Elon Musk's Starman - Is this shit real wtf

[luke viia]

On 11/11/2022 at 8:20 PM, ignatius said:

well, by not being on twitter you may be missing out on the opportunity to make it your financial institution of choice. no, really, what shitty brainstorm vomit is musk talking about here???

 

still lolling at this

twitter: maximum enjoyment, maximum learning. You're having a great hour, look at all these gizmos!

*twitter accounts now include a non-zero number of checks for your landlord's demands. then we add automatic payment

[manmower]

I have to believe he will also lose his luster to some of the crowd who bought into that genius image. Surely it's getting harder and harder to construe this chaos as anything but stupidity.

[ignatius]

1 hour ago, exitonly said:

if you were paid $56 dollars and you blew $44 of those dollars, that would still be bad right?

not if each of those dollars was more money than 10,000 people need in a life time. also, he still has like another 50 or 150 billion in value right? 

the scale of billions is quite a different thing to consider.. conceptually it couldn't be more different than just some dollars. after a billion dollars what even is money? it's a game. 

[exitonly]

Just now, ignatius said:

not if each of those dollars was more money than 10,000 people need in a life time. also, he still has like another 50 or 150 billion in value right? 

the scale of billions is quite a different thing to consider.. conceptually it couldn't be more different than just some dollars. after a billion dollars what even is money? it's a game. 

i understand what you are saying. i get that elon is not going to become completely bankrupt by this mistake. i'm just pointing out that he does have something to lose, he does have 44 billion in twitter now and i dont think he wants to lose it.  if i put a quarter of my savings into something,  i would still survive without it but i would not want to just lose it. is this hard to understand? it seems obvious to me.

[ignatius]

42 minutes ago, zero said:

indeed. calculated in a way that makes no sense to most of us observers at the moment. what he's doing to twitter right now is pretty far out of whack from what we would think of as normal behavior in this type of situation. one would think that he would decide to buy the company in order to somehow improve it, in order to grow and become (I guess) even more financially successful. at this time this appears to not be the case. so wtf is the real goal here? 

I had sorta joked a page or 2 back that perhaps he bought twitter to tank it on purpose. like buy the thing to take it straight to bankruptcy. but that also doesn't really add up because like it was pointed out here, he had to take a loan to buy it, and he used some of his personal $. does he like losing money? I dunno. most people don't. but he's a big fucking weirdo, so who tf knows...

in the tweets w/links to emails that were part of discovery or whatever in the twitter vs musk lawsuit (from when he was trying to back out of the deal) it sounds like intentionally wrecking twitter to a certain degree was part of the plan. to what end? no sure. speculating it's drive away verified people and turn it all into fake news for the masses as trump and the alt right are re-platformed... as all the checks and teams and engineers who keep that shit in line have mostly left the company. 

that's a big what if type speculation and context of those emails is important and i'm not going to read all that shit to find out.. but someone will. 

twitter was only working for me as a thing since i use tweetdeck. logging in at twitter's site is a nightmare of likes and ads and suggested posts. it's possible that whatever part of the twitter api things like tweetdeck use could shit the bed?? i don't know.. that's over my head.. but regardless it's barely worth it for me and like all social media ends up being a distraction with minor payoff once in a while. 

meh.. it's some stupid shit really.. paying attention to it at all just seems like a big farce bumbling around waiting to hit the wall and splatter.  it's worth reminding that quite often these people.. musck, zuck etc.. don't have any idea what they're doing and they're just trying to find something that sticks and can be monetized. 

[ignatius]

Just now, exitonly said:

i understand what you are saying. i get that elon is not going to become completely bankrupt by this mistake. i'm just pointing out that he does have something to lose, he does have 44 billion in twitter now and i dont think he wants to lose it.  if i put a quarter of my savings into something,  i would still survive without it but i would not want to just lose it. is this hard to understand? it seems obvious to me.

sure yeah.. and that's more than likely true here and maybe all the musk fanboys predicting twitter will be more popular and profitable in a year or so are right.. but, the idea of someone wasting a large fortune on stupid shit for reasons we don't understand is not out of the realm of possibility and i'm sure history is littered with examples i'm too forgetful to mention.

musk is a guy who tweeted out "tesla stock is over valued" and erased billions from it's value w/o explanation though many people suggest it was done to lower his own tax burden.. never mind that it fucked over so many shareholders.

if he loses say half of that 44 billion.. he could write off that loss on his taxes every year until the loss is extinguished by gains. there's always some angle w/these people and musk is no different. 

it's still weird he paid that much for it in the first place when most people had twitter valued at $14 billion or something. 

[exitonly]

2 hours ago, ignatius said:

sure yeah.. and that's more than likely true here and maybe all the musk fanboys predicting twitter will be more popular and profitable in a year or so are right.. but, the idea of someone wasting a large fortune on stupid shit for reasons we don't understand is not out of the realm of possibility and i'm sure history is littered with examples i'm too forgetful to mention.

musk is a guy who tweeted out "tesla stock is over valued" and erased billions from it's value w/o explanation though many people suggest it was done to lower his own tax burden.. never mind that it fucked over so many shareholders.

if he loses say half of that 44 billion.. he could write off that loss on his taxes every year until the loss is extinguished by gains. there's always some angle w/these people and musk is no different. 

it's still weird he paid that much for it in the first place when most people had twitter valued at $14 billion or something. 

i’m not defending him at all. he’s an ass and i think he royally messed up in even getting legally bound to buy the thing. it was an amazing 44 billion dollar impulse buy and then he went ego first into his first weeks there and tanked the company. there is no way it will continue to run on the same service level with only a third of the employees. he stands to lose a lot and he deserves it.

[ignatius]

13 minutes ago, exitonly said:

i’m not defending him at all. he’s an ass and i think he royally messed up in even getting legally bound to buy the thing. it was an amazing 44 billion dollar impulse buy and then he went ego first into his first weeks there and tanked the company. there is no way it will continue to run on the same service level with only a third of the employees. he stands to lose a lot and he deserves it.

oh i know you're not defending him. just sorting out wtf is going on in this surreal wtf thing called reality that for some reason we're all burdened w/paying attention to. well, i feel burdened in the knowing of the things. 

[zazen]

 

This tweet a few weeks ago when loads of staff were being fired made me cringe

I was thinking it was a really bad look to kick down at someone he'd just fired, just to make fun of their names. Like probably illegal or something?

And then I saw this the other day:

... and thought 'yeah they probably threatened to sue and the settlement is a pay off and an NDA'

BUT

Turns out the whole thing was a hoax, dreamed up by a couple of guys who go to a gym in the same building at twitter hq

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/rahul-ligma-and-daniel-johnson

https://twitter.com/0interestrates/status/1586218636988928000

ANYWAY

Theres a lot of noise about this. A lot of pissed off people. Elons attempt to reshape twitter is pretty brutal. I wouldn't want to work for him.

And I'm not sure if he really knows what hes doing with this free speech stuff. Social media is complicated.

But I think the rumours of twitters demise are a bit premature. Maybe it will go down for a few days, or a few weeks. Elon probably has lost more staff than he meant to.

But unless its bad enough that it goes down and they can never get it back up, I don't think he's really too worried.

A social media company with shareholders would not survive going  down for a few days. But a privately owned one as well known as twitter can.

 

So I dont buy into the 'hes an idiot and hes going to burn it to the ground' narrative. He's trying to slim down the company in a brutally fast fashion. A risky strategy that sucks for the employees.

But I do think he's unlikely to make twitter into something better than it was. He's trying to get rid of the bots but its such a complicated ecosystem he'll probably just end up with some worse problem instead. Like losing all the advertisers. He wants twitter to remain important but become more reliable (more reflective of actual people rather than being gamed by bots). But as long as it remains important there will be flocks of people trying to game it in ways we havent even thought of yet. The only way to get rid of people trying to game influence on twitter would be to make it irrelevant.

Edited November 20, 2022 by zazen

[manmower]

The difference a couple of weeks and a Twitter poll make.

[J3FF3R00]

50 minutes ago, manmower said:

The difference a couple of weeks and a Twitter poll make.

[ignatius]

so, this journo has covered musk for 20 years or something and has some insight into him and what's what if anyone cares. "take everything he says with a huge grain of salt" musk is doing "snarketing" 

 

Edited November 20, 2022 by ignatius

[Alcofribas]

17 hours ago, zazen said:

hes an idiot

 

[ambermonk]

 

[vkxwz]

23 hours ago, zazen said:

But I do think he's unlikely to make twitter into something better than it was. He's trying to get rid of the bots but its such a complicated ecosystem he'll probably just end up with some worse problem instead. Like losing all the advertisers. He wants twitter to remain important but become more reliable (more reflective of actual people rather than being gamed by bots). But as long as it remains important there will be flocks of people trying to game it in ways we havent even thought of yet. The only way to get rid of people trying to game influence on twitter would be to make it irrelevant.

I think the only way this could lead to improvement of Twitter is if somehow having it private gives twitter the freedom to do something useful that they wouldn't have had the freedom to do when it wasn't private, which feels plausible but this is a very rocky start so who knows which way this will go. And also importing talent from openAI could also help.

And don't worry that hoax is still getting cable TV news shows who should really know better.

This whole thing is very entertaining but slightly concerning to me, it's good to see he at least has a line drawn *somewhere* in the sand, not allowing Alex Jones back on the platform. And its not clear to me which is worse for society; Trump being on twitter, or having his own platform, but I guess he will have both now...

[iococoi]

[Squee]

ElonMa.mov  

 

[Silent Member]

Elon Ma is the best Elon

[randomsummer]

I can foresee him doing this to ultimately try to martyr himself as what he sees as a champion of "free speech".

Buy Twitter, get rid of bots (yeah, right), let Trump and others like him back, people leave in droves / protest, he gets to say he's fighting for "free speech" against the woke mafia, while feeling like he's fighting for what he pervertedly sees as a higher cause.

[o00o]

yeah I also buy into the "destroy all safeguards and let the right loose" theory 

[Amen Warrior]

I buy into "fucking idiot who does way too much coke and needs to be tossed down one of his dad's old apartheid emerald mines" theory

[Nebraska]

4 hours ago, randomsummer said:

I can foresee him doing this to ultimately try to martyr himself as what he sees as a champion of "free speech".

 

[Squee]

8 minutes ago, Nebraska said:

 

Just had a gander at that guy's Twitter profile. I had no idea who he was and now I wish I didn't know he existed.

[Rubin Farr]

[manmower]

https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/22/23473447/twitter-will-let-you-send-crypto-to-accounts-alongside-normal-money-elon-musk-says

Quote

Twitter will let you send crypto to accounts alongside “normal” money, Elon Musk says.

“We will also make it easy to do crypto,” Musk told employees during an internal Q&A yesterday, a recording of which I obtained. “You should be able to easily send money to anyone in Twitter with one click,” he said. “The payments side of things will probably be more valuable than all the rest of Twitter combined.”

🙄