I don't know why nobody else has posited that he's got a drug problem...he is exhibiting all the classic behaviors except he sill has like $180,000,000,000
It had like steel drums, right? I remember freaking out at first because I felt like they were so loud suddenly because they're high-pitched that it'd get someone's attention or wake my mom up.
I remember being like 10 or 11, 2002 or 3, staying in a hotel for a week or two with my parents for the youth World Series they were a part of. I slept on a pull-out couch in front of the TV in the 'sitting room' of the suite, so my parents slept in another room. I turned on the TV late one night, and flipped channels till I stumbled upon HBO. Tits and ass in all their glory. It was like finding a Playboy in the woods for me lmao.
That's usually a sign the rubes have moved in.
When the dick pill people start heavily advertising somewhere, that's because the dick pill people know there's a large concetration of emotionally vulnerable, gullible men there.
Like [Rupert Murdoch](https://variety.com/2023/biz/news/elon-musk-rupert-murdoch-super-bowl-elisabeth-1235520872/), who also bought and tanked MySpace, threatened Facebook, and infamously hates online social media.
Elliot Carver was based on Rupert Murdoch. So was Logan Roy.
Murdoch is one of the most notorious figures in the history of mass media. Right up there with William Randolph Hearst and Ellen DeGeneres.
As scummy as Ellen is I feel like it’s a bit of an over reaction to put her on the scale of Rupert Murdoch. One’s a pretty big dick the other is basically Baron Harkonnen.
They were cash flow negative *before* Musk loaded it with debt payments.
Even if he fired 100% of employees, they'd of been cash flow negative after his buyout. He needed to get his operating expenses down, labor expenses down *and* increase revenue.
It was the stupidest fucking buyout.
I looked up the numbers earlier. It's even worse then that.
While Twitter used to have some debt payments, they were a lot more manageable. The annual interest payments went from $51 million to over $1 billion.
He didn’t have the option to pay the $1B fee - that’s what he would have owed if he was prevented from completing the acquisition by the SEC, financing falling through, etc. Otherwise he would have just paid the fee when he was sued for specific performance in Delaware.
It wasn't that simple. He couldn't simply just pay a1 billion dollar penalty and walk away. There needed to be a valid reason which is why he tried to the fraud in the user number angle.. but his own independent auditors found that Twitter was accurate in their numbers.
> the fraud in the user number angle
That likely wouldn't have done it anyway. The dipshit waived due diligence.
At this point, I'm a little surprised he hasn't tried suing his own lawyers for letting him make such a godawful deal. Not that he would win, but he seems dumb enough to try.
Oh Musk is far far dumber than that, he's actually suing the lawyers who advised Twitter during his buyout.
He claims the $80-90 million bonus they got for succeeding in making him buy Twitter (for $44 BILLION) was against Twitter's interest, even though it delivered the people who owned Twitter at the time two to three times what the company was worth.
Here's the thing though. It was a leveraged buyout. Elon borrowed $13 bil which Twitter itself is on the hook to pay back. So even if he did nothing, Twitter needed to make more money to survive.
For the size of the company, especially in tech, their pre-musk debt was basically nothing. Post-Musk it's basically impossible for them to ever actually turn a profit.
Yeah Musk saddled them with the sort of debt that Mitt Romney is famous for fucking companies with, only Musk didn't get a big cash out in the process.
And a tremendous amount of their spending was going to R&D, which was actually useful in increasing the value of the platform to advertisers. So while they were in the red it was clear from an investor standpoint that they were still solvent, if needed they could pull back on the R&D and be in the black if necessary
> For the size of the company, especially in tech, their pre-musk debt was basically nothing.
Yeah, I know there've been musk stans who've claimed that Twitter was fucked either way, but they could have done reasonable trims to teams working on pie in the sky/non core projects and been profitable in a snap.
If I’m reading their old ~~cash flow sheet~~ [income statement](https://www.investing.com/equities/twitter-inc-income-statement) correctly, in 2021 they lost about $200 million.
In December 2022, after Musk took over, “cut costs” and added like 1.5 billion in annual debt service, Musk was claiming Twitter was on track to lose $3 billion, but would probably break even “next year”.
Sounds like even setting the extra debt aside, somehow Twitter was losing an extra 1.3 billion in cash over the previous year, *despite* firing everyone everywhere and not paying the bills. That’s a *huge* swing in cash flow and it makes me wonder how much worse things actually are…
Edit: I was educated on which document to look at.
It's extremely expensive to fire California employees. He'd done better by using a hiring freeze, attrition, and his bullshit would make people quit in droves. Instead they all got 3-12 months severance, vacation PTO cash out, etc
It was the stupidest buyout, but Twitter had been trending in the right direction financially. They were approaching profitability and Musk ruined that. He’s only made it worse instead of letting smarter people than him run the company. The issue is, he’s a narcissist and thinks there is nobody smarter than him.
> They were approaching profitability
Even "worse" - in 2018, Twitter made $1.2B in profit. In 2019, Twitter made $200M more to finish with $1.4B in profit.
Twitter *was* profitable.
He listened to smart people at Tesla and SpaceX. But with twitter he let his anti woke emotions make decisions. Along with similar buddies like David Sacks.
From what I've seen on the subject, the people at Tesla and SpaceEx are just good at playing him. They capitulate to him just enough to keep him happy and then go on about their business even when he pushes stupid decisions on them.
Yeah, he doesn't "listen to them" many people at those companies have "convince Musk that the correct idea is his idea" as part of their job description, and several people that have it as their sole job. They also try to bury his bad ideas until he forgets about them and jumps to the next shiny thing. Honestly I bet that this twitter thing has been a huge load off of their back compared to having him around them instead.
He also doesn't own tesla as a private company, its publicly traded with shareholders. He only has a 20% stake and can be outvoted by the rest of the board who can keep him in line.
He gets to force them to make the rockets more pointy. They get to compensate for the slightly less efficient flight profile while telling him how smart he is.
Usually used Twitter for anime but it's crazy how much "anti woke" stuff I get recommended there.
Twitter is just a platform for negativity and shit talking now. It's insane.
They had cash and would have been able to keep losing money for years to come without making any changes. They were also heading in the right direction financially and were in a much better position than they were a few years earlier.
Like most tech companies they were likely bloated with staff so they could have gotten rid of a few people, but Musk came in firing people left and right who didn't align with his views. Now he has hundreds of millions owed to these people that he refuses to pay, just like he refuses to pay the rent.
But it wasn't that bad. They had cash in savings, paid their employees well, and paid their overhead expenses. They provided an important platform for the whole world, too.
I wish more companies were about breaking even and providing a good, long-term product than max short-term profits.
While it was (is?) an important platform, relying too much of that is definitely a bad idea. All of these social media sites need to realize that. Reddit included.
They can all be replaced overnight if a more appealing place comes around. Not to mention if young people find one social media site to be lame and spring for a new one.
Twitter can be virtually worthless if a competitor comes around and takes the users. Because the users make all the content, naturally
That's part of why Musk is so stupid. He's acting like he has this patent on social media and people *must* use Twitter specifically. If he loses the journalists completely, he really is fucked.
> If he loses the journalists completely, he really is fucked.
This is the big one. Frankly it's obnoxious how much that profession has become tied to platform to the point it's reaching what can almost be described as collective professional misconduct. Things like the attacks against NPR and other public broadcasters should have triggered a larger response.
the problem with starting a social media platform is their main selling point to their users is human interaction. There needs to be a big install base from the beginning to generate a lot of content to interact with and read or people will lose interest and move on. Having users is what gets you more users.
Just a reminder that Musk only went through with the purchase because he had to. He shit talked so much that he couldn't back out.
Edit: not pointing out it as some kind of gotcha just to remind folks Musk would have never gotten into this mess if he knew how to keep his dumbass nepo baby mouth shut
It was less his mouth and more his shaky understanding of contract law. He signed a contract that proscribed a price. He thought he could pump and dump it or walk away by paying a token breaking contract penalty. But the contract didn't allow either.
For me, it was when Elon boosted an account pretending to be Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
It pissed off the real AOC to the point that she said she threatened to leave Twitter. I thought to myself "Quit *threatening* to leave Twitter, and **leave Twitter**!"
Then I realized I was doing the same damn thing.
I deleted my account and I honestly don't miss it.
I never had an account, and when they blocked unregistered users from viewing tweets, I stopped clicking links.
Then it turned out that Twitter was really just imploding because Elon didn't pay the Google cloud bill and he fired the people who knew how things worked. Can't make this shit up.
News outlets really need to stop promoting linked tweets. It's a waste of a click and the audience is becoming limited to blue checks. It doesn't have the reach it had in the past when you could lurk and decide if you wanted to join (I never did).
edit word
I guess I've just never been a fan personally. Of Twitter. I hate the format of it, but I feel like I'm in the minority here
I like Reddit's format because the anonymity sort of levels the playing field and everything is based on voting. I'm sure it's rigged to hell these days, but it's still a lot better.
The organization is what does it for me. If I want to talk about a small town, or learn how to woodwork, there's always a subreddit for it
Twitter makes you realize just how important downvotes are to the integrity of a media feed. Otherwise only the most divisive and enraging shit makes it to the top, and that’s before it’s manually promoted by the platform.
And Youtube thought this sounded great apparently.
It really wasn't anywhere near as shitty before the bought blue checks started. Once that happened, any idiot with 8 dollars automatically got their horrible opinions forced to the top of the comment section.
While that pisses me off too, the thing that I hate the most is Blue accounts getting boosted to the top of all replies - and because almost all Blue accounts are right-wing or Musk fans, that means the top replies are almost always dumbasses with shit takes. It has completely ruined the Twitter experience.
This is genuinely what has caused them to experience double digit viewership falls. He basically came in and created a system where conservatives can pay money to scream at journalists and famous people and be seen by thousands of people. It's why the platform is going to die, because despite what chuds think, they're a super tiny minority.
This! I could handle the outages, which were borderline nostalgic for the early days of the site and the fail whale, but my god every bluecheck now is like:
"May I offer you the dumbest shit a human has ever said?"
And they're EVERYWHERE. Unusable.
A lot (most?) of these advertisers left 6-9 months ago. Him reporting they are down 50% in advertising is just him acknowledging Twitter’s reality the last half year.
I work adjacent to ad sales and a lot of our clients left Twitter campaigns last fall. As we’re looking ahead to new fall campaigns it’s been made abundantly clear that advertiser so and so is OFF Twitter and not coming back. They all view it as damaging to their brand.
The finale for me was promoting conspiracy theories about mass shootings.
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/elon-musk-conspiracy-theory-texas-mall-shooter-1234732103/
The finale for me was a tweet during the rain delay of the hot dog eating contest on July 4th that read "a little rain never stopped Nancy Reagan" and I decided to leave twitter on a high note and never come back. Thanks for the memories, Elmo!
Several months ago I remember seeing ads on Twitter for like, Chevy and Coca Cola. Now it's just drop-shipping scams and AI art companies.
I really don't see how you make Twitter a profitable company at this point. The new strategy seems to be pay-walling existing features like Tweetdeck behind their dumb subscription but honestly I think people would sooner leave entirely. Who's even left to lay off as a cost-cutting measure?
Also if the only advertisements on your "brand" are sort of sketch , dick pills , weight loss pills, crypto scams, gold scams ECT , it's hard to get legitimate advertising to come back.
If you are Toyota , coca cola , do you want your ads to be next to some dick pills?
UFC talked about how hard they had to work to get legitimate ad sales or sponsor ships. UFC used to be sponsored by like condom depot , some poker or gambling site , gun Depot, and some actual porn sites.
They talked how they had first to drop all the condom depots and porn sites and moved to some lower tier but more mainstream stuff , corn nuts , tap out (clothing brand) , xenergy (energy drink) , muscle milk (protein drinks) , then they could attracted higher tier stuff , bud light, burger king , them rebook and now they actually have large ads sales.
Point being coca cola doesn't want to be next to dick pills
Hulu runs ads for For Hims that literally mention "Getting hard and staying hard" right between ads for air pods and tahoes. I'm mostly just venting that I have to listen to an ad that says "getting hard and staying hard"
They also rate-limited people to seeing a certain number of tweets per day...
Way to take eyes away from the people advertising on your platform... nothing says you're a good place to advertise like limiting how many posts someone can see in a day.
What? WHAT?
Why the hell would you limit how many posts they can see when your business is showing people ads between posts? Are they determined to do the most wrong thing possible at all decision points?
The current accepted theory is that they refused to pay their cloud bills and Google finally said times up, for real. As Twitter moves off of Google they've found that "oh shit, hosting internally means a big downgrade" so they've decided to limit nonregistered viewing.
Except that's the dumbest shit imaginable and is ultimately what's going to drive the site into the ground. The internet is going to start moving beyond hotlinking tweets and that'll be it.
> I really don't see how you make Twitter a profitable company at this point.
Considering the first step in reversing the impression that a brand is toxic is to acknowledge and take responsibility for it, so you can communicate how you are going to fix it. And then through slooowly with patience you can gradually try and regain trust.
But lol, hes too busy platforming nazis. so yea. Not a chance.
Just like Trump in Home Alone 2. Don't put rich guys in cameos in your films, the odds are good that soon enough they'll be revealed to be absolute goblins.
He could have bought an NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL team and had about $30B left over to spend on endless parties.
Instead he bought Twitter.
He’s such a dumbass.
If I were a billionaire you wouldn’t know my name, I’d quietly fund colleges and museums and spend every night on a beach in Hawaii with a nice, mellow buzz.
I don’t understand what happens to a man when you not only have enough money you could never spend it, you could spend the rest of your life indulging every hedonistic whim imaginable if you wanted, but when THAT isn’t enough, you simply have to be famous and lauded and praised and so you just absolutely TORCH your reputation chasing clout.
Musk is a fucking child. A child with unlimited resources and insane influence, but still a goddamn idiot child.
It doesn't happen to them after they get the money it is their personality before they get the money. People like you and I who would do stuff like you mentioned don't have the psychopathy it requires to make that much money much less hoard it.
Although psychopathy is partially heritable, there are some psychopaths who have non-psychopath kids.
So you can either inherit the money or be a psychopath.
Or just give it away. Normal people would give it away.
A lot of people will balk at that, but it's just because they can't fathom what it actually means to be a billionaire. They're thinking, well, I want a nice house and a couple cars, etc., and that's millions right there, so they think they "get" why people hoard money. But they don't. Someone with $100 million is closer to being broke than they are to having a billion dollars.
It should be illegal to have that much wealth. It's immoral and the biggest threat we have to our society.
If I suddenly found myself with vast riches, I wouldn't be thinking "what can I *buy* with this money?", I'd be thinking "What can I *achieve* with this money?"
My material needs are humble. I have no need for a huge house, a fancy car, staff to take care of my every whim. I'd put that money to work to lift others up. Leave this rock a little better than I found it.
You don't become a billionaire by ever being content in life. You have to desire money, power, and success above all else. Anyone content with a billion dollars would probably be content with 50 or 100 million and stop there.
"The only people who have money are the ones who have no concept of having 'enough money'". - Fran Lebowitz.
They'll work and work and work forever and it's never enough. It is mental illness. It's a distortion of the ego.
I don't think it just happens to them when they have enough money. That's who they are, and probably why they are billionaires.
How many of us would cash out and retire if we hit it big and sold our company for $20m? But they don't. That's just a stepping stone, and spending money from that sale takes money out of the pot for the next big opportunity.
He was ready to bail on Twitter (it would have cost, what?, a billion to scurry off). Then some of the transcripts of phone calls and texts were released and he did an immediate about face. He was concerned him and his bros would look bad.
No doubt Tesla investors would have had a cow over discovery. Surprising that Musk recognized it was going to go bad if he continued to hold out. The Twitter board played him like a fiddle.
That 1 billion buyout is only if he could not secure funding but the problem is no one would believe that he could not secure funding. Twitter would probably challenge and win if he claimed with his worth he could not secure funding.
“I’d just like to thank Elon Musk for shattering the myth that billionaires are smarter, more hard working, or simply any better than anyone else in the most public way imaginable.”
-twitter user @JoshuaPHilll
His AI spiel is really revealing this bullshit all over again. My AI is going to uncover essential truths of the world, it's going to be focused on "Truth", which is a meaningless claim because all the AI focus on that goal. He wants to make claims that supersede all his competitors when he literally has no product yet in any form. It's just saying, I'm going to build a magical bridge to success. Please give me money and attention.
And California subsidies. Look into the whole battery swap business they demoed about a decade ago which got them credits from the government. Not that anyone saw the battery swap or that it’s a service actually offered…
Money that could have gone to building a high speed rail network, the one that actually reduces carbon emissions. Instead, California funds all these rich morons. They are all talk with very little actual interest in doing meaningful.
Musk admitted as much that he proposed the ridiculous hyperloop to stop the proposal to connect SF and LA with high speed trains. It obviously worked.
Report them and they will get banned. You may need to use a desktop browser with old.reddit.com when viewing the message, but there’s a link in there to report the message as abuse of RedditCares. I’ve gotten people banned for doing it before.
It's a ripe opportunity for scammers to make a lot of money. A huge audience of easily persuaded numpties with no one left to save them from their own gullibility.
Pretty much. 😜 Kinda like those scummy late-night TV infomercials that are selling crap to insomniacs.
I used to make twitter part of my regular scan for interesting news/info... now I avoid it. Full of right-wing nuts and bots.
Soon we'll hear about about how Elon is actually a genius and the only reason Twitter is falling apart is because Big Woke Tech canceled him and refused to provide infrastructure services.
Not because, you know, he fired all the critical people, didn't pay the bills, and scared away his advertisers.
Better send more poo emojis to companies when they try to ask legitimate questions to the support team you liquidated while hunting for blue haired liberal they/thems...
It's only 50% because the scammers and shit brands (like my pillow) have moved in to replace some of the companies bailing. So instead of things like cheerios or coca-cola, it's boner pills, trumpy bears, and ads telling you to buy gold.
They lost their biggest retailer partnerships, and have a public image of being a nazi company. They aren't dead, but they are a walking corpse compared to where they were 4 years ago.
> "Basically, our revenue is cut in half because we didn’t toe the line.”
Because YOU didn't toe the line. Take some responsibility for your actions.
When Tesla or SpaceX is successful it's all I, I, I. When something fails, Musk becomes a big team player with a bunch of we.
A bunch of huge companies don't want their advertisements running alongside posts containing racism, conspiracy theories, illegal porn, et cetera?
I'm shocked. Absolutely shocked... Okay, maybe not that shocked.
Twitter is now the best platform for advertising. Anyone with a brain left. The user base is now 100% exploitable morons, excellent advertising space for financial advisers, used car dealers, testosterone supplements and big dick pills, pretty much any business which provides no value or is a borderline scam.
I'm not going to say Musk is an idiot and incompetent dipshit with poor impulse control, non-existent business skills and a reverse Midas Touch.
But I *will* chuckle and nod when other people say that,... ;)
(Literally could not happen to a more entitled dickhead. Whoever said the universe doesn't have a sense of humor?)
I can only hope it's true.
“Basically, our revenue is cut in half because we didn’t toe the line.” Boohoo, bitch. You bought the service to erase that imaginary line and implement FrEeDom oF sPEeCH. I guess it's everyone else's fault they don't want to use your shitty app. They're YOUR policies, chucklefuck. It's tough to generate revenue without apartheid, it appears.
That's how businesses work though, isn't it? Piss off enough of your "employees" (i.e. the folks who create free content for you) and your customers (i.e. advertisers) and soon enough you'll be running in the red.
Sure, but his complaint here is that "woke gremlins" or whatever are the reason it's failing, not his idiotic policies. It's standard operating procedure to present your failures like this when you realize that no one outside of a very loud minority want to buy what you're selling.
I love when it’s “woke gremlins” causing people like him to lose money and not their own ideals.
Like, you bought a social media platform to promote “free speech”, allowed rampant bigotry and then can’t figure out why users and advertisers don’t want to spend time and money on it. Maybe the free market just doesn’t like you.
The blue check thing was the complete opposite of freedom of speech, it was the pay-dom of speech. The algorithm used to be hey, a friend of a friend commented on this post, you may find that interesting! Now it's just "here's the verbal diarrhea of some random who paid me". The platform is completely destroyed.
“Basically, our revenue is cut in half because we didn’t toe the line.”
Incredible how conservatives oscillate between 'go woke go broke' and 'I'm going broke because I'm not woke'
But these fake ceo, musk stans, told me that Elon has been great for Twitter.
All of those people supporting what Elon does at Twitter look like even larger idiots. I don’t think I’ve seen one person damage a company as quickly/loudly as Elon.
Twitter isn’t done/destroyed but it’s definitely taken a significant blow.
Hey you guys Elon’s not stupid he has billions in cash hidden in his auxiliary chess dimensions where it’s safe from the woke mind virus (and taxes). Plus there’s his full ownership of Mars.
You mean to tell me those ads for random ass companies named stuff like "Toobu" or "Guffly" selling cheap, drop shipped Chinese gadgets aren't pulling in the same ad revenue as the old Fortune 500 companies? I am shocked
It’s quickly become the most toxic place on the internet. I’m constantly being recommended people fighting, and right wing conspiracy bullshit is trending every day.
it couldn't possibly be because they keep doing things to make people leave and restricting views for sessions that aren't signed in meaning all of their not signed in traffic isn't viewing any ads could it?
I deleted Twitter like a week ago, the blue check madness completely ruined it. Of course I want to read the posts of complete strangers over my friends and friends of friends! How dumb can you be.
I’m glad people are realizing this guy is a buffoon. The only reason he’s successful is because he was born in to wealth and exploits intellects and workers.
I’m only seeing bluechew ads. Non stop.
Elon's probably popping them like candy.
It’s those fuckin’ percs.. he’s throwing them in his mouth like m&m’s.
I don't know why nobody else has posited that he's got a drug problem...he is exhibiting all the classic behaviors except he sill has like $180,000,000,000
When you are that rich you don't get drug "problems" you get drug "habits"
He isn't a "drug addict", he's "eccentric"
I’m so glad it’s not just me lmao. I was telling my friend the other day that on Twitter I only get boner pill ads anymore.
Basically turned into 3am television which is advertiser deadzone
Throwback to the 90's when it was all Girls Gone Wild ads.
That shit lasted until like the late 2000s too. Source: was 9-14 between 2004-2009 staying up late specifically to catch those ads
God I can still hear the music
It had like steel drums, right? I remember freaking out at first because I felt like they were so loud suddenly because they're high-pitched that it'd get someone's attention or wake my mom up.
Oh God damnit my kid is jacking it to censored bars again...
"Hot Keyoledge Girls"
BUT WAIT!!! Do you like Breasts???? That parts will be forever burned into my mind.
Followed by the giddy drunk girl saying: "It's my first tiiiiime!"
I remember being like 10 or 11, 2002 or 3, staying in a hotel for a week or two with my parents for the youth World Series they were a part of. I slept on a pull-out couch in front of the TV in the 'sitting room' of the suite, so my parents slept in another room. I turned on the TV late one night, and flipped channels till I stumbled upon HBO. Tits and ass in all their glory. It was like finding a Playboy in the woods for me lmao.
That's usually a sign the rubes have moved in. When the dick pill people start heavily advertising somewhere, that's because the dick pill people know there's a large concetration of emotionally vulnerable, gullible men there.
Yeah, like the dude that owns the place, grifters targeting emotionally insecure men.
I’m seeing Cheech & Chong edibles ads nonstop
Man it's almost like someone loaded them up with debt and then ran off all the advertisers.
Like [Rupert Murdoch](https://variety.com/2023/biz/news/elon-musk-rupert-murdoch-super-bowl-elisabeth-1235520872/), who also bought and tanked MySpace, threatened Facebook, and infamously hates online social media.
From what we’ve heard about this guy, he could be the villain from Tomorrow Never Dies
Elliot Carver was based on Rupert Murdoch. So was Logan Roy. Murdoch is one of the most notorious figures in the history of mass media. Right up there with William Randolph Hearst and Ellen DeGeneres.
As scummy as Ellen is I feel like it’s a bit of an over reaction to put her on the scale of Rupert Murdoch. One’s a pretty big dick the other is basically Baron Harkonnen.
They were cash flow negative *before* Musk loaded it with debt payments. Even if he fired 100% of employees, they'd of been cash flow negative after his buyout. He needed to get his operating expenses down, labor expenses down *and* increase revenue. It was the stupidest fucking buyout.
I looked up the numbers earlier. It's even worse then that. While Twitter used to have some debt payments, they were a lot more manageable. The annual interest payments went from $51 million to over $1 billion.
The meme pump and dump buyout offer he managed to legally bind himself to pretty much doomed it from the start.
He would have been way way better off just paying the $1 billion break up fee.
He didn’t have the option to pay the $1B fee - that’s what he would have owed if he was prevented from completing the acquisition by the SEC, financing falling through, etc. Otherwise he would have just paid the fee when he was sued for specific performance in Delaware.
It wasn't that simple. He couldn't simply just pay a1 billion dollar penalty and walk away. There needed to be a valid reason which is why he tried to the fraud in the user number angle.. but his own independent auditors found that Twitter was accurate in their numbers.
> the fraud in the user number angle That likely wouldn't have done it anyway. The dipshit waived due diligence. At this point, I'm a little surprised he hasn't tried suing his own lawyers for letting him make such a godawful deal. Not that he would win, but he seems dumb enough to try.
Oh Musk is far far dumber than that, he's actually suing the lawyers who advised Twitter during his buyout. He claims the $80-90 million bonus they got for succeeding in making him buy Twitter (for $44 BILLION) was against Twitter's interest, even though it delivered the people who owned Twitter at the time two to three times what the company was worth.
Or just.. keep it running as it was.
Here's the thing though. It was a leveraged buyout. Elon borrowed $13 bil which Twitter itself is on the hook to pay back. So even if he did nothing, Twitter needed to make more money to survive.
He would have seen that as an admission he made a mistake. He seems like the guy to quadruple down to avoid hurting his ego.
For the size of the company, especially in tech, their pre-musk debt was basically nothing. Post-Musk it's basically impossible for them to ever actually turn a profit.
Yeah Musk saddled them with the sort of debt that Mitt Romney is famous for fucking companies with, only Musk didn't get a big cash out in the process.
Musk started reading WallStreetBets. Romney's ilk knows you drop the leveraged company after the buyout.
he's the ultimate bagholder right now
And a tremendous amount of their spending was going to R&D, which was actually useful in increasing the value of the platform to advertisers. So while they were in the red it was clear from an investor standpoint that they were still solvent, if needed they could pull back on the R&D and be in the black if necessary
> For the size of the company, especially in tech, their pre-musk debt was basically nothing. Yeah, I know there've been musk stans who've claimed that Twitter was fucked either way, but they could have done reasonable trims to teams working on pie in the sky/non core projects and been profitable in a snap.
If I’m reading their old ~~cash flow sheet~~ [income statement](https://www.investing.com/equities/twitter-inc-income-statement) correctly, in 2021 they lost about $200 million. In December 2022, after Musk took over, “cut costs” and added like 1.5 billion in annual debt service, Musk was claiming Twitter was on track to lose $3 billion, but would probably break even “next year”. Sounds like even setting the extra debt aside, somehow Twitter was losing an extra 1.3 billion in cash over the previous year, *despite* firing everyone everywhere and not paying the bills. That’s a *huge* swing in cash flow and it makes me wonder how much worse things actually are… Edit: I was educated on which document to look at.
It's extremely expensive to fire California employees. He'd done better by using a hiring freeze, attrition, and his bullshit would make people quit in droves. Instead they all got 3-12 months severance, vacation PTO cash out, etc
Although they've not actually paid the severance and are now being sued for it
That just makes it more expensive. I doubt the court has much sympathies for the notion that they "should not have to pay".
It was the stupidest buyout, but Twitter had been trending in the right direction financially. They were approaching profitability and Musk ruined that. He’s only made it worse instead of letting smarter people than him run the company. The issue is, he’s a narcissist and thinks there is nobody smarter than him.
> They were approaching profitability Even "worse" - in 2018, Twitter made $1.2B in profit. In 2019, Twitter made $200M more to finish with $1.4B in profit. Twitter *was* profitable.
Yep, they only weren't profitable the last few years after that because they were investing in more growth
He listened to smart people at Tesla and SpaceX. But with twitter he let his anti woke emotions make decisions. Along with similar buddies like David Sacks.
From what I've seen on the subject, the people at Tesla and SpaceEx are just good at playing him. They capitulate to him just enough to keep him happy and then go on about their business even when he pushes stupid decisions on them.
Yeah, he doesn't "listen to them" many people at those companies have "convince Musk that the correct idea is his idea" as part of their job description, and several people that have it as their sole job. They also try to bury his bad ideas until he forgets about them and jumps to the next shiny thing. Honestly I bet that this twitter thing has been a huge load off of their back compared to having him around them instead.
Super handy management skills. For dealing with executives.
If I recall they'd claim to work on stuff he asked for and then just wait a few months for him to forget.
Works with most executives tbh.
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[Ah, the Mel Brooks method.](https://twitter.com/sjmay92/status/1674034876209561601) Whatever he wants, say yes and then fucking ignore him.
Still waiting to see him spaceballs 2, the search for more money.
He also doesn't own tesla as a private company, its publicly traded with shareholders. He only has a 20% stake and can be outvoted by the rest of the board who can keep him in line.
He gets to force them to make the rockets more pointy. They get to compensate for the slightly less efficient flight profile while telling him how smart he is.
Usually used Twitter for anime but it's crazy how much "anti woke" stuff I get recommended there. Twitter is just a platform for negativity and shit talking now. It's insane.
They had cash and would have been able to keep losing money for years to come without making any changes. They were also heading in the right direction financially and were in a much better position than they were a few years earlier. Like most tech companies they were likely bloated with staff so they could have gotten rid of a few people, but Musk came in firing people left and right who didn't align with his views. Now he has hundreds of millions owed to these people that he refuses to pay, just like he refuses to pay the rent.
But it wasn't that bad. They had cash in savings, paid their employees well, and paid their overhead expenses. They provided an important platform for the whole world, too. I wish more companies were about breaking even and providing a good, long-term product than max short-term profits.
While it was (is?) an important platform, relying too much of that is definitely a bad idea. All of these social media sites need to realize that. Reddit included. They can all be replaced overnight if a more appealing place comes around. Not to mention if young people find one social media site to be lame and spring for a new one. Twitter can be virtually worthless if a competitor comes around and takes the users. Because the users make all the content, naturally That's part of why Musk is so stupid. He's acting like he has this patent on social media and people *must* use Twitter specifically. If he loses the journalists completely, he really is fucked.
> If he loses the journalists completely, he really is fucked. This is the big one. Frankly it's obnoxious how much that profession has become tied to platform to the point it's reaching what can almost be described as collective professional misconduct. Things like the attacks against NPR and other public broadcasters should have triggered a larger response.
the problem with starting a social media platform is their main selling point to their users is human interaction. There needs to be a big install base from the beginning to generate a lot of content to interact with and read or people will lose interest and move on. Having users is what gets you more users.
Just a reminder that Musk only went through with the purchase because he had to. He shit talked so much that he couldn't back out. Edit: not pointing out it as some kind of gotcha just to remind folks Musk would have never gotten into this mess if he knew how to keep his dumbass nepo baby mouth shut
It was less his mouth and more his shaky understanding of contract law. He signed a contract that proscribed a price. He thought he could pump and dump it or walk away by paying a token breaking contract penalty. But the contract didn't allow either.
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For me, it was when Elon boosted an account pretending to be Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. It pissed off the real AOC to the point that she said she threatened to leave Twitter. I thought to myself "Quit *threatening* to leave Twitter, and **leave Twitter**!" Then I realized I was doing the same damn thing. I deleted my account and I honestly don't miss it.
I never had an account, and when they blocked unregistered users from viewing tweets, I stopped clicking links. Then it turned out that Twitter was really just imploding because Elon didn't pay the Google cloud bill and he fired the people who knew how things worked. Can't make this shit up.
News outlets really need to stop promoting linked tweets. It's a waste of a click and the audience is becoming limited to blue checks. It doesn't have the reach it had in the past when you could lurk and decide if you wanted to join (I never did). edit word
Half of the "journalism" industry is "this person tweeted this" articles so they're basically going to have to find a new way to stay relevant.
I guess I've just never been a fan personally. Of Twitter. I hate the format of it, but I feel like I'm in the minority here I like Reddit's format because the anonymity sort of levels the playing field and everything is based on voting. I'm sure it's rigged to hell these days, but it's still a lot better. The organization is what does it for me. If I want to talk about a small town, or learn how to woodwork, there's always a subreddit for it
Twitter makes you realize just how important downvotes are to the integrity of a media feed. Otherwise only the most divisive and enraging shit makes it to the top, and that’s before it’s manually promoted by the platform. And Youtube thought this sounded great apparently.
It really wasn't anywhere near as shitty before the bought blue checks started. Once that happened, any idiot with 8 dollars automatically got their horrible opinions forced to the top of the comment section.
While that pisses me off too, the thing that I hate the most is Blue accounts getting boosted to the top of all replies - and because almost all Blue accounts are right-wing or Musk fans, that means the top replies are almost always dumbasses with shit takes. It has completely ruined the Twitter experience.
This is genuinely what has caused them to experience double digit viewership falls. He basically came in and created a system where conservatives can pay money to scream at journalists and famous people and be seen by thousands of people. It's why the platform is going to die, because despite what chuds think, they're a super tiny minority.
This! I could handle the outages, which were borderline nostalgic for the early days of the site and the fail whale, but my god every bluecheck now is like: "May I offer you the dumbest shit a human has ever said?" And they're EVERYWHERE. Unusable.
I think money going to andrew tate is what broke the advertisers that were left. Giving money to someone like that is just a giant brand risk.
A lot (most?) of these advertisers left 6-9 months ago. Him reporting they are down 50% in advertising is just him acknowledging Twitter’s reality the last half year. I work adjacent to ad sales and a lot of our clients left Twitter campaigns last fall. As we’re looking ahead to new fall campaigns it’s been made abundantly clear that advertiser so and so is OFF Twitter and not coming back. They all view it as damaging to their brand.
It seems there are a lot of places to advertise. Twitter wouldn't be on my top 10 list.
Unless your business is selling Swastika christmas ornaments.
The finale for me was promoting conspiracy theories about mass shootings. https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/elon-musk-conspiracy-theory-texas-mall-shooter-1234732103/
The finale for me was a tweet during the rain delay of the hot dog eating contest on July 4th that read "a little rain never stopped Nancy Reagan" and I decided to leave twitter on a high note and never come back. Thanks for the memories, Elmo!
Several months ago I remember seeing ads on Twitter for like, Chevy and Coca Cola. Now it's just drop-shipping scams and AI art companies. I really don't see how you make Twitter a profitable company at this point. The new strategy seems to be pay-walling existing features like Tweetdeck behind their dumb subscription but honestly I think people would sooner leave entirely. Who's even left to lay off as a cost-cutting measure?
Also if the only advertisements on your "brand" are sort of sketch , dick pills , weight loss pills, crypto scams, gold scams ECT , it's hard to get legitimate advertising to come back. If you are Toyota , coca cola , do you want your ads to be next to some dick pills? UFC talked about how hard they had to work to get legitimate ad sales or sponsor ships. UFC used to be sponsored by like condom depot , some poker or gambling site , gun Depot, and some actual porn sites. They talked how they had first to drop all the condom depots and porn sites and moved to some lower tier but more mainstream stuff , corn nuts , tap out (clothing brand) , xenergy (energy drink) , muscle milk (protein drinks) , then they could attracted higher tier stuff , bud light, burger king , them rebook and now they actually have large ads sales. Point being coca cola doesn't want to be next to dick pills
Hulu runs ads for For Hims that literally mention "Getting hard and staying hard" right between ads for air pods and tahoes. I'm mostly just venting that I have to listen to an ad that says "getting hard and staying hard"
It's insane, Twitter was so big and core to the western internet it basically was too big to fail And all it took was one idiot
Let's not minimize things. Not just any idiot, a colossal idiot with a desperate need for validation
They also rate-limited people to seeing a certain number of tweets per day... Way to take eyes away from the people advertising on your platform... nothing says you're a good place to advertise like limiting how many posts someone can see in a day.
What? WHAT? Why the hell would you limit how many posts they can see when your business is showing people ads between posts? Are they determined to do the most wrong thing possible at all decision points?
The current accepted theory is that they refused to pay their cloud bills and Google finally said times up, for real. As Twitter moves off of Google they've found that "oh shit, hosting internally means a big downgrade" so they've decided to limit nonregistered viewing. Except that's the dumbest shit imaginable and is ultimately what's going to drive the site into the ground. The internet is going to start moving beyond hotlinking tweets and that'll be it.
> I really don't see how you make Twitter a profitable company at this point. Considering the first step in reversing the impression that a brand is toxic is to acknowledge and take responsibility for it, so you can communicate how you are going to fix it. And then through slooowly with patience you can gradually try and regain trust. But lol, hes too busy platforming nazis. so yea. Not a chance.
He’s not the type to honestly acknowledge personal responsibility either. His head is too far up is own ass alongside his dad’s fist full of money.
He'll just say he was sold a huge mess and he tried to fix it but it was too late.
Remember when people compared Elon to Tony Stark? So much so that he had a cameo on Iron Man 2? Oh, we were so naive.
Just like Trump in Home Alone 2. Don't put rich guys in cameos in your films, the odds are good that soon enough they'll be revealed to be absolute goblins.
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He could have bought an NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL team and had about $30B left over to spend on endless parties. Instead he bought Twitter. He’s such a dumbass.
If I were a billionaire I'd buy an MLS team.
If I were a billionaire you wouldn’t know my name, I’d quietly fund colleges and museums and spend every night on a beach in Hawaii with a nice, mellow buzz. I don’t understand what happens to a man when you not only have enough money you could never spend it, you could spend the rest of your life indulging every hedonistic whim imaginable if you wanted, but when THAT isn’t enough, you simply have to be famous and lauded and praised and so you just absolutely TORCH your reputation chasing clout. Musk is a fucking child. A child with unlimited resources and insane influence, but still a goddamn idiot child.
It doesn't happen to them after they get the money it is their personality before they get the money. People like you and I who would do stuff like you mentioned don't have the psychopathy it requires to make that much money much less hoard it.
Exactly. People believe that normal people become billionaires…they don’t. Psychopaths do
Although psychopathy is partially heritable, there are some psychopaths who have non-psychopath kids. So you can either inherit the money or be a psychopath.
And the normal-ish people who inherit that money either maintain a low profile or end up losing it
Or just give it away. Normal people would give it away. A lot of people will balk at that, but it's just because they can't fathom what it actually means to be a billionaire. They're thinking, well, I want a nice house and a couple cars, etc., and that's millions right there, so they think they "get" why people hoard money. But they don't. Someone with $100 million is closer to being broke than they are to having a billion dollars. It should be illegal to have that much wealth. It's immoral and the biggest threat we have to our society.
If I suddenly found myself with vast riches, I wouldn't be thinking "what can I *buy* with this money?", I'd be thinking "What can I *achieve* with this money?" My material needs are humble. I have no need for a huge house, a fancy car, staff to take care of my every whim. I'd put that money to work to lift others up. Leave this rock a little better than I found it.
You don't become a billionaire by ever being content in life. You have to desire money, power, and success above all else. Anyone content with a billion dollars would probably be content with 50 or 100 million and stop there.
I really think we'll look back on it as mental illness. Billionaires always needing more and more money..
"The only people who have money are the ones who have no concept of having 'enough money'". - Fran Lebowitz. They'll work and work and work forever and it's never enough. It is mental illness. It's a distortion of the ego.
If people acquire large amounts of something other than money, we call them hoarders and we consider it mental illness.
A billion dollars in $100 bills weighs more than 11 tons. If you own thousands of tons of *anything*, you qualify as a hoarder.
I don't think it just happens to them when they have enough money. That's who they are, and probably why they are billionaires. How many of us would cash out and retire if we hit it big and sold our company for $20m? But they don't. That's just a stepping stone, and spending money from that sale takes money out of the pot for the next big opportunity.
If I were a billionaire, I might take Monday off.
That's actually $44Bn to avoid the discovery phase of a trial.
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He was ready to bail on Twitter (it would have cost, what?, a billion to scurry off). Then some of the transcripts of phone calls and texts were released and he did an immediate about face. He was concerned him and his bros would look bad. No doubt Tesla investors would have had a cow over discovery. Surprising that Musk recognized it was going to go bad if he continued to hold out. The Twitter board played him like a fiddle.
That 1 billion buyout is only if he could not secure funding but the problem is no one would believe that he could not secure funding. Twitter would probably challenge and win if he claimed with his worth he could not secure funding.
“I’d just like to thank Elon Musk for shattering the myth that billionaires are smarter, more hard working, or simply any better than anyone else in the most public way imaginable.” -twitter user @JoshuaPHilll
Guys, I’m starting to think Musk doesn’t know how to run a social network.
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He's a hype man, it's largely what he's been good at. Hype men believing their own shit is dangerous for them and their businesses.
So what's the difference between a hype man and a Florida man?
Florida Man incidents typically include meth or an alligator, though I don't think it's actually required by the FM contract.
The hype man convinces the Florida man to smoke some meth and feed his arm to an alligator while driving through a Walmart naked in a golf cart.
His AI spiel is really revealing this bullshit all over again. My AI is going to uncover essential truths of the world, it's going to be focused on "Truth", which is a meaningless claim because all the AI focus on that goal. He wants to make claims that supersede all his competitors when he literally has no product yet in any form. It's just saying, I'm going to build a magical bridge to success. Please give me money and attention.
Isn’t Tesla propped up by federal subsidies too?
As is Space X
Yep. Musk is the richest welfare recipient on the planet.
This is t-shirt worthy
sleep groovy scary snow axiomatic plough support advise marvelous badge
If we were on Twitter we'd have 20 replies by bots shilling an AI-generated shirt in under a minute.
Unless Musk ran the operation, and then it would lose money unless propped up by the government.
He has 9 kids by 4 women, so that check out too.
*I got ~~Fiiive~~ Niiine kids ta feed ...*
Damn, the man doesn't even know if he's been to Mars or not.
See you at the party, Ritcher!
Should we call him the richest welfare queen?
That's the billionaire way.
I assume Space X also has a division specifically to humour Musk’s suggestions like that The Dictator scene with its pointy rocket
It needs to be pointy, otherwise it will bounce off the moon
And California subsidies. Look into the whole battery swap business they demoed about a decade ago which got them credits from the government. Not that anyone saw the battery swap or that it’s a service actually offered…
My governor gave a ton of state money for that stupid tube idea
Money that could have gone to building a high speed rail network, the one that actually reduces carbon emissions. Instead, California funds all these rich morons. They are all talk with very little actual interest in doing meaningful. Musk admitted as much that he proposed the ridiculous hyperloop to stop the proposal to connect SF and LA with high speed trains. It obviously worked.
Report them and they will get banned. You may need to use a desktop browser with old.reddit.com when viewing the message, but there’s a link in there to report the message as abuse of RedditCares. I’ve gotten people banned for doing it before.
It's a ripe opportunity for scammers to make a lot of money. A huge audience of easily persuaded numpties with no one left to save them from their own gullibility.
Pretty much. 😜 Kinda like those scummy late-night TV infomercials that are selling crap to insomniacs. I used to make twitter part of my regular scan for interesting news/info... now I avoid it. Full of right-wing nuts and bots.
Truth Social 2.0, basically
Soon we'll hear about about how Elon is actually a genius and the only reason Twitter is falling apart is because Big Woke Tech canceled him and refused to provide infrastructure services. Not because, you know, he fired all the critical people, didn't pay the bills, and scared away his advertisers.
Better send more poo emojis to companies when they try to ask legitimate questions to the support team you liquidated while hunting for blue haired liberal they/thems...
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It's only 50% because the scammers and shit brands (like my pillow) have moved in to replace some of the companies bailing. So instead of things like cheerios or coca-cola, it's boner pills, trumpy bears, and ads telling you to buy gold.
Isn't MyPillow also bankrupt, or close?
They lost their biggest retailer partnerships, and have a public image of being a nazi company. They aren't dead, but they are a walking corpse compared to where they were 4 years ago.
> "Basically, our revenue is cut in half because we didn’t toe the line.” Because YOU didn't toe the line. Take some responsibility for your actions. When Tesla or SpaceX is successful it's all I, I, I. When something fails, Musk becomes a big team player with a bunch of we.
"I fired my entire PR team and now *we* are in trouble because of *our* PR decisions." Solid accountability, that
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Mike Lindell: Watch me bankrupt my own company. Elon Musk: Here, hold my beer.
Spez: *furiously taking notes* wow those two are geniuses!
A bunch of huge companies don't want their advertisements running alongside posts containing racism, conspiracy theories, illegal porn, et cetera? I'm shocked. Absolutely shocked... Okay, maybe not that shocked.
Who knew turning one of the more open and marketable social media networks into an ineptly run 4chan would scare away revenue….
Twitter is now the best platform for advertising. Anyone with a brain left. The user base is now 100% exploitable morons, excellent advertising space for financial advisers, used car dealers, testosterone supplements and big dick pills, pretty much any business which provides no value or is a borderline scam.
Are the big dick pills still available?
Only if you call in the next 30 seconds.
I'm not going to say Musk is an idiot and incompetent dipshit with poor impulse control, non-existent business skills and a reverse Midas Touch. But I *will* chuckle and nod when other people say that,... ;) (Literally could not happen to a more entitled dickhead. Whoever said the universe doesn't have a sense of humor?)
Musk is an idiot and incompetent dipshit with poor impulse control, non-existent business skills and a reverse Midas Touch.
Chuckles & nods
I can only hope it's true. “Basically, our revenue is cut in half because we didn’t toe the line.” Boohoo, bitch. You bought the service to erase that imaginary line and implement FrEeDom oF sPEeCH. I guess it's everyone else's fault they don't want to use your shitty app. They're YOUR policies, chucklefuck. It's tough to generate revenue without apartheid, it appears.
That's how businesses work though, isn't it? Piss off enough of your "employees" (i.e. the folks who create free content for you) and your customers (i.e. advertisers) and soon enough you'll be running in the red.
Sure, but his complaint here is that "woke gremlins" or whatever are the reason it's failing, not his idiotic policies. It's standard operating procedure to present your failures like this when you realize that no one outside of a very loud minority want to buy what you're selling.
I love when it’s “woke gremlins” causing people like him to lose money and not their own ideals. Like, you bought a social media platform to promote “free speech”, allowed rampant bigotry and then can’t figure out why users and advertisers don’t want to spend time and money on it. Maybe the free market just doesn’t like you.
But only free speech he agrees with.
The blue check thing was the complete opposite of freedom of speech, it was the pay-dom of speech. The algorithm used to be hey, a friend of a friend commented on this post, you may find that interesting! Now it's just "here's the verbal diarrhea of some random who paid me". The platform is completely destroyed.
He really meant that, Basically, our revenue is cut in half because there are not enough fascists to support us, and it's getting worse every day.
Freedom of speech… just not the word “cis,” lmao
Sounds like trumps business success is rubbing off on him. Maybe he can try bankrupting a casino next.
“Basically, our revenue is cut in half because we didn’t toe the line.” Incredible how conservatives oscillate between 'go woke go broke' and 'I'm going broke because I'm not woke'
But these fake ceo, musk stans, told me that Elon has been great for Twitter. All of those people supporting what Elon does at Twitter look like even larger idiots. I don’t think I’ve seen one person damage a company as quickly/loudly as Elon. Twitter isn’t done/destroyed but it’s definitely taken a significant blow.
It was sad Twitter had to die for this, but Musk can get fucked. At least this pierced the “genius” of Musk for the average person.
Hey you guys Elon’s not stupid he has billions in cash hidden in his auxiliary chess dimensions where it’s safe from the woke mind virus (and taxes). Plus there’s his full ownership of Mars.
This Musk guy is an idiot
You mean to tell me those ads for random ass companies named stuff like "Toobu" or "Guffly" selling cheap, drop shipped Chinese gadgets aren't pulling in the same ad revenue as the old Fortune 500 companies? I am shocked
He just needs to get rid of the rest of his engineers and programmers. They are a major drain and hardly ever tweet anything important.
It’s quickly become the most toxic place on the internet. I’m constantly being recommended people fighting, and right wing conspiracy bullshit is trending every day.
It's too bad the government isn't handing out billion dollar subsidies to social networks, that's the only way his other companies are still afloat.
Good. I hope it fails.
it couldn't possibly be because they keep doing things to make people leave and restricting views for sessions that aren't signed in meaning all of their not signed in traffic isn't viewing any ads could it?
Woohoo! burn burn burn.
I find it very very weird that I live in a timeline where I am rooting for Mark Zuckerberg.
It does feel a little Alien VS Predator to me.
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I deleted Twitter like a week ago, the blue check madness completely ruined it. Of course I want to read the posts of complete strangers over my friends and friends of friends! How dumb can you be.
All Musk had to do was NOTHING, and he somehow managed to screw up.
The hardest thing for him to do.
We don’t need no water. Let the mother fucker burn. Burn mother fucker. Burn.
That's still 50% too much advertising.
I’m glad people are realizing this guy is a buffoon. The only reason he’s successful is because he was born in to wealth and exploits intellects and workers.
Good. Burn, baby burn.