Here are the new rules - no warning. Musk probably fired whoever wrote that page you linked to, so it’s not been updated.
No impersonation?
As I said in another thread, “What makes the Musk Rat guard his Musk?”
I’ve always thought Twitter encourages narcissism anyway. Look at me! Look at me! I don’t want to engage with you, I just want you to look at me!
This is exactly it.
LOOK AT ME!!!
In fact, most of the money that Musk brings to the table is actually other peoples’ money, including taxpayer dollars in the form of subsidies, grants, low interest loans, and tax breaks.
Let’s be clear; Musk was only “the richest person in the world” in the sense that someone becomes a wealthy tycoon playing Monopoly. The valuation of Tesla, which at one point eclipsed the top six automotive manufactures combined despite the fact that each of those companies built as many cars in six weeks as Tesla did in all of 2020, is completely specious, FOMO-driven speculation with no basis in an objective reality of what Tesla could render in profit over decades of production. Musk’s other manipulations show that he understands very well that his ‘wealth’ is little more than an economic slight-of-hand.
Musk, of course, is not Andrew Carnegie or John Rockefeller or Henry Ford, and not even the fictitious Tony Stark or D.D. Harriman that he imagines himself to be. Despite all of his pretensions about having earned everything himself at great risk and having founded many technology companies on little more than the sweat equity of his own brow, several of the companies he has credited himself with founding were actually started by others who were driven out after Musk came in. No, Elon did “solve the payment problem on the internet” by starting PayPal, and despite having himself retroactively listed as a founder of Tesla he neither started the company nor fulfilled the legal obligations to the actual founders who he forced out after taking over as a later investor.
He shows little detail technical knowledge of the companies where he claims to be the genius expert involved in the design of every system, and is often clearly and inaccurately parroting phrases that he has clearly just heard someone else use. He has attempted to deflect criticism by alternately playing the victim, pretending to be on the autistic spectrum, and attacking people both in court and public forums who lack his financial resources and legions of weirdly fawning adorationists ready to step in and troll anyone who denies the greatness of their God Emperor, including pursuing an one-sided petty feud with a former minor official of the SEC because this is apparently what wealthy technology tycoons who sleep on their production floors and claim to live in $50k houses do with their spare time.
Musk’s dalliances in right-wing politics, embrace of conspiranoia, and supposed devotion to “free speech” (if and only if it is the kind of speech he approves) all mark him as far more of a Frederich Flick than the Greatest American Business Hero he tries to cosplay at being. Of course, his willing supplicants here and elsewhere leap in and whinge about how badly he is treated and how misunderstood Poor Elon is, often by poorly imitating his attempts at insinuation and insult.
Stranger
I’ve migrated to Mastodon, as have most of the journalist types I was following. Even with the growing pains they’re having right now it’s a much more pleasant place than Twitter. Unfortunately many of the artists and authors I follow on Twitter haven’t moved over yet; some are afraid because there’s a learning curve.
Yeah, I went and checked Mastodon out, briefly. I may set up an account there to follow the same accounts I followed on Twitter, or similar ones, if they become available, which I hope they do.
Advertisers are fleeing Twitter because Musk looks like he doesn’t know what he’s doing.
But contrary to Musk’s version of events, the problem is less that leftists are bullying the company that makes Cheerios and more that Musk is not as good at business as he thinks he is. Advertisers don’t like to run their ads in places where they might appear alongside abuse, harassment, spam, racism, misogyny, slurs, and the like. The typical way to make advertisers comfortable—to ensure what they call “brand safety”—is to limit speech on a platform. This poses an obvious problem for a self-described “free speech absolutist” who has telegraphed that he wants to make the platform friendlier to the kind of people who bristled at Twitter’s making it more difficult to post uninhibited hate speech, election denialism, and the like.
Musk seems to lack a fundamental knowledge of how advertising works, and maybe that makes sense; Tesla has not historically done it.
“Elon, Great chat yesterday,” MMA Global president Lou Paskalis tweeted Friday before the new Twitter boss blocked his account. “As you heard overwhelmingly from senior advertisers on the call, the issue concerning us all is content moderation and its impact on BRAND SAFETY/SUITABILITY. You say you’re committed to moderation, but you just laid off 75% of the moderation team!”
When I read in the Garmen newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung today that Elongate Musk is a will-o’-the-wisp (Irrlicht in the original) I found it to be an appropiate comparison. Then I went to wikipedia to learn something about ignis fatuus (also a very appropiate name, fatuus being Latin for fatuous and Merriam-Webster’s having this list of synonyms) and was truly delighted to learn that another word for will-o’-the-wisp or ignis fatuus is hinkypunk. I like that word, will forever assotiate it with Musk.
There is nothing punk about Musk.
Punk has many meanings. I like meanings 1, 2c and 4 as a noun as well as 2 as an adjective.
That reminds me of this scene, except Elon is all five of them rolled into one.
I might move over, if the people and organizations I follow do. So far, they mostly haven’t.
One of the quotes that @Acsenray gave pointed out that Tesla doesn’t advertise, giving that as evidence that Musk doesn’t understand it. That’s true, but furthermore, Tesla doesn’t even have a communications team. As in the people who send out press releases and answer questions about the products from reporters, that kind of thing. I remember hearing that Musk got rid of Twitter’s communications team as one of the first layoffs. He really doesn’t understand this part of business.
In that context, I would think of it as “no good little punk.” A brat. A troublemaker. A ne’er-do-well.
More than that, Musk dissolved Tesla’s PR team himself a few years back and has repeatedly re-iterated he won’t re-introduce one.
OTOH (Jun 04, 2022) …
Is this the guy who employed Woodcock to keep Butch from robbing the Flyer?
“Think you used enough dynamite there, Elon?”
Elon is rolling out a gray checkmark to do the exact same thing the blue checkmark was designed to do before he decided to cbange it to meaning “I have eight dollars”.
Also, in a sign that THIS IS FINE EVERYTHING IS FINE WHY ARE YOU LOOKING AT ME THAT WAY I’M NOT YELLING YOU’RE YELLING, he’s sold off $4 billion in Tesla stock.
At rhis rate, by the time his Twitter fiasco is done he won’t own Tesla either.
Nope. He’s The Man who Sold the Moon in Heinlein’s Future History.