Elon Musk‘s erratic posting on X, formerly Twitter, has come back to haunt him once again as a 22-year-old Jewish man pursues a defamation case over tweets in which the tech mogul baselessly suggested the recent college graduate was an undercover federal agent posing as a neo-Nazi during a street fight between far-right groups. Musk’s excruciating March 27 deposition in the matter, which a judge ordered released to the public over the objections of the CEO’s lawyer, reveals the extent to which he has continually sabotaged both himself and the social media platform he owns.
An entertaining read that further cements Musk as an honest-to-god unhinged idiot. I’ve seen a lot of people speculate that him buying Twitter and tanking its value was some kind of genius plot, but the simpler explanation is that he’s just unironically stupid and a bad businessman.
The fact that he has another burner account which he uses to get around blocks and hurl insults at others is both really funny and completely expected. I’m willing to bet a signed dollar that he has yet another alt that he uses to lean even further right and say the N-word on a regular basis.
There’s a third explanation: He’s a fairly bad businessman but Twitter was always expected to lose money, and the purpose of owning it is to use it as a cost center for massive political influence.
I’m not necessarily espousing this theory, I have no real evidence either way, but lots of billionaires buy media outlets so they can direct public sentiment. Twitter, managed correctly, could have been a pretty good way to do that, but even within that lens it has been managed very badly, so IDK
I guarantee you that at least one of those burners has at least once instance of the N-word on it.
Guarentee you he calls himself African American on that hidden burner.
It does seem like he’s ignorant on many subjects, but if he is a complete idiot, how did he manage to make the right investments to become among the richest of the world?
Because of dad’s money (it seems there’s no clear information about the money from the mine https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/11/17/elon-musk-emerald-mine/)? That’s a good start, sure, but many smart people, with a similar good start or more, try to become richer and don’t reach this level. So what’s the additional element?
Is it really not an acceptable explanation that he had good guts at detecting the bubbles and did multiple smart investments at the right times (early internet website, internet payment, electric cars, low cost space)?
Let’s try to have an opinion of a higher quality than what Musk usually writes on his media, that is to say, not solely based on some strong feelings.I believe a combination of inertia and “throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks” may be applicable here.
If his recent ventures are anything to go by, he’s an “idea guy” that makes a convincing case of sounding smart enough to succeed. He makes big promises about revolutionizing something, and because of his persona as a successful inventor, investors and fans buy into those ideas.
With support behind him, he’s free to burn other people’s money in the hopes that one of his fantastical projects actually succeeds. And if it doesn’t, just sweep it under the rug like the Hyperloop.
Or, you know, he could always use his capital to fund others’ ideas and then take credit as though they were his original idea, like with Tesla.
Seems like a good explanation, can a complete idiot do that?
Yes. Cunning =/= intelligence. A rat can reach the center of the maze off the smell of the cheese, not an understanding of geometry or topography.
Aren’t there thousands of rich born cunning “rats” that didn’t make as much?
As much
Did I fucking stutter? It’s a function of mass of capital + opportunity (Peter Thiel wants your booty hole) = Inertia which breeds either people like you spending time on the defense of the morally reprehensible. Assuming you’re not the man himself, fucker has the right amount of time.
One again, mass of capital + opportunity (luck) = Inertia persistent enough for fucks like you to eat off perpetuity in the hope of scraps.
Please refrain from personal attacks. I understand your point otherwise.
I’m not defending him, I even negatively criticized him two times in my initial comment. I’m defending having a rational opinion about him, but it’s very hard, as you can observe by your own reaction to my questioning.
I assume you think Trump is a very stable genius.
That’s quite the opposite of the nuanced discussion I stupidly tried to have, but I guess your comment was not serious.
You sounded like you were arguing that rich means smart.
My point is becoming that rich does mean some skills and cannot be achieved by a total idiot as stated in the top comment.
Trump is that rich. What are his skills?
I think mostly communication, since his multiple frauds cases show he’s not actually good at business, and having some instinctive understanding of what he should say to appeal to the poor uneducated white people who are afraid of falling lower. I feel like in the case of Trump, it’s even more important to not use his populist and hate based tactics.
X is “the most accurate, timely, and truthful place on the internet,” Musk said during his questioning about a false statement he made on the site that has been viewed by over a million users and has yet to be retracted or deleted almost a year later.
Hilarious.
Truth in this case, comes from the ability to be proven wrong. If they removed it, the truth wouldn’t have a chance to be relevant and challenge the wrong statement. I assume that is what Elon has in mind when he considers his site to be more truthful. Much on the common internet these days gets shut down and removed before even being able to be challenged. Like on Reddit. Which ironically leads to less truth, since less people have their opinions challenged and are instead removed, or the challenge is removed.
Give an example of where it’s led to less truth. When X perpetuates lies, truth and the world’s welfare is harmed. Look at the number of people that died thinking covid was a lie and people that think vaccines are somebkind of conspiracy to harm them.
If X perpetuates a lie and doesn’t have the facilitation to allow a variety of perspectives and opinions to hold the lie accountable, that is an echo chamber and I’d agree it would be a huge problem. Elon said every person should be allowed to speak for the most part on X. If that saying holds any merit, I assume X lives up to that eventually. If it doesn’t I’m on you guys’ side about X.
I feel if Elon Musk said covid was a lie and people took only his word for it, that is on them. Its another story entirely if there was no other trustworthy source of information or data. USA seems to struggle with that these days, so I understand how it went so wrong with Covid in some places. But yeah, a person in this case would win the game of natural selection by not only going off of what one dude/source says (probably in a casual, low effort manner at that).
Musk allows extreme right wing to flourish and boosts their falsehoods himself, but has personally censored many left voices. What he claims about “free speech” and what he does are not the same.
Do you have sources that show he intentionally censored voices? He would be a huge hypocrite depending on how that was done.
There are numerous examples available to anyone who looks for it. Here’s one where he banned a bunch of journalists who had been critical of him, using an excuse about “doxxing”:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/twitter-journalist-suspend-1.6688110
There’s another where he suspended the account of a prominent Tesla critic:
Thank you for sharing.
Hm, in the first link, the journalist seems to have contributed to the incentivization of giving people the power to find and try to harm/kill Elon. I personally feel that directly incentivizing and feeding information for possible murder of an individual is one of the few things I would agree with keeping away from the app myself.
As for the second link it reads like a red flag for me. The reasoning to the ban is not there. And any estimates of why fall short with obscurity. At least within’ the article. Generally when something is obscure I assume the worst. But part of me wonders if details were left out from the article. I’d need to do more research. Looks bad for Elon though.
Are we just going to ignore the fact that an account can’t be a “burner” account if you keep reusing it? This abuse of language doesn’t fly with me
Just like how a drug dealer throws away their burner phone after every drug deal. /s
Or maybe you’re not thinking about what this word means in context. Burner doesn’t mean “use once and abandon”, it means “use anonymously and abandon if needed”.
For a plug thats not a “burner”, its the trap phone. Hearing lemmy nerds talk about this stuff is amusing
