Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 669: Musk's Twitter Takeover

Episode Date: February 9, 2023

This episode of Cognitive Dissonance is brought to you by our patrons. You fucking rock. Be advised that this show is not for children, the faint of heart, or the easily offended. The explicit tag is there for a reason. recording live from glory hole studios in chicago and beyond And wearing the same shirt as the last episode. Same shirt, last time. This is Cognitive Dissonance. Every episode, but only one shirt,

we blast anyone who gets in our way. We bring critical thinking, skepticism, and irreverence to any topic that makes the news, makes it big, or makes us mad. It's skeptical,

it's political, and it's recorded on the same day as the prior episode. Same day. It's skeptical. It's political. And it's recorded on the same day as the prior episode. Same day. We are tired. It's a two-fer. It's late. But here's the thing.

If you listened to Tom reading this article by The Verge, it's written in The Verge. The Verge sounds like a family. It does. It totally sounds like an 80s family. It sounds like a 90s flannel band. Did you hear the new album

from The Verge? Man, The Verge was really, they were on stage before Pearl Sand. No, but we posted it to Patreon. And so, if you didn't listen

to this article, you can go to Patreon right now and you can go listen to this article. And this article is 45 minutes of Tom reading this article to you. It's a long article.

We're going to post it in this week's show notes. I just want to say too, like what this whole article is about is about Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter. And these reporters had real good inside information, looking at the Slack, talking to people who work there. And they really did a lot of work to try

to find out what happened when Elon Musk took over. Nothing good! And goddammit, is it the worst car wreck you've ever seen in your entire life? Oh my god. This is... This is a car wreck like a fucking

autopilot Tesla right into a pylon. And then a battery gets punctured. Everything's flaming. Everything shoots into flames. The fucking Musk apologists have got to contend with this. And they won't because they're all fucking douche bro Bitcoin knuckleheads that fucking love this guy for no reason. Elon Musk, let's just get it out there.

Elon Musk is not a business genius. You know, I'm not a business guy. Right. I don't know a lot about business, but every single decision he seemed to make seemed like the very worst, most petty,

shitty decision done by sort of a despotic ruler. You know what I mean? He's a megalomaniacal nut job. He felt like one of these shitty people who just likes to hurt other people. And so what he did was he came in and was like, well, I don't ever go back on what I say and I'm going to hurt this group of people. You know what I mean? That's what he really felt like. And it felt like all emotional decisions. I know we do this where we talk about like how bad women are in business and how bad women are in leadership roles. And you see this and you're like, could you imagine how bad this person would be raked if

they were a woman? How emotional they would be painted? A hundred percent, man. If you, A hundred percent, man. If you, if, if Elon Musk were melon Musk, I don't know, Musk melon. Musk melon. Musk melon. I'm calling him Musk melon. Yeah, man. Like this is a guy who is the worst possible business person. He paid, he overpaid for, uh, he overplayed, he overpaid for Twitter. He bought Twitter for $44 billion. So that is, by most estimations, a gross overvaluation of Twitter at the time, which is why Twitter was like,

that sounds amazing, 100%. Yes, you can buy us. And then when he tried to back off, they were like, no, no, no, no, no. We're going to make you buy us because you totally contractually agreed to, and that price is baller. You know,

what's so funny is like, you could do that with a house and you can still walk away. Right? Yeah. You can, there's, there's a million loopholes in a house contract. You can be like,

but not in a Twitter contract. I mean, Ellie, cause they offer, they were like, no, we're going to take you to court. And he's like,

fine, I guess I'll buy your stupid company. But the thing is like, Musk was worth 200 and whatever billion dollars, but it doesn't mean he has $200 billion liquid. He can't write a check for $44 billion. So in order to create the equity that he needed in order to buy Twitter— Yeah, he had to eat a bunch of smaller billions. That's how it works.

It's like the asteroid game or whatever. It's like the Ashton game or whatever. It's like Jet Li and the Ones. They're just like, only one billionaire left standing gains all the power of the other billionaires. It's like the Highlander. He's chopping heads off and there's lightning shooting all over the place.

There's Sean Connery with a samurai sword for some reason. Yeah. So he had to sell a shit ton of Tesla shares, right? And when a major sell-off occurs of a single valued asset, then the value of that asset declines. So then all of a sudden, he sold all these Tesla shares, and then the value of Tesla slumped. And then that's tied to his net worth. And then as he mismanaged Twitter, he focused away from Tesla

where most of his wealth is accumulated. His wealth, he's lost over $200 billion on this deal. It's amazing how much money he's lost. Imagine the business. He's booked the world records for the most money lost. Right. Most money lost. And there are still people, he's a fucking genius.

He's an emerald millionaire. Like he comes from emerald mine money. He comes from money. From South Africa. He comes from family emerald mine money. He bought his way into the precursor to PayPal. He didn't invent PayPal. He never invented anything.

He bought his way into every job he's had. He purchased his way into them. Tesla, he didn't invent the fucking electric car. No, no. He didn't invent shit. He purchased his way into them. Tesla, he didn't invent the fucking electric car. He didn't invent shit. He bought his way into Tesla. He bought his way into everything that he's had, including Twitter. Now he gains control of

Twitter, and he shows up with his fucking kitchen sink with his stupid fucking pun. Let that sink in. It's not even what that means. It's not even what that means. It's not even the right sink. It's not even what that means. Like, he couldn't have used a everything but the kitchen sink

metaphor. At least it would be the right version of the word sink. Right. Right. He's like, he's confused. It's a fucking homophone, you stupid dipshit. I hate him so much, Tom. I fucking hate him. I hate him so much. I want to read parts of this article. How much, real quick. I know. I want to talk about the article. I do. I do. But I want to talk about this more importantly.

How much do you want to fight Elon Musk? Cause it would be a fucking hoot. Okay. Come on. You know, in Minecraft, in Minecraft. Let me find this photo.

Cause I want to show you what I think Elon Musk is. And I want to show the audience too. Jesus. How many fucking ads are there? Okay. So Tom, this is why I don't want to fight him. Because for the people looking,

there's an image. Somebody took a photo of Elon Musk getting out of a pool or getting out of a- It's not flattering. And it's not a flattering photo. But then somebody drew an image of what looks like a little Elon

driving a big Elon. And it says, instead of Tesla, it says torso. You know, all you have to do is search for Elon Musk torso meme and you you'll find it. But I just, that's why I don't want to fight him because he's in a Mac. Like he's in a Mac.

He's in a meat Mac. He's in a meat Mac. And I don't want to fight him. Like I'm, I'm a little afraid of him. I don't want to, I don't want to go ground and pound with a guy who could just get out. Oh my God.

I mean, he could just get out of the thing and then climb on top of you and insist to know who rules Barter Town. That's exactly it. He's like a little master blaster. All right.

So there's a lot of this article that I really want to talk about and that I really want to read. And it starts out where he comes in

and he's like, I want to know about the infrastructure at Twitter. I want you guys to tell me. And then, so they bring it in and they bring in, they're like talking about videos and he's like, and they say, the infrastructure engineers in the room agreed that adding support for long-form video was technically possible, but their job was building stuff, not strategy or marketing.

Because he came in and immediately said, I want to make long-form video. And he's talking to all the engineers and they're like, but don't you want to talk to marketing? Like, don't you want to talk to people who think that like, maybe you should do this or not, not just like the guys do it. And he says, and it says, it seemed as though Musk didn't understand the basic organizational structure of a social media company. It was as if a rich guy bought a restaurant and started telling the cooks he wanted to add a new dining room. Might he want to speak to the media product team instead? And that shows you like one of the first days he comes in and he's talking to the wrong people. And I think this is one of those symptoms of really rich guys just getting their way all the time.

Right? They go into any place they want and they're ultra rich and people just fall over backwards to help them out. Right? So that no matter what they want, you know, there's a great scene in Get Shorty, the movie Get Shorty,

where Danny DeVito is playing a really famous actor and he walks in and he's talking to John Travolta and I think Rene Russo's there and they're at a restaurant. And they come up and like, John Travolta's ready to order. He's a gangster, so he's ready to order like steak and eggs or whatever for breakfast. And

Danny DeVito grabs everybody's menus and he says, I'm just going to order for the whole table. Can you do me a favor? I'd really like just an egg white omelet, but I don't want any cheese. Just sprinkle some shallots on top and I want it really big and I want you to fold it so we can all share it.

Can you bring it? And he tells like this really specific recipe and the waiter's of course like, I'm going to go, I'm going to go, I'm going to go. And it's like, because, and it's a perfect example of like a rich guy getting exactly what he wants. And then the omelet, the best part of the whole scene is the omelet gets delivered to the table.

And he's like, I got to go enjoy the omelet. And nobody wanted it, right? Nobody wanted the omelet. He's the one who ordered it. He ordered for the whole table and he's not going to eat it. And that's a- I kind of want to do that. That's a perfect example of Elon Musk, right?

It's a perfect example. But it's not just Elon Musk. It's every rich guy. It's Trump. Yeah, man, it is. It's every one of these fucking billionaires. When, what occurs to me, I can give you kind of a funny analog for my personal life. When I got, 10 years ago, I got a new job. So I got the job that I'm at now. I've been there about 10 years. And I was hired into a pretty high level position, but I realized that I was coming into a company where I knew the industry very well, but I realized that I was coming into a company where I knew the industry very well, but I didn't know the company at all. And I didn't know any of

the people or the players. And so walking in the door very intentionally, I thought to myself, my first day, I thought to myself, my job for the next two or three months is to just fucking listen. Yeah. Cause I don't know. I got hired because I know a lot, but I don't know any of these people. I don't know how this company works. Right, right. I need to just shut my mouth and listen. What a difference that is.

Right. Guys like this don't know how to listen. Yeah. They don't value listening. And they don't value listening because they don't value the other people in the room to speak. They are not interested in what the other people have to say unless what they have to say is,, sir. And here's when the only thing guys like this can

hear is yes, sir. And here's when, yes, sir. And here's when this guy is going into meetings with the wrong people. Cause he doesn't know who the right people are. Cause he fundamentally misunderstands the product because until he bought Twitter, he only used Twitter. He only used it. So he didn't care. That's like walking into a fucking Toyota factory because you drove there in a Camry once. And I want to say too, to this part

of this whole story doesn't matter to him. It will never matter that he went to the wrong team. No. Because for him, he didn't care who he told it to. He needed to tell it to somebody and they will figure out who needs to hear it, period. Yeah. That's a good point. He does not learn a lesson from having had an embarrassing meeting. Have you ever had an embarrassing meeting where you called a meeting

and you realized you maybe were underprepared or misunderstood? I've done that. I have had meetings where I ran the meeting and realized part of the way through the meeting that I misunderstood fundamentally what problems were I was trying to solve. Or somebody asked a question that I just can't answer. I don't like that. I don't like to do that. I like to be prepared. And sometimes you can't be that prepared. And I've adjourned the meeting.

I've said to people, I've said in meetings, I've said, you know what? This one's on me, guys. I misunderstood fundamentally the problem we were trying to solve. on me, guys. I misunderstood fundamentally the problem we were trying to solve. So I need to go back to the drawing board, and I think I need to have a different meeting with maybe some different participants and kind of come back

to the problem. I misunderstood. Watch your email. I misunderstood. And that's, you know what, I've never had a lack of respect come from that. Sure. Never. Even though I look like a bungling fool in that meeting, in that moment, you actually gain respect from other people. Do you think it's the money that makes people think

like they can't ever make anything, do ever make a mistake? Yeah, I do. I think that, you know, like once you get that rich. Yeah. And, you know, it's not like just, I mean, even though it is a lot like winning the lottery, it very much is.

It very much is. They don't see it that way. No, no. They see it as- They all see it that way. No. No, they see it as... They all see it as bootstraps. Yeah, they see it as the reward for their fucking awesomeness. They see it as bootstraps. And so they don't think on that level. Right.

Here's another one. On Musk's first full day in charge, October 28th, the executive assistant sent Twitter engineers a Slack message at the behest of the goons. Now, these are the people who he's come in to sort of hire. They're like his squad. Yeah, they're the bobs.

The boss wanted to see their code. Employees were instructed to print out 50 pages of code you've done in the last 30 days. Get it ready to show Musk in person. Panicked engineers started hunting around the office for printers. Many of the devices weren't functional, having sat unused for two years during the pandemic. Eventually, a group of executive assistants

offered to print some engineer's code for them and they would send the files as a PDF. Within a couple hours, the goon's assistant sent out a new missive to the team. Update, stop printing, it read. Please be ready to show your recent code within the last 30 to 60, preferably on your computer. And

if you already have it printed, please shred it in the bins. And then the meeting was pushed back and canceled. We didn't actually get to show our code to Elon. So even though two times they sent out this thing, and now they're asking for people, these engineers, to show

their code. And now I saw online, I'm not a coder, so I don't know, right? But what I saw online was a couple of people who said, that's actually a really bad way to do it because the people who really fix your problems might not write a lot of code or might not write sloppy code. They might write really tight code that fixes your issue or that fixes a really small thing that is very integral, but they aren't writing page after page after page of code. Right. And they might be your least productive. They also did not give them any metrics to say like what the least productive was either. Right. Yeah. And I, I heard that. And again, I don't know anything about coding, but I thought it is inherently valueless to walk into a meeting

with 50 pages of material. A meeting with 50 pages of material is a pointless connection, right? Like email it to me. I'll read it. Like if I need to read it for you to can't sit and have a meaningful look at something as detailed as code and 50 fucking pages of it, nonetheless, and have a productive meeting. Wouldn't you instead want to sit across from somebody and have them demonstrate the code works or explain what the code does? This seems so granular for somebody at that high of a level, right? Like as a guy, like at a guy who's that high level, he shouldn't be deep into the weeds like that. That's not appropriate and it's not meaningful.

And you can't have a good conversation with somebody. Show me, it'd be like if somebody was like writing a book and you're like, okay, we're going to have a meeting about your book. But instead of you telling me about your book that you're writing, I know I gave you an advance. I want to see how far along you are. Let's have a quick meeting so you can kind of tell me where you're at with it. Bring me the first 50 pages. But don't bring me the words.

Just bring me the commas. Right. Yeah. Right. And I want you to print it like it's the past. Yeah. Like it's the, I was once. I just want to see how many commas you did.

I was once in a meeting. One comma. A singular comma. It's just, you know what? This is actually Ulysses by James Joyce. It's all commas.

Comma, comma, comma, comma, comma, comma, camellia. Anyway. I was once in a meeting. It's just a funny aside. I was once in a meeting where our teams from India

had flown in from India and they handed out, Cecil, I'm not even kidding, they handed out a printed slide deck, printed PowerPoint. No kidding. And the subject of the meeting was how they were going to leverage technology to better, I'm not even kidding.

Fuck up, Tom. To better communicate. Shut up, come on. Between our offshore and onshore teams. And so in the middle of the meeting, I turned to the guy who's now my boss and I was like, just so that I'm not the only person

thinking that right now. You were not the only person who was thinking it, right? In order to show us how we're going to leverage technology to communicate overseas. He was thinking it too, right? The guys from overseas

flew here to hand me a piece of paper. He was thinking it too, right? Oh yeah, he was dying. He was thinking it too, right? The guys from overseas flew here to hand me a piece of paper. He was thinking it too, right? Oh yeah, he was dying. He was thinking it too, right? He and I got to the point where he wouldn't let me, he wouldn't sit next to me or across from me in meetings because I would look at him, we'd both start laughing.

Oh. So he's like, I can't sit across from you, Curry. I can't do it. I'm like, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, but you're here too. I'm really funny. Like meetings like that are crazy.

Here's a 50 pages. It doesn't make any sense. But again. You sit here for two hours while I read it. Here's the other thing though too. Here's the other thing though too. Again, this is a rich guy thing. Yeah, right.

Where they don't, they just want you to say how high. Yeah, man. That's all they want you to do. They want you to jump through as many hoops as they can to show you that they have power over you. This is a flex. That's all it is. It do. They want you to jump through as many hoops as they can to show you that they have power over you. This is a flex. That's all it is.

It's just a flex, man. Everything in this, when I read these pieces, you'll recognize it as a boring flex of a weak, worthless person. That's all you'll recognize. Who cannot effectively run a company. You'll recognize it as such. Then Twitter Blue's paid verification

was unveiled on November 10th. I love this. Almost immediately, fake verified accounts flooded the platform. An image of Mario giving the middle finger

in what looked like an official Nintendo account stayed up for more than one day. An account masquerading, this is my favorite, this is so num-num-tum. Oh, no. I love this.

Feed this to me until I die. An account masquerading as the drug manufacturer, Eli Lilly, tweeted that insulin would not be free. Company executives begged Twitter to take down the tweet. The marketing team tried to do damage control. You build trust by being transparent, predictable, and thoughtful, one of the former employees says.

We were none of these during the launch. And it's so funny because this Twitter verified thing, for a long time, I'm not a Twitter guy. I go on Twitter once every couple months. Like maybe not that, maybe that's too infrequent. Maybe once every two weeks,

let's say I go to Twitter. And I'll check our mentions, you know, I'll look. And then inevitably somebody's being an asshole and I got to be like, go fuck yourself or whatever and then continue on. But like mostly when I scroll through the feeds before, I would see the check

mark and these people would be notable in some way. They would definitely be noted. There would be something about them that was either an official government person or they were an official comic. They were somebody who was in movies. They were a real band, like the actual band that's posting. These are all accounts of large media entities in some way, right? It could be a single person, but they had a large media presence.

And you knew it. It is such a fucking joke now. You click on these verified people and they're like 75 followers. They're a nobody. They're literally a dude who's paying $8 a month to look important. That's all it is.

And there's so many of them now. And then there's people who I used to follow who had their check mark removed, who have hundreds of thousands of followers. And don't have a check mark. And they don't have a check mark anymore. I love it. And it's chaos.

I love the chaos. It's chaos. I love it. And it's chaos. I love the chaos. I love it. And now it's a feed that's impossible to parse. Good. I love it. I want to see the complete destruction of Twitter. I know, Tom. And you know I do.

I know. Oh, and I just... This blue thing is such a disaster. For people who like Twitter, it's such a disaster. I know, and I'm sorry if you like Twitter. I'm sorry. And if you like Twitter, and this is like disaster. I know, and I'm sorry if you like Twitter. I'm sorry. And if you like Twitter, and this is like making your life

and your experience on Twitter worse, and it can't not be, I'm sorry. But this was a bad idea. It was poorly conceived. The reason that he wanted to do this was that he wanted to move away from reliance on ads. And he wanted to get into the subscription service model of having a revenue stream.

It doesn't make a lot of money, though. It doesn't make a lot of money. And interestingly, Twitter doesn't make a lot of money. So if you look, Twitter, in the course of 10 years, Twitter's only been out of the red twice. Twitter almost never turns a profit. Twitter has been a money sink most of Twitter's existence. So he spent $44 billion for a product that doesn't make any money, that relies on ads, that he then ruined the reputation for. He totally tanked the ads, man. Tanked the ads.

He tanked the ads. That's on you. Then he replaced it with a tiny, pitiful revenue source that barely works, that causes fucking madness and chaos and anarchy. And I do think that the reason he did it, and this is just speculation, but I think the reason that Musk wanted to get away from the ad model is that the ad model, while very profitable for other social media companies, wouldn't let him achieve his goal of ultimate free speech,

which is what he initially said he wanted. There's nothing that you can't, yeah, he wouldn't have been able to do it. So as long as you've got advertisers, you can't have a chaos based platform. He thought there was enough bigots out there to pay for check marks. I think that's right. I think that's what he thought. I think he wanted to create a bigot zone subsidized by bigots for bigots. And I think he thought the check marks were going to do it. And it didn't matter then if Coca-Cola wasn't like advertising anymore on Twitter,

he wouldn't need it because he would replace it with millions of $8 accounts. Yes, I think that's very true. I think that's, I think it's exactly right. He also, at this point, When everyone's verified,

no one is verified. That's very true. It's so true. And then, so they're doing layoffs and then the weekend after the layoff, so he lays off a bunch of people. Weekend after the layoff, Musk reversed himself.

Twitter's remaining employees were told they could ask anyone who was fired to come back with approval from leadership. The directive was given on Sunday and managers were given until Sunday afternoon

to share their lists of whom they wanted to un-lay off. How embarrassing. Also, it's on Sunday. Yeah. It's on Sunday. Like, again,

we talked about this on our last episode. You know, this is the like, you're always at work shit. You're always at work. You're always at work, unless you got fired, in which case, you're still always at work.

Man, his fucking, like the pictures that were coming out and the stuff he was doing, he's making people, they stop their work from home. Yeah. And this is like a contractual, he's making people, they stopped their work from home. Yeah. And this is like a contractual, he's breaking a contract.

These are all people, they basically said, you can just work from home, just go. Right. And man, I think that business in this country is making a huge mistake when they start pulling people back to the workplace. I think, I look at how much work

I was able to get done during the pandemic and after, and even till now, how much work I'm able to just sit down and just power through in comparison to what kind of staggered, terrible work I get done at the office because of so many interruptions,

because of the commute cuts into my day. There's all these other things that happen when I go to work. And when I stay home and I work from home, I almost always have a 10 times more productive day and I work less. Yeah. Well, the numbers are in and they're fairly clear. I just read an article the other day. The numbers are fairly clear that like, what are workers doing with that extra time at home? They're working. Yeah. They're working.

We're more productive at home. Like working from home is more productive and giving people that sort of like, oh, no commute, the flexibility to run out and get a haircut. Like that, pick up the kids from school. Have a cat on my lap. Yeah.

To have my cats just be able to walk into my room, see me cat on my lap. Yeah. To have my cats just be able to walk into my room, see me jump on my lap. I relax while I'm typing, while I'm on a call, there's a cat. I mean, that's so comforting. Yeah, man. Yeah. And like the quality of life benefits make it so that you don't mind working a little more, right? So like, just like this entire week in my life, this whole week, the buses have been running late. So I can't, like the buses are a half hour to 40 minutes late for the kids to get to and home from school. So I got to take the kids to and from school or they'll literally miss their first period of class. Yeah.

It's not all the buses. It's just like, but like our bus route, for whatever reason, is running at least 30 minutes late every day. So they come in and they say, it's 15 minutes late. Can you take me to school? No, you get a text message from the school that says the bus is running 30 minutes late. And I say, okay, I'm going to drive you instead. And then you get a text message in the afternoon that says, your kid's going to be home at four instead of 3.30.

And it's like, well, I'll just go get him. And I can do that, right? I can just hop in my car and I can go get a kid because it's a, well, I'll just go get them. And I can do that, right? I can just hop in my car and I can go get a kid because it's a five minute drive to the school and I can come back. But if I was at the office, I'd be an hour away. And then the kiddo would be stuck at school, sitting, twiddling their thumbs for an hour late, missing their first quarter, an hour late, missing their first class. You know, the other thing too is like, I find myself too, I don't mind when I work from home answering emails all the way into the night.

It doesn't bother me. If I see an email that comes in at 7.30, I'll be like, I'll be on my phone. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not sitting at my desk that whole time. No. I stopped working at like 4.30 and I, you know, I did some stuff.

I cooked dinner, you know, and during my lunch break, I worked out, dinner, you know, and during my lunch break, I worked out, right? So I worked out during my lunch break. I ate a bar, went up to my room. I did my stuff. I'm at 4.30 now. I was at my desk at eight, but I'm at, it's like 4.30 now. I'm well done with work. I'm like, all right, I'm just going to quit. I shut my computer down. I will go downstairs. I cook dinner. And you know, halfway through dinner, I might get an email. I'll answer that email. The moment I get on the train, I don't open my email until tomorrow morning. If I take the train in and I come home, the moment I get on that train to come home, you don't talk to me at all.

I will not speak to you. Don't even ask me to talk. And it's 3.30 when I walk out the door down there. It's 3.30. Don't fucking expect an answer from me until tomorrow. You want me to work late into the night, I'll do it. But I'm doing it from home. Yeah, man. There's no fucking way I'm doing that when I go downtown. And the whole, especially with a company like Twitter, where it's technical work that can be done mostly in front of a computer. Yeah, I know.

They're not to- Like, it's not customer facing. And these are people who you literally can check up on to see whether or not they're working, right? They're producing a product. There's metrics to know. And you still call them back because again, it's that petty power trip.

Here's something too. Musk promised he would leave major decisions such as whether to reinstate Trump's account to a council of experts. Then on November 19th, he reneged and he made a decision via public Twitter poll. And he did this a couple times. He did this with whether or not he should stay CEO. And public Twitter poll. And he did this a couple of times.

He did this with whether or not he should stay CEO. And then he did. So he followed the one for Trump because there was enough people who voted for him to come back on. Because it was the answer he wanted. And then when it was the answer he didn't want, he went back on it and said,

well, I'll do something. I'll figure something out. I seriously thought he thought he was going to win that. I did too. And like, I also am, and this is just very, very cynical.

And I realized that the answer about whether you should be the CEO actually disproves this. But I recognize too that like, I'm super fucking cynical about a poll conducted

on a platform that you literally control. That you can control. I know, yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like, hey, Cecil,

I'm going to conduct a poll and you're going to run the poll. And I want to win the poll. Yeah, exactly. Well, and no problem, Tom. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like, Hey, Cecil, I'm going to conduct a poll and you're going to run the poll. And I want to win the poll. Yeah, exactly. Well, and no problem, Tom,

you won. What the fuck? We used to read polls on a live stream and like, we could just stop them whenever we want. You could, you could go in the back end of it. We'd just be like, Hey guys,

we could stop the steal. Whatever we want. Let me tell you. I can do what just be like, hey guys, we could stop the steal whenever we want, let me tell you. That's not good. I could do what Trump would. Trump was screaming, stop the vote. We could have stopped the count

whenever we want. Do you think that when Musk lost that poll that he called one of the guys and was like, I just need 11,000 votes. I need you to find me 11,000 votes.

I don't think that would have saved him. I think he lost by more than that. I hope you don't. After this resignation saved him. I think he lost by more than that. Did he? I don't know. After this resignation stuff, an impossible-to-follow tweet thread that unfolded over several hours, Matt Taibbi published the names and emails of the rank-and-file ex-employees

involved in communication with government officials, insinuating that Twitter had suppressed the New York Post story about Hunter Biden's laptop. After it was pointed out that Taibbi had published the personal email of Jack Dorsey, that tweet was deleted, but tweets naming low-level employees and a personal email of the sitting congressman were not deleted. And then they talk about how it's a shitty thing to do to dox everybody. Soon after, Musk granted access to others, including Barry Weiss and Michael Schellenberger. They published Twitter threads on the company's handling of COVID misinformation and shadow banning. While the framing was intended to stoke outrage, the internal correspondence that was published was more banal.

It showed employees having nuanced discussions about complicated thorny moderation topics and often resisting requests by government agencies to take action. Like it literally had the exact opposite effect. But the problem is Musk thought it was damning and so that he wanted somebody to do it. And the same thing with the Taibbi thing. You know, when Taibbi went with this big expose of the Twitter documents or the Twitter files or whatever, Taibbi comes out and he starts publishing all this stuff and everybody's like, dude, he told them

to take it down because it was showing Hunter Biden's dick. Yep. That's it. It's just, all it is is a request

by a group of people to say that's not allowed because it's basically It's revenge porn. Revenge porn. That's it. It's revenge porn. Like, what the fuck?

This is the biggest nothing ever that was a porn like what the fuck this is the biggest nothing ever that was enough it is this is the biggest nothing that was ever nothing though the the the amount of like purposeful obfuscation yeah that is built into all of this nonsense you know like what occurs to me too is that i really think that a big part of the reason that Musk bought Twitter, and again, this is me just talking, right? I don't know this. But Musk seems to have a real desire to try to control the narrative. And I think he realizes that if he controls the structure that the narrative lives on, then he can continue to control the narrative. And I think that for a while he was losing, he was sort of like in this place where he had to compete with all these other people for ideas and space and time. But if he buys Twitter,

then he gets to control the whole fucking thing. He gets to be always at the center of attention. Yeah. And that's really what he's bought himself. He's bought himself a moment of centering of the attention of Elon Musk. And to feed into that, Tom, I think he wanted to be the guy at the center of the conspiracy. Because all conspiracy theorists

think they're at the center of the conspiracy and they're the one who are unveiling this truth for everybody. And so what he decided to do was play that role for everybody to be the most important person he could be for them,

even though there was no conspiracy. No. It's like I say, nuanced conversations or it's revenge porn, you shouldn't do it. It's not some big conspiracy.

In fact, they've shown time and time and time again that right-wing voices are the ones that are amplified on Twitter and were before. Yeah. There's no smoking gun here, which is why it continues to be nothing. But what it does, I think you're exactly right, is this feeds his hero narrative. Yeah. His self-imposed hero narrative. He views himself, I think, as the

Tony Stark of America. I think he really buys that idea and believes that concept. And so if he's the guy who, you know, well, you know what? To get to the truth, there's no limit to the amount of money I'll spend. If I can't get them to tell the truth, I'll buy the place where the truth lives. Yeah.

You know, and then he doesn't. Yeah, you're right. And there's nothing there. Yeah. There's nothing there. This is like the financial and technological equivalent of busting into the fucking comet ping pong pizza or whatever

you're absolutely right and then there's no basement you're absolutely right and you're like I'm here for the kids and you're just like there's no basement you stupid motherfucker yeah man you didn't do your research you're a fucking dimwit doesn't he remind you though of Deadwood's hearse in so many ways holy shit

he totally does doesn't he like as soon as you said that like oh my god yeah you gotta know deadwood right but hearst was a was a real person yeah that they depicted in deadwood and if you haven't seen deadwood holy fuck watch deadwood it's the it's it's amazing holy shit big love for that show with you man i love that fucking show i re-watched it a couple years ago and it is so good. It holds up amazing. It is outstanding

and it is so worth your time. The writing in it is just beautiful. But the guy who comes in in like the late second season is a guy, like one of these really rich dudes, a guy who owns a newspaper, Hearst,

and, you know, look at him. a newspaper, cursed, and, you know, look at him. And again, look, this is the traits of all really, really wealthy people, right?

These are all bullies. These are all shitty people. These are all people who think that they can get their way anytime they want. And this is another example of, you know, of him doing the same thing.

He's coming in, trying to show people he can get his way and then reveal some big reveal and there's nothing to reveal. There's no reveal. After this, Musk decides to ban the Elon Jet.

So Elon Jet was a Twitter account that was following him wherever he went. I guess there's a tracker in his private plane, just like there is in every I think, every single one of these, every, I think every plane has one. And so, and

there's a public website that allows you to look it up. And so the person just basically set up a thing, like a bot, that would just go find it, know where it is, and then he would know where he left and where he went. And- Elon hates this. Elon hated it so much,

he actually offered to pay the kid like five grand or something. Yeah, something, nothing amount of money. He was like, eat a dick. And so Elon buys Twitter and then bans him, bans an account that tracked public data about his whereabouts in a private jet. His, what he called assassination coordinates. Yeah, what a fucking troll. All it tells you is that heabouts in a private jet. His, what he called, assassination coordinates. Yeah, what a fucking troll.

All it tells you is that he landed in a place, and it's not even, I don't even think it's like real time. I think it takes, there's a delay, and it's like, and the other thing too is like, it's a big place you landed in. It's a whole airport. Yeah, man. You know, like, it's not like they have ninjas

hiding behind every fence ready to murder you. It's a stupid thing to say.. It's a stupid thing to say. It's a totally stupid thing to say. And like, it's so funny that he offered the kid next to nothing to buy it. Yeah. And then this is, you know, Elon Musk is a purported free speech absolutist. Except for, except for, except for, except for. He's not a free speech guy.

Yeah, that's exactly it. except for, except for, except for. He's not a free speech guy, right? Because when it comes to criticisms of Elon Musk, when it comes to speech that Elon Musk personally dislikes in any way, Elon Musk, all of a sudden, oh, you're using Twitter to promote your Mastodon account. Oh, well, that's gone. That's free speech, I don't like.

Yeah, that's the next thing is, if you tweeted out, like, here's the thing, they banned this guy and then other people reported on the story and he banned them. Yeah, he banned them. Even the person

who we invited in to look at the Twitter files condemned him on Twitter and then he unfollowed her. I love it. It's just, what I love is the chaos it's so petty

and it's so chaotic the chaos it's both Tom it's petty and chaotic but you're right it's this you know it's

it's only this free speech I want to hear and look man like like this is what you got down on everybody for the difference between this is what that other free speech was doing

was hurting a lot of people. Right. This free speech is hurting your fee-fees. Right. Right? It's just you. That other free speech

was like, like, banning people because they repeatedly use the N-word or something. Right. You know?

Or were continually saying anti-Semitic stuff. Or, you know, like, just doing horrible shit. Yep. Like, saying that Sandy Hook was a hoax for know, like just doing horrible shit. Yeah. Like saying that Sandy Hook

was a hoax for instance. Yeah, right. Right? Banning people like that. Yeah. Or starting an insurrection. Or starting an insurrection. You know,

if you're just throwing things around. You know, man, there was a lot of people who got banned, but like when you start looking at the things that they did, you know, the Milo thing.

Terrible shit. When he organized his whole group to go after that lady from the Ghostbusters. Yeah, man. You know, there's all this terrible shit that happened on Twitter that they had to take in action because they figured they were going to get sued if they didn't. Yeah.

Right? They had to cover their ass. And he just doesn't get it. No. What Elon Musk wanted was to restore free speech. And then as soon as he shows up, he realizes, oh, this sword cuts both ways. Well, I don't like the way the sword cuts when it hits me.

So what I want to do then is start curtailing the speech that offends Elon Musk. And you're like, all right, well, I mean, you're just a fucking billionaire asshole. That's all you are is a billionaire asshole. And he's mad. He's genuinely mad that like advertisers are pulling out of Twitter. Advertisers are pulling out of Twitter in mass. Yeah. Right. And he's like, oh, there, there's a whole, you know, they don't want to be,

look, this is the free market asshole. Yeah. That's what happened. You created, you took Twitter, you made it less safe for everybody. You took Twitter and made it less safe for advertisers to want to associate their product with yours. That's okay. They get to make that call. You got to make the call, Elon, to buy Twitter. You got to do that. This is how fucking free market

works. You went in, you bought it. You mismanaged it, and it has financial consequences, and now you're like, but I don't like him. And then you want to like, oh, free speech, but I don't like it. Yeah. He's a baby. He's a fucking baby.

If I ever fucking see him, I want to put a binky in his fucking mouth. I want to kick him out of his chest and drive his chest. That's what I'm going to do. So the last part of this article, the last piece I want to read. Tesla shares started in 2022 trading at nearly $400 a share by September Tesla stock had dropped

by 25% plummeted again after Musk bought Twitter and ended the year at $123 from 400 investors, that's like Bitcoin loss investors are begging Musk to step away Tesla employees are too as one person on Musk's transition team put it,

what the fuck does this have to do with cars? But Musk appears unaware of what he's actually broken. The company culture that built Twitter into one of the most influential social networks, the policies that attempted to keep the platform safe, and the trust of users who populated every day with their conversations, breaking news and weird jokes, Twitter's true value and contribution of the world.

I disagree with that last statement. I don't think there's a lot of contribution of the world. But, you know, genuinely, he came in and he broke everything. And I like that last line because it's like he not only broke Twitter, right? And Twitter's not technically broke. And there are some, at the end of this article,

they do say he seems to have allowed to fire a bunch of people and it still seems to be working. Now there are people out there that are saying, yeah, it's going to do that for a while, but it will start to go down. And it has gone down a couple of times. And there's been problems with verification

and there's problems with other stuff that's happening. Like it's not- Would you give them your credit card right now? It's not at its top form, I will say that. But, you know, he's also proven that you can cut some severe, you can make some severe cuts and things can still work. Oh yeah. And so he has proven a little bit of that,

but at the same time, like they're right in a way, like Twitter seemed to be one of these places that seem to try to keep getting it right. You know, like as much as they got it wrong. Yeah. They seem like, especially after Trump left and all that stuff, it felt like they were starting to try to get it right. And then he bought it.

And now it feels, I mean, he just let everybody back. He just was like, open the gates. It was like. All the trolls. I mean, seriously, it was way. Seriously, it was really terrifying that he's just like, everybody comes back. He reinstated Trump, everything. Yeah. And I think what you've also seen is a huge exodus of people from Twitter. Yeah, I think so too. People are just giving up. A lot of people just giving up on Twitter.

I scroll through there now and I'm seeing stuff from really crazy far right stuff that I'm just like, hide that, hide that, hide that. That's all awful. Yeah, I don't doubt it. Yeah. I don't doubt it. And I love that like

as a result of all this, Tesla lost 70% of its share. Yeah, it's just, I mean, God. Holy shit. Holy shit. How mad would you be as an investor to Tesla? If I lost 70%?

How mad would you be as somebody who invested in Tesla to be like, this is the future of cars. Yep. I'm here because I want Elon Musk as the leader because he seems to be pushing the boundary

of the electric car. Whether that's true or not is irrelevant. He did a great job making the electric car cool. I think that's true. I do think that's true. I think he's right.

He made the electric car cool and nobody else had done that before. I am, for a while, when I first saw Teslas, I was very high on them. I thought,

wow, that's cool. I would not get one now. No. I've seen enough videos and enough bad stuff where I'm like, this is probably not a car for me. Have you ridden in one?

No. I've ridden in a Tesla a few times. I've gotten a couple of Ubers. I had an Uber once. Yeah. For the cost of a Tesla, they Ubers. I had an Uber once. For the cost of a Tesla, they do not have the interior fit and finish.

They don't. They feel like a 1997 Kia. I saw a $120,000 car that they were opening the trunk and the molding's not even together correctly. It's crazy. It's bad. And the other thing, too, is they still have problems with their autopilot that they said they could fix.

That's garbage. And there's all these problems that they're having with their cars. And then also repair costs. And then for a while that you couldn't get one. So it's been a disaster for this company. But they seem to still be able to weather the storm. master for this company, but they seem to still be able to weather the storm. But, you know, I feel like if I was an investor to that, I would be so mad that he's diversifying this and ruining every bit of, you know, investment. But, you know, it couldn't happen to better

people, though, I guess. You know what I mean? It's like, but I really feel bad for the, for like the guy who's got this in his 401k. Yeah, man. That's the thing. It's like for the big institutional investors, I don't care. I don't care what happens to fucking hedge fund holdings LLC. I care about some regular Joe who's got a 401k who's like, man, I lost a whole bunch of money because my guy who's my whatever at work, because I do it through work. So my guys, I got a guy at work who I, they do a match at my work. So like I pay a little, they pay a little, and it's not a lot,

but there's a little amount of money that every month goes into a 401k or whatever it is for me. I don't think it's a 401k, but whatever it's called, some type of retirement account. And then there's a guy who sort of handles this big trunk of money that our entire company gives them. And then they make a decision on based on stuff.

And so like, you know, you can, you can tell them to be a little less risky or you can tell them to be more them. Right. And then they make a decision based on stuff. And so, like, you know, you can tell them to be a little less risky or you can tell them to be more risky. Right. You know, you could be like, oh, be risky, don't be risky,

whatever. But, man, poor sucker out there losing half his... Yeah, man, there's people losing their pants on this. More than half. Yeah, absolutely.

And why? So that a billionaire could satisfy him. The thing is... Think if you're 62 or 65 and you're like, I'm almost there. And you know,

fucking Elon Musk face fucked. Elon Musk fucks you. He fucked my retirement. And keep in mind that when you're a multi-billionaire, all of it's fake. Yeah. No, you're right.

You're right. There's no difference. We laugh because Elon Musk lost $200 billion, but it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It's the same amount of money he walked in with pretty much. When you reach a certain level of wealth, there's no difference anymore.

There's no functional difference between being worth $100 billion and $600 billion. Yeah. $100 billion is so much fucking money, it can't be meaningfully thought of. Yeah. Because it already does everything money can do at a way lesser dollar amount than you have, right? Money at a billion dollars, like that's an insane, asinine sum of money. If you had a billion dollars and you put a billion dollars in a fucking savings account, you didn't even invest it. You put it in a, and you, I know you can't,

but if you put it in a savings account, you'd put $37.5 million a year in a savings account. That kind of money doesn't really make sense to conceive of. So for Elon Musk, there's already nothing he can't buy. There's already nowhere he can't go. And so as soon as money does that, it ceases to be meaningful. And now it's all just a game to stroke his ego. And if you lose money, remember Elon didn't. Even though he lost $200 billion,

no, he didn't. No, he didn't. You're right. It doesn't matter. You're right. You're right. So, we hope you enjoyed this discussion of Elon Musk. We think that this article was a blast. Go check it out on The Verve. Go check it out on The Verve. The Verve. The Verve pipe. The Verve pipe.

Whatever. Go check it out on the Verve. No, seriously, it's a good article. If you want to hear Tom read it again, you can go check it out on our Patreon page. Next Thursday night, we are going to be doing a live stream.

Yep. So next Thursday, come check us out for our live stream. We'll still have a show on Monday. We'll remind you about it. But next Thursday, we'll be doing a live stream. So come check us a show on Monday. We'll remind you about it, but next Thursday,

we'll be doing a livestream. So come check us out. And yeah, cool. That's going to wrap it up for this week. We're going to leave it like it was due with Skeptic's Creed. Credulity is not a virtue. It's fortune cookie cutter, mommy issue, hypno Babylon bullshit. Couched in scientician, double-bubble, toil and trouble, pseudo-quasi-alternative, acupunctuating, pressurized, stereogram, pyramidal, free energy, healing, water, downward spiral, brain dead, pan,

sales pitch, late night info docutainment. Leo Pisces, cancer cures, detox, reflex, foot massage, death in towers, tarot cards Psychic healing, crystal balls Bigfoot, yeti, aliens Churches, mosques and synagogues

Temples, dragons, giant worms Atlantis, dolphins, truthers Birthers, witches, wizards Vaccine nuts Shaman healers, evangelists, conspiracy Double speak, stigmata Nonsense Expose your sides. Thrust your hands. Bloody. Evidential. Conclusive. Doubt even this.

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