2022-11-11T18:20:06Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Of course, there are people who will refuse to accept this. They believe that billionaires are a higher form of life who are incapable of making a mistake. So when somebody like Elon Musk is publicly failing, they will say that ordinary grubs like us aren’t capable of understanding the genius of somebody like Musk, who is only choosing to appear to fail in order to go on to achieve higher levels of success as a result. “ordinary grubs like us aren’t capable of understanding the genius of somebody like Musk”. So what I, an ordinary grub, is reading, is that Musk is playing 4D chess! 😉 ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2022, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/849 "2022-11-11T18:24:20Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > Just because you were spectacularly successful at one thing doesn’t mean you have some kind of omnipotence or omniscience. OTOH, it leads to a mindset that you _do_. > [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > So when somebody like Elon Musk is publicly failing, they will say that ordinary grubs like us aren’t capable of understanding the genius of somebody like Musk, who is only choosing to appear to fail in order to go on to achieve higher levels of success as a result. It’s not that he’s so much smarter than an ordinary grub like us, it’s that he’s acting stupider than an _actual_ grub. ---
**Author:** ![Maserschmidt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/maserschmidt/32/18829_2.png) [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2022, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/850 "2022-11-11T18:35:59Z")
> [@Tamerlane](#): > > That adds to the mystery, as one would assume Jack Dorsey has some degree of insight into the company he helped found and ran until recently. And he is supposedly Musk’s buddy. How, if he is advising Musk, is this going so disastrously? Well, I think it’s possible that Dorsey wildly overestimated Musk’s intelligence and business savvy. I would certainly like his thoughts on the subsequent trainwreck, but his tweets since then have been few and cryptic, and on top of that his tweets (even before this) have been pretty abstracted anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Slight\_Off\_Hand](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f08c70/32.png) [@Slight\_Off\_Hand](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slight_Off_Hand)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2022, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/851 "2022-11-11T19:18:51Z")
Oops. Looks like $8 was enough to tank some stock. > Did Twitter Blue tweet just cost Eli Lilly [$LLY](https://twitter.com/search?q=%24LLY&src=ctag&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) billions? > > Yes. [pic.twitter.com/w4RtJwgCVK](https://t.co/w4RtJwgCVK) > > — Rafael Shimunov is on Mastodon (@rafaelshimunov) [November 11, 2022](https://twitter.com/rafaelshimunov/status/1591133819918114816?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2022, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/852 "2022-11-11T19:39:29Z")
> [@Maserschmidt](#): > > > [@Tamerlane](#): > > > > That adds to the mystery, as one would assume Jack Dorsey has some degree of insight into the company he helped found and ran until recently. And he is supposedly Musk’s buddy. How, if he is advising Musk, is this going so disastrously? > > Well, I think it’s possible that Dorsey wildly overestimated Musk’s intelligence and business savvy. Or he just needed to unload that white elephant and Musk made himself the ideal patsy. ---
**Author:** ![PastTense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pasttense/32/14550_2.png) [@PastTense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastTense)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2022, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/853 "2022-11-11T19:42:44Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > Or he just needed to unload that white elephant and Musk made himself the ideal patsy. No. > Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey retained a **2.4%** stake in the microblogging site after Elon Musk completed his $44 billion acquisition, according to a new filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. By the numbers: The filing indicates that Dorsey rolled over some 18 million shares when Twitter became private. [https://www.axios.com/2022/11/01/jack-dorsey-retains-twitter-stake-elon-musk-takeover](https://www.axios.com/2022/11/01/jack-dorsey-retains-twitter-stake-elon-musk-takeover) ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2022, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/854 "2022-11-11T19:44:02Z")
Could just be plausible deniability. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2022, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/855 "2022-11-11T19:52:52Z")
> ---
**Author:** ![squeegee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/squeegee/32/14537_2.png) [@squeegee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/squeegee)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2022, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/856 "2022-11-11T20:08:22Z")
> [@JohnT](#): > > [https://twitter.com/ZoeSchiffer/status/1591152301817102336?t=9MDQc2yag9Ec6elHGtoffA&s=19](https://twitter.com/ZoeSchiffer/status/1591152301817102336?t=9MDQc2yag9Ec6elHGtoffA&s=19) Wow. a complete list of all the employees who were laid off. You can analyze which departments were gutted, find each employee’s linked in and recruit them, I don’t know what else. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2022, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/857 "2022-11-11T20:11:42Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > So when somebody like Elon Musk is publicly failing, they will say that ordinary grubs like us aren’t capable of understanding the genius of somebody like Musk, who is only choosing to appear to fail in order to go on to achieve higher levels of success as a result. #TooDumbToFail > [@Maserschmidt](#): > > Well, I think it’s possible that Dorsey wildly overestimated Musk’s intelligence and business savvy. I would certainly like his thoughts on the subsequent trainwreck, but his tweets since then have been few and cryptic, and on top of that his tweets (even before this) have been pretty abstracted anyway. #TooStonedToFail Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Mr.E](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mr.e/32/8932_2.png) [@Mr.E](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.E)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2022, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/858 "2022-11-11T20:15:31Z")
It’s hard to wrap my head around just how idiotic this has been. The “Verified” checkmark has meant one very specific thing for over a decade. Now, it would have made sense if Musk had changed it to “If you subscribe to Twitter Blue you will automatically be eligible for verification as long as you meet the requirements and pass the review” because honestly there’s a lot of people on Twitter who ought to be verified and aren’t. He didn’t do that. He foolishly believed $8 would be enough to separate the sheep from the goats and is paying a much steeper price. People have capitalized on this dumb decision to make a lot of funny jokes that are pissing off Twitter’s most important source of revenue. The verified badge is meaningless now. It’s hastily being replaced by a different verified badge for no discernible reason. Or maybe it’s not, because this particular detail keeps changing on a moment to moment basis. This debacle has literally cost other companies millions of dollars. Musk has no idea what he’s doing. If a new home owner walked in the door and lit the curtains on fire because he was cold and didn’t know how to work the thermostat that would be less stupid than what Musk has done since buying twitter. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2022, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/859 "2022-11-11T20:20:31Z")
I wonder if Eli Lilly could have a cause of action against Twitter for this. ---
**Author:** ![nate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nate/32/13085_2.png) [@nate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nate)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2022, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/860 "2022-11-11T21:17:17Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > You mean a workforce culture like this?: > > [Five former SpaceX employees speak out about harassment at the company - The Verge](https://www.theverge.com/22831380/spacex-employees-harassment-workplace-misconduct-elon-musk) > > or this?: No, I mean making your work your life. It’s understandable for SpaceX engineers but I don’t think Twitter has the same sort of inspiring goal. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442.md?page=42) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442.md?page=44)