Just for the record, I don't care about either Elon Musk or Twitter. Both fall into the category of "obviously flawed but not as bad as the haters claim." Nor do I care who has a blue checkmark or how much it costs. I also don't care what kind of moderation regime Musk sets up, since he'll soon learn that his options are limited. What's more, even in the extreme case that Twitter fails completely or becomes unusable, it will have only a modest effect on both me and the wider world.
Now, can we all stop obsessing over it? Let's just let Musk do his thing and then we'll see.
It's actually pretty wonderful to not give a fig about Musk while at the same time not giving a fig about the people who do give a fig.
Kevin has a very get-off-my-lawnish approach to saying, "I'm not a heavy Twitter user."
"It's really not that big a deal" has pretty much become the slogan of this blog.
I dunno. Between Zuckerberg thinking everyone wants to wear a headset and Musk thinking everyone wants to read more Russian propaganda, we're getting a fun look at the worldview of Silicon Valley bigwigs. And what idiots they are. We don't often get to see them lose money like this, so it's kinda fun.
Of course I agree that the importance of Twitter is vastly overrated by people to whom it is important, who disproportionately have other media megaphones to talk about its importance on.
Have to admit, though, when I think about it, lack of an aptitude for schadenfreude is one of KD's most appealing characteristics. So this post makes me feel like a bad person for enjoying watching EM flail around like the proverbial dog who caught the car.
You know, I have the opinion that Facebook, in its current format, is doomed, between increasing "identity defense" and government regulation, it has topped out and likely to decline.
Zuck thinks that VR will be the new digitized social connection. This is based on something that's quite a bit more substantial than imagination. "Presence" in VR is a thing. It remains to be seen if he can turn it into the next new thing that matches how big FB was, though.
And Wall Street, along with lots of other people, doesn't like risks.
"And what idiots they are."
Bingo. The widespread assumption that rich people must be smart just isn't backed up by data. Smarts do matter, but not as much as people assume; and luck is a much bigger factor than any successful people ever admit.
Capitalism has many of the same traits as a lottery. The biggest difference is that the jackpots in capitalism are much bigger.
These guys in the "PayPal mafia" -- primarily Elon M and Peter Thiel -- seem to have decided the lesson of PayPal's success was "we're great, we know everything, many things are very simple, such as Donald Trump having a megaphone to say what he wants is obviously a good thing, and everyone else is -- also obviously -- very stupid."
Whereas to me, the idea "people should be able to pay for things on the internet!" is one of the great "well, duh" ideas ever.
It's really a case of being in the right place at the right time and grabbing the opportunity (and more power to them for that) but the idea that they get to push the rest of us around because of their blinding genius is just... the epitome of post-Reagan America...
What...you want to talk about global warming or war in Ukraine?
Elon Musk is the Kardashians of the business world. Matters nothing to most of us, will not change any of our lives. Just keep scrolling.
Good comparison. Except he has zero entertainment value. So full of himself he can't see outside his own self important bubble.
Sure, Kevin.
He's too much like Trump for most liberals' PTSD to handle. He's also good at getting positive and negative attention. I bet he even runs for president at some point.
You can stop obsessing all you want but everyone else will continue and they might make it relevant just on its own.
Sorry.
I bet he even runs for president at some point.
I don't believe he can. He was born in South Africa.
good luck with the presidential run since he was born and raised in south africa
Agreed. Let Musk be Musk. But let's take about 90% of his income every year in taxes. Federal. State. Local. The more the merrier. Like twitter--it won't make much difference to the wider world, but reducing his wealth would go a lot further toward reducing Musk-obsession. And the $2+ billion annually in additional tax collections would go a ways in lowering the burden on the rest of us.
Agreed but I will say this: anything that forces me to have to pay to use Twitter of all things and I'm bye-bye.
Kevin, you do seem awfully concerned about what other people choose to care about.
A post obsessing about obsessing about Elon Musk is the wrong way to stop obsessing about Elon Musk.
Musk will NOT run for President of the United States for one simple reason: he is not eligible:
Born
Elon Reeve Musk
June 28, 1971 (age 51)
Pretoria, Transvaal, South Africa
He is not a “natural born citizen.”
Thank god.
Elon Musk is an anagram of
Sunk Mole.
Like Kevin, I think Musk is obviously flawed but not as bad as the haters claim. I think it's pretty clear he's spectrum, and this inspires pushback from me, particularly when people say things that are obviously false. Additionally, I know people who worked for him, and shared that sense of mission he has.
I mean, there's plenty there to make fun of already, but somehow that ain't enough for some people.
He's an anti-democratic fascist jackhole who happens to be, for now at least, the richest anti-democratic fascist jackhole in the world, but other than that he's just a meh.
Quite right. But it remains problematic that, despite the plenty there to make fun of already, there's still so much more underneath that has yet to be excavated. The man's a cream puff resting on a rockbed of wealth. He was born poor, and remains poor to this day, and surely cares less about his wealth than anyone else. A fountain of lies, mostly unknown to himself, he captures the imagination, often, of our host. He's a hapless wanderer possessed of gigantic wealth. Killer wealth, but it's hard to imagine he'd ever use it. Oh, wait. He just did. He's going to kill twitter.
He could be a much better man.
Is "born poor" a metaphor, or a comment about moral qualities? If wiki can be trusted on this the family had plenty of dough when he was growing up, and dad's vocations and avocations would support that idea. Grandpa seems to have been kind of a wild-ass adventurer, dad a real go-getter (and anti-apartheid local politico) and mom had been a model, so maybe he had some things to live up to.
Kara Swisher, who's interviewed him quite a bit and who I've respected, says every time his name comes up that he's "quite brilliant." Yeah, probably, but at my distance it seems kind of like a detached and solipsistic 12-year-old's brilliance.
It feeds a quality of what DFPaul here calls the paypal mafia, a techbro subset, that reminds me a lot of the Wall Street Masters of the Universe we saw so much about until certain events circa 2008. Those guys each glommed onto one small idea that they were convinced gave them entire insight into the inner workings of the world and all that happened within it, and deserved to run the world because of the insight their idea gave them. These techbro snots go beyond just having an idea that gives them insight, to thinking they *are* the insight.
That kind of self-absorption can breed incredibly captivating hucksters. The former guy is one such, and (admittedly without knowing anyone who knows him) it looks to me like Elon is cut from similar cloth.
I once worked for a guy who was like that in a minor-league way and it took some time to understand just how he was working the people who worked for him, the same way he was working everybody outside the group. Fun and inspiring for a time, but in the end disillusioning.
The whole reason for being for blogs, twitter, and social media generally is to obsess about trivia. What else is there for you to do? Clicks and page views and retweets make the world go around.
I thought this was going to get KD attention, but not yet.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/02/opinion/artificial-intelligence-automation-jobs-populism.html
Elites Are Making Choices That Are Not Good News
“The class and cultural resentments that were inflamed by the China trade shock (alongside other technological, cultural, and political forces) are now so burned-in that I strongly suspect that they are self-perpetuating.”
I think this is great. I am content to let this so called working class throw their lot in with the trumpists. Then I won’t have to give a crap about them at all! It’s liberating.
"Let that sink in" was funny. Stephen Colbert who spent minutes showing how silly the play on words was, lost his sense of humor. The whole point of a childish prank is being childish. Also, this was a pretty grand way of being a good sport. Danton also quipped with the crowd as he was hauled to the guillotine.
It's more likely to become "let that sink", of course, since social media are supposed to be horizontal not vertical. The last thing a user wants is Big Brother reacting to a post with "yeah but I think your comment sucks and I own this place". And if Trump is allowed back, that'll sink not just Twitter but also Truth Social, and I suspect Tesla too since its share price can only be explained by faith in the infallibility of its CEO. Can't creative destruction be limited to one company at a time? We little guys have such trouble keeping up already. It seems only yesterday we were advised to divest from oil. The sane thing to do, you see. Now the big players who bet on crazy are laughing all the way to the bank.
Anyway, hats off to the shareholders of Twitter for a ripoff worth fifteen thousand times more than the haul of the Great Train Robbery, and to its new owner for the joke.
An article I can't find now mentioned that "sink" or "kitchen sink" has a jargon meaning specific to Silicon Valley that I suspect might have gone over most of our heads but hit home with people inside the building. Maybe something like a thorough cleaning, but I don't really recall. Have to check up on the specifics when I get a chance.
Childish for sure; to me he seems essentially like a sniggering 12-year-old at heart. I have heard that he thinks we live in the literal Matrix. So I guess lol, nothing matters really.
Personally, I’d be happy If people stopped obsessing about Kanye West.
Those who want to yank Musk's chain. Add a "🏑" to your Twitter name.
Musk's tweets on the Pelosi attack were the final straw for me.
I generally hadn't shared the disdain expressed by so many of my fellow liberals for Musk until recently, but I like him less and less with each passing day. I believe with great wealth comes great responsibility, and he comes across as a frat boy—as a glib, deeply unserious clown. I know he's smart AF. But he's not very *wise* in my view. Nor very civic-minded. Contrast him with, say, Michael Bloomberg or Warren Buffett or Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos. These men aren't saints. But they're substantial, serious people.
I'm glad Musk isn't eligible for the presidency
Why you should care about the blue check mark fee:
- It'll make it practically impossible to discern authentic voices from copycat fakes. W/ Musk's assertion of less moderation, one should fully expect the rise of fully automated bots powering fake accounts mimicking authoritative voices but w/ fake info or feeding infected links.
- It's the beginning of Twitter capitalizing on users' content: Next step is to charge users to post videos, longer tweets, etc. All users will be nickel and dimed.
Why you shouldn't care about the blue check mark fee:
- You're buying cred, just like you do when you pay yearly fees for association with professional groups in the offline world. Those most likely to need the blue check mark will be able to write off the fees on their taxes.
- This specific policy won't affect the vast majority of users.
I’m not very much bothered by the fate of Twitter either way, But the blue checkmarks really aren’t that big a deal, because big accounts have big follower numbers, and as far as I know that cannot be faked.
I read that in 2018 about 30 million of Trump's Twitter followers were bots or fake accounts:
https://qz.com/1422395/how-many-of-donald-trumps-twitter-followers-are-fake