I failed repeatedly to log in and cancel my twitter account a month ago before finally noting the messages popping up on my gmail account that someone was trying to log into my twitter account. This was how I discovered my user name and was able to ask for a new password. Viola! I accessed my account and canceled it. Not completely, however, as twitter would hold my account open for 30 days in case I wanted to come back. No thanks!
It wasn't like I much used twitter. I could only find one image that I posted in the last three years. A picture of Loki when we first got him, looking like a little Arctic fox in the snow. I deleted the image before cancelling my account.
Twitter always seemed odd to me. The idea that you couldn't select your audience bothered me. Anyone could chime in on your posts, which made it ripe for verbal abuse, identity theft, you name it. Already bad enough on facebook where I did have some control over who viewed my posts. If Twitter couldn't get any worse it did last October. In typical Musk fashion he came to the San Francisco office with a sink making everyone wonder what the hell that was for. Needless to say you didn't have to think too hard. It was a not-so-subtle reference to "let that sink in."
Ever since Musk has been playing with his new toy, not sure what to make of it. Now he has rebranded it as if twitter never really existed. Users have declined and revenue has fallen off. He uses threats and intimidation to try to keep high profile names on the account. He threatened to reassign @NPR to another user if NPR closed their account. National Public Radio had enough of twitter when he labeled it "state-affiliated media" as if that was a bad thing. So, NPR simply doesn't post anymore on Twitter, or X as it is now called.
City authorities were none too happy when he put a big blazing X atop the headquarters. They forced him to take it down. He hasn't paid rent either since moving in last Fall, which has resulted in lawsuits not just in San Francisco but London and New York too. He apparently has something against paying rent according to former employees. I would also think Armani might take this X as a copyright infringement as it suspiciously looks like the X in Armani Exchange.
Musk got really miffed when Zuckerberg launched Threads a few months back. He threatened a lawsuit claiming "Zuck" had stole "trade secrets" and "other intellectual property." This after firing more than half his twitter crew, leaving many to look to Meta for jobs. But, Zuck had this new social media site long in the works. He was just looking for a propitious time to unveil it. Reports that Twitter or X was now only worth half the price Musk paid for it seemed like a good time.
Figuring it was a lost cause, Musk then challenged "Zuck" to a cage match. Not surprisingly, Musk was quick to hedge on this match and recently claimed he had a sore back and needed surgery. Not to mention, his mother had been asking anyone who would listen not to encourage the fight. I guess it finally dawned on him that Zuckerberg is 13 years younger and has been training extensively in Jiu Jitsu. It would take more than a few weeks for this bleached whale to get in shape for an MMA match. Too bad, Dana White was salivating over the opportunity, thinking such a match could generate over a billion dollars in television revenue worldwide.
So, Musk then challenged Zuck to a "noble" debate to be livestreamed on X with money going to charities of their choice. Zuckerberg mocked the idea by noting X's revenue losses the past year, which had Elon ready to fight all over again. However by this point Zuckerberg had enough and called the whole thing off.
It's truly amazing how much attention this cage match garnered. Virtually every single news outlet covered it worldwide. People were already taking bets. These are two tech centibillionaires mind you, who you would think have more serious matters to concern them, especially Elon who sits atop major industries like Tesla and Space X.
If Musk was trying to draw Zuckerberg out and make him look like a fool, he succeeded in making himself look more the fool with all his posturing on X. Yet, he still has quite a fan club including some young Chinese guy who looks like Musk and was willing to be his surrogate in the ring. The only question is whether this guy is real or just an AI image? Hard to tell these days.
All this makes you wonder where Elon and Mark will take AI themselves? They don't seem like very stable characters if their idea of gaining the upper hand is a cage match. Both have invested heavily in AI and see it as the new tool for roping more people into the imaginary world of social media. In fact, one starts to wonder if these two are even real? Zuckerberg has long looked like an automaton and Musk like something a North Korean CGI company would come up with as the image of corporate greed.
I don't have much time for any of these tech billionaires. They all appear to live in some sort of Libertarian fantasy world. The only one that seems to have any real sense of what is going on in the world is Bill Gates but even he has plenty of skeletons in his closet. It was one of the reasons he divorced with Melinda after so many years. At least Bill isn't chasing after young movie stars and singers like Musk in his perpetual quest for more kids to "Occupy Mars." Yet, most media outlets give these guys a free pass. I suppose they find these unsavory pasts and wild hair notions entertaining.
Far from it. These guys are deadly serious. They know how to play a gullible audience and they do so with the barely disguised glee of sociopaths. We have allowed these social media sites to become multi-billion dollar enterprises worth far more than television stations and newspapers. In fact, mainstream media as we know it relies heavily on social media to get its message out. Zuckerberg and Musk know this full well, which is why they can so easily intimidate these news outlets. The Washington Post is just small potatoes, which Bezos bought for a mere $250 million ten years ago. WaPo apparently generates about $3 billion worth of revenue, which is a pretty good return, but nothing compared to X and Meta. Fox is valued at $17 billion, about 40% of what Musk paid for twitter last year.
Google remains the giant of the internet, valued in excess of one trillion dollars thanks to its many holdings like YouTube that is a very large part of the social media market. Unlike Musk and Zuck, the boys at Google stay relatively quiet, content to develop their massive AI project in relative privacy, It currently dwarfs the efforts of these two social media bully boys.
One can only hope that this internet bubble will burst soon and that these media tycoons will have their comeuppance. Of course it would drag a lot of us down with them as we have come to rely on social media way too much for everything. The idea of writing a letter to the editor seems so quaint now when you can become an influencer virtually overnight if you find the right angle to hook followers on social media. I haven't been so lucky but not for lack of effort.
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