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Hard not to titter

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It didn't take long for King Twitter to recover from his massive losses last year.  He had hoped to ride the Republican red wave last Fall, putting in his chips at the very last minute, but when that didn't happen he laid low for a while.  Now, he is back with a vengeance. He slashed prices on his Teslas, which like its stock was greatly overvalued; further downsized Twitter and named his dog CEO after losing a Twitter poll on whether he should step down.  Oh, and he decided to slash the w from Twitter as some sort of puerile prank to get back at his San Francisco landlord.

This is the man that many regard as a genius.  Musk has been able to project himself like Eddie from Limitless, a disheartened writer who takes a wonder drug and suddenly can see 50 steps ahead of everyone else.  Elon only wished he could look as good as Bradley Cooper. 

The problem is that Musk doesn't like to be challenged, especially by those he considers beneath his amazing acumen.  You remember when one of the rescue divers in Thailand had the audacity to criticize his mini-submersible?  Musk thought his latest greatest invention would save all the young boys trapped in the flooded cave in Thailand.  When the lead diver vetoed the idea, Musk called him a pedo.  A lawsuit followed.  Musk brought out his army of lawyers to eventually win the defamation case but left such a bad taste that the board at Tesla actually thought about firing him at one point.

His latest broadsides concern the news media.  Elon decided to label networks like NPR and BBC as "state-affiliated media," putting them in the same category as propaganda outlets like Global Times, RT and Sputnik, largely in response to all the bad press he has been getting recently.  Incensed by this imperial decree, NPR chose to drop Twitter.  BBC asked for an explanation and got this meandering response.  James Clayton covered a broad range of topics but kept circling back as to why he has run Twitter into the ground.  Not surprisingly, Elon got increasingly testy.  I'm surprised he didn't walk out but I guess he felt he needed to get the last word.

One of the perks of being the man behind the dog at Twitter is that you can always get the last word.  You can even pull the plug if you want.  After all, he has recouped most of his losses so why bother with this social media headache.  However, one of the things that stuck out like a sore thumb in his BBC interview was his claim that he is curbing hate speech on the open forum when nothing could be further from the truth.  As Emma Brockes pointed out, a recent study carried out by the Anti-Defamation League noted a general spike in hate speech since he took over last October.

Musk can't even stop himself from ad hominem attacks, much less curb the vitriol on Twitter.  Whatever kind of moderation he uses on the platform is subject to his discretion, making it more a means to exact his revenge.  In that sense, Twitter is no better than Truth Social or Parler at this point.  Advertisers got skittish of all the trolling, and no longer pay for services, which makes you wonder how long the Great Elon can keep this platform going.  Twitter is currently valued at $20 billion, less than half of what he paid for it.

Yet, Musk has to keep up a good face.  There are a lot of people banking on him to fully recover and once again be the King of the Electric Cars if nothing else.  But, we must never forget that his ultimate endgame is to leave this planet all together, tending his garden on Mars like Thanos did after ridding the galaxies of half its population.  The world means nothing to him beyond how much he can take advantage of it.  He would have no qualms burning everything down.

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