# 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:** 47
**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 13, 2022, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/921 "2022-11-13T00:48:22Z")
Have any of you on Twitter tried describing this to someone not on Twitter? It’s really hard to describe, things are moving so fast & so crazily. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2022, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/922 "2022-11-13T01:05:26Z")
> [@suranyi](#): > > I’m not enjoying it. In fact, it’s giving me a stomachache. Because Musk is destroying what is, for me, a very useful platform. It’s extremely useful for breaking news, especially in areas where mainstream media does not have much of a presence. The lead stories on Ukraine, for example, tend to break first on Twitter, and then get followed up by other media presences. If Twitter disappears, then people in isolated areas lose a valuable way of getting their stories out to the world. ---
**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 13, 2022, 1:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/923 "2022-11-13T01:26:34Z")
> [@Maserschmidt](#): > > Have any of you on Twitter tried describing this to someone not on Twitter? It’s really hard to describe, things are moving so fast & so crazily. The easiest way I found was to compare it to their favorite medium… "Imagine if ABC allowed someone to buy ad time as Coca-Cola, this ad announcing that cocaine is being added to the formula. Now assume nobody can tell the difference between a real Coke ad and this fake Coke ad. And now assume that ABC ran real Coke ads alongside fake Coke ads. “What would you do if you were Coca-Cola?” … replace “ABC” with “Facebook”, “YouTube”, etc, as needed. ---
**Author:** ![Leaper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/4bbf92/32.png) [@Leaper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaper)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2022, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/924 "2022-11-13T01:37:42Z")
> [@JohnT](#): > > Now assume nobody can tell the difference between a real Coke ad and this fake Coke ad. It’s kind of more like, the fake ad says it’s a parody in that tiny type few people bother to read. ---
**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 13, 2022, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/925 "2022-11-13T04:43:45Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > It’s extremely useful for breaking news, especially in areas where mainstream media does not have much of a presence. But how often does it really matter that you hear about a news event instantly? Frankly I would be better informed if I read more long form analyses about major issues and fewer news items. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2022, 4:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/926 "2022-11-13T04:57:34Z")
It is a way to get the news out in areas that do not have mainstream news on the spot. By getting the news out, it may attract the attention of other media outlets, who otherwise may not even have known of the event. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2022, 5:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/927 "2022-11-13T05:01:58Z")
> [@PastTense](#): > > But how often does it really matter that you hear about a news event instantly? Frankly I would be better informed if I read more long form analyses about major issues and fewer news items. Timely breaking news announcements and in-depth news analyses are both important. But they’re two completely different kinds of journalism. We need them both. ---
**Author:** ![suranyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2022, 5:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/928 "2022-11-13T05:58:29Z")
See, I use it differently. For me, the breaking news I follow relates to concerts and ticket sales. And in that case, it does make a difference how fast I learn about them. Many of the shows I go to sell out in just a few minutes. So learning about them the next day is too late. ---
**Author:** ![D\_Anconia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/67e7ee/32.png) [@D\_Anconia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/D_Anconia)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2022, 6:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/929 "2022-11-13T06:12:18Z")
Now Mr. Musk has gone too far. Employees will have to pay for lunch in the cafeteria. He’s trying to starve them! [Andrew Wortman on Twitter: “He fired 3/4 of the employees. Now he’s planning to starve the rest of them. He’s failure incarnate. https://t.co/elL8N3D2CB” / Twitter](https://twitter.com/AmoneyResists/status/1591275540475936770?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1591275540475936770%7Ctwgr%5E4bdc27cfe05a34776e0baf3c9bf8606fe9e26a73%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fredstate.com%2Fnick-arama%2F2022%2F11%2F12%2Foh-the-humanity-elon-triggers-the-left-with-his-most-evil-twitter-move-yet-n658172) If that’s the kind of whiny entitled brats that work there, maybe he should fire them all, and start over. ---
**Author:** ![CairoCarol](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cairocarol/32/3825_2.png) [@CairoCarol](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CairoCarol)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2022, 6:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/930 "2022-11-13T06:13:20Z")
> [@suranyi](#): > > See, I use it differently. For me, the breaking news I follow relates to concerts and ticket sales. And in that case, it does make a difference how fast I learn about them. Okay, it seems like Twitter performs a service for you, but … in the greater scheme of things, is quick info on ticket sales important, compared to, say, knowing what’s happening on the ground in Ukraine? I should think that the vultures would swoop in pretty fast to solve any disconnect about ticket sales due to Twitter disruption. As for me, I just heard on our local public radio station that David Sedaris is coming to Hawaii in February 2023 - I don’t know that I necessarily got the best price for tickets, because I’m not really savvy about all the ticket sales companies that are clearly trying to make a profit on demand for popular performers, but without Twitter I managed to snag the tickets I wanted at a not TOO insane price. Do you really need Twitter to buy concert tickets? ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2022, 6:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/931 "2022-11-13T06:28:53Z")
> [@D\_Anconia](#): > > Now Mr. Musk has gone too far. Employees will have to pay for lunch in the cafeteria. He’s trying to starve them! > > [Andrew Wortman on Twitter: “He fired 3/4 of the employees. Now he’s planning to starve the rest of them. He’s failure incarnate. https://t.co/elL8N3D2CB” / Twitter](https://twitter.com/AmoneyResists/status/1591275540475936770?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1591275540475936770%7Ctwgr%5E4bdc27cfe05a34776e0baf3c9bf8606fe9e26a73%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fredstate.com%2Fnick-arama%2F2022%2F11%2F12%2Foh-the-humanity-elon-triggers-the-left-with-his-most-evil-twitter-move-yet-n658172) > > If that’s the kind of whiny entitled brats that work there, maybe he should fire them all, and start over. It’s all relative. Google employees having been getting awesome free gourmet lunches for years, along with lots of other perks. The only thing Twitter employees have been getting lately is fired. Both companies are vying for the best talent. Where would you rather work? > **[Lunch at Google HQ is as Insanely Awesome as You Thought](https://www.seriouseats.com/lunch-at-google-insanely-awesome-as-you-thought)** > > Forget sloppy cafeteria fare. The cafés on the Google campus serve some of the best food in the San Francisco Bay Area. We snagged a coveted invitation to eat lunch on site and found out what all the fuss was about (think pecan-crusted rockfish and... ---
**Author:** ![D\_Anconia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/67e7ee/32.png) [@D\_Anconia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/D_Anconia)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2022, 6:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/932 "2022-11-13T06:33:58Z")
They’re certainly not going to starve, as Mr. Wortman claims. Unless they are really that bad at adulting? ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2022, 6:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/933 "2022-11-13T06:57:09Z")
So I gather that you don’t like hyperbole as a literary device and would prefer that Wortman had used different words to describe Musk’s catastrophic mismanagement. OK. ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2022, 7:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/934 "2022-11-13T07:48:58Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > By getting the news out, it may attract the attention of other media outlets, who otherwise may not even have known of the event. I generally think Twitter is a net negative for society. but I will make a gigantic exception for things like the virality of “police misconduct” videos. Absent Twitter, the mainstream media generally ignores these because they’re controversial and hard to cover, but when a million people are independently drawing attention to an incident of official abuse, suddenly there’s some solid ground on which the media can base a story. I don’t think Chauvin gets prosecuted, let alone convicted, without Twitter, for example. When Musk is done pressing Twitter’s face into the garbage disposal, whatever replaces it will need to have the same broad reach and user-driven communication agenda to have the same kind of social effect. ---
**Author:** ![Banquet\_Bear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banquet_bear/32/373_2.png) [@Banquet\_Bear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banquet_Bear)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2022, 8:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/935 "2022-11-13T08:27:29Z")
> [@D\_Anconia](#): > > Unless they are really that bad at adulting? …I think that the person who is bad at “adulting” would be the person who has arbitrarily decided to remove part of their employee’s compensation package without notice or mutual agreement. ---
**Author:** ![Shalmanese](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shalmanese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shalmanese)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2022, 8:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/936 "2022-11-13T08:36:03Z")
> [@PastTense](#): > > But how often does it really matter that you hear about a news event instantly? Frankly I would be better informed if I read more long form analyses about major issues and fewer news items. It’s not about speed, it’s that all sorts of stuff breaks on twitter and then the stuff that gets engagement later gets amplified through mainstream media. It lowers the barrier to entry which brings in a more diverse set of voices who get to set the news agenda. eg: One of the first indications we had of the OBL operation were people in Pakistan tweeting that they heard strange helicopters going overhead. None of them would have had access to forward these videos to traditional media but because they posted it on twitter, people put two and two together and there was a more complete record of how the operation went down. Similarly, stories of celebrity sexual misconduct or videos of police brutality get put on twitter first and then later get covered by the news who can do more investigation and provide more context. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2022, 8:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/937 "2022-11-13T08:51:31Z")
Twitter has fact-checked another of Dear Leader’s twits. [![](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FhbWyQ9VsAAci90?format=jpg&name=small) ](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FhbWyQ9VsAAci90?format=jpg&name=small) ---
**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 13, 2022, 9:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/938 "2022-11-13T09:34:31Z")
> [@PastTense](#): > > But how often does it really matter that you hear about a news event instantly? Frankly I would be better informed if I read more long form analyses about major issues and fewer news items. Yes, this is your third post along these lines and we get it: you don’t use Twitter and you are cooler and better for it. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2022, 9:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/939 "2022-11-13T09:48:25Z")
> [@D\_Anconia](#): > > Now Mr. Musk has gone too far. Employees will have to pay for lunch in the cafeteria. He’s trying to starve them! > > [Andrew Wortman on Twitter: “He fired 3/4 of the employees. Now he’s planning to starve the rest of them. He’s failure incarnate. https://t.co/elL8N3D2CB” / Twitter](https://twitter.com/AmoneyResists/status/1591275540475936770?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1591275540475936770%7Ctwgr%5E4bdc27cfe05a34776e0baf3c9bf8606fe9e26a73%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fredstate.com%2Fnick-arama%2F2022%2F11%2F12%2Foh-the-humanity-elon-triggers-the-left-with-his-most-evil-twitter-move-yet-n658172) > > If that’s the kind of whiny entitled brats that work there, maybe he should fire them all, and start over. That’s such bullshit. The cafeteria wasn’t a gift, it was an agreed-upon benefit of their employment, and the free food was part of their pay. Cancelling it is for all effects and purposes cutting their salaries. Who _wouldn’t_ complain if someone wasn’t paying them what they were owed? ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2022, 10:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/940 "2022-11-13T10:01:35Z")
> [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > …I think that the person who is bad at “adulting” would be the person who has arbitrarily decided to remove part of their employee’s compensation package without notice or mutual agreement. Here’s a good overview of how and why Elmo’s thinking is channeled and constrained, leading him to decisions like this. > **[Billionaire Brain Damage](https://wheresyoured.at/p/billionaire-brain-damage)** > > We are now off the edge of the map. Elon Musk has laid off 50% of Twitter’s staff in a move that some call ‘backbreaking.’ Twitter has suffered a “massive drop in revenue” as major advertisers, including GM and Audi, paused their spending on the... Note that this is from a week ago, and accurately predicts how the blue-check fiasco was going to blow up in Elmo’s face. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442.md?page=46) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442.md?page=48)