It Could Happen Here - Inside Twitter's Soul

Episode Date: November 21, 2022

Robert and the gang discuss the comments to a single Elon Musk tweet, which is more revealing and culturally important than you might guess.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadowbride. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, five-year-old Cuban boy

Elian Gonzalez was found off the coast of Florida. And the question was, should the boy go back to his father in Cuba? Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or stay with his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Or whenever you get your podcasts. while running errands or at the end of a busy day. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Listen to Black Lit on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. AT&T, connecting changes everything. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. Those were some callers from my call

in podcast Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take phone calls from anonymous strangers as a fake gecko therapist and try to learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's very interesting. Check it out for yourself by searching for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I am... Yep, that's how we start this episode of our professional podcast that I am Abba. Yep. That's how we start this episode of our professional podcast that makes, pays all of our rent. This is It Could Happen Here, a podcast about things falling apart.

And today we're talking about Twitter because nothing embodies things falling apart quite like Twitter. bodies things falling apart quite like twitter um we have on the show today garrison davis chris shereen james everybody the whole crew except for the people who aren't here they're not here but i hate them yeah i don't hate them yeah how's everybody don't we all great i just woke up had my coffee scrolled on twitter for an hour so i'm ready to go this this this has been this has been legitimately the best three weeks that we have had on twitter since like like 2013 i feel bad for all the people who've like left because they're missing some of twitter so first off i So first off, I want to say we're going to try

not to get too into the weeds here if you're not a Twitter person. And most people are not Twitter people. The reason that, number one, I want to start by explaining why we think this is worth

getting into, which is that Twitter has an undeniable command of global news discourse. It's where all of the journalists hang out. It's where a significant number of the politicians and wealthy business people hang out. And all of us are being broken by it. Like it's one big opium den that we are all like engaging in an addiction that is destroying

our brains inside. It's not good for anyone, but it's undeniably important. And since Elon Musk took over, things have been quite wild. To say the least. We're going to give an update on kind of some of the stuff that's been happening in Twitter at the end here. But I want to read a little essay I wrote just kind of looking at mostly a single post Musk made and some of the responses to it that I think says a lot about where we are as a species right now. On October 31st, 2022, shortly after taking control of Twitter from its former shareholders, Elon Musk went on a frenzy of what you might call ill-considered amphetamine-derived tweets about his ideas for how the site should function.

At one point, he noted that $20 a month seemed like a fair price for people to pay to get or keep blue check marks. There was even talk of $20 a month being the price fair price for people to pay to get or keep blue check marks. There was even talk of $20 a month being the price to use Twitter at all and paywalling the entire site. Now, a lot of people thought this was bug fuck, especially since, like, HBO doesn't cost that much. And it's got Andor on it. No, it doesn't. You can watch. Wait, is that on HBO?

No, Disney has Andor. Both of the streaming services that I I watch I stole from you Garrison yeah I forget which is on one for both of these for Robert to watch anyway so it doesn't matter so really it's an incredible deal um so everyone made fun of the fact that Elon was suggesting this and no one had a bigger laugh than stephen king now stephen king if you're not aware is worth pretty close to a billion dollars he is an unbelievably wealthy man and like he has like actual money not like stock made up money no that is cash he has hundreds of millions of dollars in cash because people like his books more money than he has more money than Elon Musk now. He has more actual money than Elon Musk. He probably has liquid assets.

He's a very liquid man because he wrote The Shining and The Stand and Cujo and that clown book. He writes a new book every week. That's what it's called. He's the only man who has successfully turned a painkiller addiction into putting out a best-selling novel every single month. What a hero. Anyway, he tweeted, quote, $20 a month to keep my blue check? Fuck that. They should pay me. If that gets instituted, I'm gone like Enron. Now, in addition to being the kind of wordplay for which Stephen King has become rightly famous, the reason that he got kind of pissed off is actually sensible. Obviously, $20 means nothing to someone with his kind of money.

But he's not wrong about his central argument, which is that, like, Twitter ought to be paying people like him. He has nearly 7 million followers, and he tweets very regularly. Massive accounts like Stephen King's are not Twitter's customers. They are the business itself. It's the product. It is the product. I want to quote now from a report in Reuters. Quote, these heavy tweeters account for less than 10% of monthly overall users, but generate 90% of all tweets and half of global revenue.

Heavy tweeters have been in absolute decline since the pandemic began, a Twitter researcher wrote in an internal document titled, Where Did the Tweeters Go? Now, so. That's very funny. that is very funny other social media sites like instagram or tiktok or whatever once you're like have a lot of followers you can make money so i think twitter is different that way yeah like it is i i am the only person in the history of twitter who has actually turned being a shit poster into a lucrative professional career. I am the only one. Everyone else on Twitter... That's drill erasure. Yeah, that is...

Drill was already in this. Drill was already, I think, in the scene doing stuff. They had something to do with Homestuck. But the point is that the people like Stephen King are what makes Twitter profitable

the idea that like they owe the company money to be able to tweet is kind of absolutely absurd and in addition to that like it it feeds into a serious problem the site is having before Elon bought it they're they're they're attempting to answer the question of like why are these people who are responsible for most of our money tweeting less? Because it's costing us. Like, there's a reason why Twitter has been on a profit downslope lately. The only profitable years the company has had, I should note, were 2018 and 2019, in which they were doing reasonably well financially. And since the pandemic started, Twitter has reliably lost hundreds of millions of dollars

per year. This research, which was attempting to answer the question, why be that, concluded, quote, Cryptocurrency and not-safe-for-work content, which includes nudity and pornography, are the highest-growing topics of interest among English-speaking heavy users, the report found. At the same time, interest in news, sports, and entertainment

is waning among those users. Tweets on those topics, which have helped Twitter burnish an image as the world's digital town square, as Musk once called it, are also the most desirable for advertisers. So basically, the things that advertisers like to see ads next to are becoming less popular on Twitter, and shit that is poison for advertisers has become more popular. Now, this is a problem for Musk because he loves crypto shilling, which is a huge issue for everyone who isn't a crypto weirdo. There are some opportunities. One of the things that I thought wasn't a bad idea was Musk suggested ways in which to like monetize the site so sex workers could more effectively monetize their followings, which is a way Twitter

might be able to make more money. Now, is that likely to make the company money in excess of what they would lose in advertising for becoming known as the fuck site? Probably not. Probably, broadly speaking, a bad idea. So in addition to Musk's outright hatred of journalists in reporting, it seems like just his general vibes might not be great for bringing back the advertisers. He seems to be personally inclined to halfway through probably been fine he seems to be personally inclined to like go after the things and support the things that are directly poisoned for twitter's bottom line which is fascinating for a guy who's spending 44 billion dollars on the site can we can we mention for a second by the way the reason he spent 44 billion dollars on the site was because he bought the

stocks the site's shares for a meme price that someone suggested, the reason he spent $44 billion on the site was because he bought the site's shares for a meme price that someone suggested on Twitter. Yes, it was like $54 and $54.20. So there's a $4.20. Yeah. This is why he spent $44 billion on this site. It's worth noting he

previously did that with Twitter stock or with Tesla stock. He attempted to take Tesla private for $420 a share. Heavily reprimanded. The SEC really went after him for that one. Because it's illegal.

Because that was very illegal. And we think very not that funny. It's also worth noting that the one thing that he actually has he has created right he didn't invent tesla like he didn't even invent paypal it's his it's his reply guys no his his reply guys are like his unique asset and and he's trying to price them out of being his reply guys the cult of personality stuff yeah yeah but like that's largely built on

twitter right like he's the whole cult around him well and red. Yeah, but, like, that's largely built on Twitter, right? Like, he's... The whole cult around him. Well, and Reddit, but... Yeah. And just, like, the fact that, like, people think he's a genius, XYZ, whatever. Yeah. That is...

That's too big a topic for today's episode. He's proven that not to be true in recent... We'll see. But, you know, we're not talking today about, like, Musk's, broadly speaking, why Musk is a con man. We'll talk about that. We've talked about that on plenty of other occasions. Nor is this supposed to be an exhaustive explanation for why Musk's Twitter is likely to fall apart. We don't have the end of that story yet. So instead, what I want to do is review a single tweet and particularly the responses to that tweet, because I think it is hugely interesting and kind of an important cultural artifact. I think it is hugely interesting and kind of an important cultural artifact. So the tweet was a response by Musk to the Stephen King tweet that I read earlier, right? King being like, I'm not going to pay $20 for this.

Musk responded simply, we need to pay the bill somehow. Twitter cannot rely entirely on advertisers. How about $8? Now, this is also very funny because this man- This is mind boggling. You're peering into the soul of a man and you're like, whoa, there's nothing in there. There's nothing but it's just bouncing around like a fucking BB and a goddamn dryer. So the first comments to this response are what you'd expect. There's a mix of anti-Musk lib types laughing at his bad business sense, mocking the idea of making Twitter's most valuable users pay for the site.

You've got your Musk defenders insisting that blue checks are some sort of out-of-touch elite, which is one of my favorite bits of deranged right-wing culture, that there's some sort of... It's like the palace at Versailles. This was an

old left Twitter joke. Literally, there was a running series of jokes about like the blue check bourgeoisie and like – and then somehow all of these people became convinced it was real through a process that like I cannot even begin to understand. The process, and this is critical, is that you cannot tell jokes on Twitter.com. That's true. That is the actual process and that is the yeah that's that's that's what's happening here so a representative musk defender response is this comment by douche canoe magoo everyone stop continue okay ha ha ha ha dude worth 500 million

who wants to tax the rich rich can't play 20 dollars ha ha ha hey el Dude worth 500 million who wants to tax the rich can't pay $20. Ha ha ha. Hey, Elon Musk, I'll pay this loser $20 a month. Now, I looked into it, and this guy is an anti-vaxxer with 34 followers, if you're curious. On the lib side, you've got guys like Keith Olbermann subtweeting Musk to try and use numbers and math to show that this business plan, which was never a real business plan, isn't going to make money. The first interesting response, though, is a few comments down from Keith by a journalist named Hopewell Chinono. Good morning, Elon Musk. For a lot of journalists in Africa, verification has helped us to not fall victim to state tactics to use our names to spread propaganda. I have been to jail three times inside six months for exposing corruption. Few African journalists will afford the U.S. $20.

And attached to this tweet were images from two Guardian articles about Hopewell. I'm going to quote from one now. Chinono posted on his Twitter account that police had taken him from his house and said that they were charging him with communicating falsehoods. The arrest comes after Chinono tweeted that police had beaten an infant to death while enforcing COVID-19 lockdown rules this week. Police later said the information was false. Before the latest arrest, Chinono was out on bail on separate charges of inciting violence after he voiced support for an anti-government protest in July, and also on contempt of court charges for allegedly claiming

corruption within the country's national prosecution agency. Chinono is one of Zimbabwe's most prominent critics of President Emerson administration, accusing it of corruption and human rights abuses. The government denies the charges. Now, Hopewell is a Harvard fellow. He is an award-winning journalist, and I had no idea this guy existed prior to this tweet. He is an extremely courageous person who, from everything I can read, is reporting on corruption within the Zimbabwean government, has been very influential. It recently led to the sacking of the very corrupt health minister. I would not have heard of this man without Twitter. He would not have had a voice capable of reaching a large number of people without Twitter. It's possible his Guardian articles about him and his struggle would not exist if it weren't for the prominence of his

Twitter account. And, you know, it's also worth noting that if Twitter weren't the site that it is, he never would have had a chance to make his concerns public anywhere close to the CEO of that company. Many things about this interaction cry out for the very best about Twitter, the smallest and probably most valuable of the major social media websites, and at least at a social level. We all call it the hell site, and a huge part of Twitter culture is despising it, but moments like this really do make a lot of the bullshit worthwhile. In the articles Hopewell attached to his post, he's wearing a red and white striped shirt. The top response to Hopewell's reply to Musk is by Jason Roberge, a Musk reply guy,

one American News and Fox News commenter. He writes, Why did they dress you like American Waldo? I'll pay for your subscription. Popo replies, That is very kind of you. That is prison uniform. My imprisonment was triggered by tweets exposing state corruption. The ruling political elites used captured state institutions to punish journalists who exposed the looting of public funds. Which, I don't

know, another perfectly characteristic Twitter response. Someone being like, Ah, look at the way he's dressed. And being like, yeah, that's a prison uniform. I was I just got out of prison for when I was doing Amazing Killers. Yeah, it's just very it says a lot. There's a lot going on here. Yeah, it is. Have you come across his, I guess, HopewellChinono.com, which is not his website?

No, Jesus. My God, is it some is it like a government thing? Yes, it's a government. Hope, what you don't know is very deceptive. He's a liar and a dishonest person. Really? Whoa. Wow.

Oh, wow, this is an incredible website. Look at this. Yeah, they've done some work. Someone's been on GeoCities. I love that the background is like a boat sailing into the stars. The solar sea. What the fuck?

They're not doing their finest work over there in Zimbabwe. The first section is, the title in all caps is, and I quote, Daddy Hope Story. That's his Twitter handle. Oh, okay, okay. His residence looks like a sex haven, apparently. Okay. Yeah. I don't know what they look like but you can like these it's it's yeah obvious that like he's obviously like disinformation

about him personally it's a big fucking issue for this guy yeah yeah yeah dot com is just a great example of why verification on twitter is an important yeah it's a wonderful example of that garrison important. It's a wonderful example of that, Garrison. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora.

An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network,

available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with.

His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network,

available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Parente. And I'm Jimei Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, the early career podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. One of the most exciting things about having your first real job is that first real paycheck. You're probably

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Now, the responses to this guy continue to be pretty amazing. Another fun reply was simply, I thought that in Zimbabwe, they arrest only white folks. Oh, dear. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. Oh, dear. Has that person got a picture of like a uh some kind of white guy very short shorts and yeah yeah he's some some serious rhodesian shit on that

dude's timeline yeah now i want to note most of the responses to hopeful are very positive um and all of the negative replies have multiple people attacking the people who are going after Hopewell and defending him. Because Twitter works the way that it does, though, this increases engagement, provides an algorithmic boost to everybody involved. The whole situation in his replies is kind of as bleak and hopeless as Hopewell's initial reply is itself hopeful. Scrolling down further, the replies to Musk's tweet, we get this gem Jim, from The Skin Doctor. And this is somebody just like tweeting his advice to Elon. How about privilege classes like white straight men and women, upper caste Hindus pay $100 for their blue ticks. You keep

$8 each from it and pay the rest $92 to oppressed classes, blue tickers like rich communists, LGBT, blue tickers like rich communists lgbt dalits feminists left journos vegans pita fair no this this one's quite the response it has wow it has 7200 likes which makes sense because the skin doctor has more than half a million followers he is a hindu dermatologist from flower mound texas who posts like pro hindu fasc content. He's like a far right Hindu guy. He also posts right-wing sketch comedy videos about how a modern Titanic sinking wouldn't put women and children

first because of wokeness. He's an incredible account. I recommend following the Skin Doctor. Jesus Christ. No, do not follow him. This is the world that RRR wants. Yeah, and this is the world that RRR wants yeah the responses to his tweet

are another perfect microcosm of twitter because a big part of it is he has this long fight with another right winger who doesn't get the joke and attacks him for being woke and also gets thousands upon thousands of likes yes it's so good and it's probably and also gets thousands upon thousands of likes. Yes. That is a mistake. That's a mistake. It's eating itself.

It's so good. And it's probably, you know, fair for me to talk just a little bit about the liberal lefty, you know, Musk reply guys, the ones who reply to every one of his posts but attacking him. So let's talk about Eric Davis, a verified candidate for the North Carolina State House

with 54 followers. No. That's not a lot of North Carolina State House with 54 followers. Not a lot of followers. He is a Democrat, and he seems to be trying to draft off of Musk's replies to increase his own popularity in that. This was, you know, prior to the election. We should check in on how Eric Davis did in North Carolina. Hopefully all his followers voted for him and therefore i love that his like all his replying just landed with 54 people like it's very funny yeah yeah his reply shows a total lack of understanding about what's happening with twitter quote wait so twitter

was perfectly fine before the supposedly richest man took control but now that it has even more money and got rid of many of the workers so it's even cheaper to sustain, now it can't survive without paying? That is par logic for the Musk fan base, I guess, which is completely wrong. Twitter was not making money. Twitter was losing hundreds of millions of dollars a year and now makes even less money. But anyway, it's got 374 likes, which is one of the biggest tweets this particular candidate has had. By the way, that is, he, no, wait, wait what are we looking at the same guy did he win north carolina's school board oh no not over school but in in in the general election he got

8 000 votes and lost by uh how much what he lost by by 52 percent of the vote. He got 26. 23% of the vote. His opponent got 76. Oh, yeah. Oh, wow. In his. Yeah. If only he had. If only. If only he tweeted more. Yep.

If only he'd owned Elon Musk a little bit harder. Yeah. Via tweets. That would have swung things. God, that's funny. So further down is a political cartoon, and I do not understand it, but I'm going to force you all to observe it. I could look at it.

I can try to explain it. Drop it in the chat. So, that's the political cartoon. Okay, so it's the meme of the guy who's walking with his girlfriend and is looking at the other woman, except all of their faces are cartoon faces of Elon Musk.

What is that saying? Elon Musk's girlfriend is wearing a Twitter shirt and he's looking over at a girl with a red tank top. Wearing a red tank top. What does this mean? That's a hard question, Robert.

I feel like we could do a whole semester about what this means yeah yeah elon is distracted by elon looking at elon it's like uh ignoring twitter because you're looking over at the red pill i guess i don't know you're looking yeah i don't but the red pill is also you like hot you yeah um i don't think it's supposed to be anything that's probably true they all have his face, which makes it so much more complicated. There's a lot going on there. I'm so happy that none of us

have been on the internet enough to understand what this means, guys. I'm so proud of us. And lastly, there's my very favorite reply from someone called DrDisRespect with a staggering 2.4 million followers. Wait, do you not know who this is? He's some video game player.

Oh my God. He wears like a plate carrier while he's playing video games and also public sometimes. Oh my God. Anyway. Yeah. He, he tweets this to Musk.

Let the two X give you a thought. Allow face scan slash retinal scan into a blue check mode similar to iphone unlock through face scan but in this case only while scan is active a tweet is created alongside unique code coinciding with that instance let's wake up elon this has 8 322 likes so who the fuck is this guy okay so he he's like he's like he's an fps streamer right like he was like a big codger he does this like whole thing he's a first person shooter streamer who plays call of duty there among other things i was thinking about fish so i'm yeah he got banned from twitch for doing something that like well he's been banned

i think a couple was he was he the guy who got banned he took a video in a why are you asking us i think he might be the guy who got banned for taking a video in a in a in a bathroom i can't remember exactly he's also okay so one of the things he's most famous for is he's one of the people who are there's this entire cadre of like professional like call of duty streamers whose entire thing is that they don't want there to be ranked matchmaking and video games because they don't like playing against good players and they want to be able to stream pub stomps all the time and they're really really mad about this and have been screaming at every game dev who has like ever existed for like multiple years now about how

they suck like so he's a guy who plays too much video games. Yeah, he's also mad about people who are good at it. I hate him. He's really annoying. Okay, okay. That's all we need to know about this fellow. I've learned a lot. That's the little thing that I wrote about that.

I couldn't get it out of my head. I don't know why I just found that specific post in the comments to it. It is fascinating. it both shows that musk did not have a clear game plan on what he wants going forward into this like the the $20 that how fast the 20 the $20 a month thing got disregarded for $8 just because of one tweet yeah because stephen king didn't like it yeah it's like his it's very clear he's just bouncing from one thing to another with no clarity on what he's doing whatsoever and then with the

with the thing about the journalist it really shows how elon does not understand what verification is or why it exists and slowly over the course these past few weeks has understood why it exists and just replaced it with another with a second check mark beneath the first check mark so you have your blue check mark that you have your official check mark it's it's just wild that he's he's slowly he's slowly over the course of mostly thousands of people impersonating him to make to make fun of him he realized why why verification exists and i mean but it's telling that like he he did not know why it exists until But it's telling that he did not know why it exists until it was a personal

problem that impacted him specifically. He doesn't care about a journalist from Zimbabwe. He doesn't care that that's going to happen. It only becomes a thing when it's going to start impacting him. Can we take a moment of silence for our brave posters who went out in a blaze

of glory impersonating us and getting their accounts banned that was all funny but that's less of the I want to talk about people have fucked around and had fun a bunch of famous people got banned making fun of Elon Musk and it was

the funny part of this was that damage was done legitimate damage was done to a couple of companies, Lockheed Martin and Eli Lilly. Eli Lilly had damage to their stock price done, which is at least, you know, probably temporary, although they haven't yet recovered to the heights they were before the joke. What's less temporary is that as a result of those jokes, at least one company, Eli Lilly, pulled millions of dollars in advertising off of Twitter. So the $8 checkmark did cause real financial harm to Twitter, the company, and at least kind of a temporary financial slap on the wrist to some other people. It's kind of unclear what the long-term impacts of that will be, but Musk has delayed the rollout of the

blue checkmark plan on a wider basis for like a month until they figure shit out, which they may not do. At the present time, what you're seeing is he's fired and is continuing to fire everybody within the company who says anything negative against him. A couple of engineers were bold enough to like critique him or argue with him on Twitter. And there have also been people within the company who have kind of pushed out um corrections to some of his posts through Twitter's bird watch uh thingamajig that have been critical of like things he said that were not factually true and at the moment kind of the holding pattern what we're kind of doing is sort of watching him purge most of the old staff of

Twitter as he seems to be in the process of trying to hire new people on. And one of the most recent thing that's happened is he's sent out a letter saying, basically, like, we all have to, everybody has to go into hardcore crazy mode to make the company profitable. If you don't want to do this, you know, here's the door, you can get your three month severance. And it kind of looks like the vast majority of the remaining engineers may take the severance. There's a good reason for this. So basically, the kind of position they're in, and this is heavily involved in how Silicon Valley works, the way to make a lot of money in Silicon Valley is to get equity in a company before it gets huge, right? You can also get a big salary at a company, but salaries, a big salary for a dev might be $400,000 to $800,000 a year if you're really, really good. Whereas if you get in on the ground floor of a startup that goes public, you could make

hundreds of millions of dollars, right? Big difference in those two things. Musk is asking people to work like nightmare startup amounts, but they will not have any equity or any of it. Like if they figure out Twitter 2.0 and suddenly make it a website that a billion people use, which is what he wants, they will not have any share in that. So a lot of devs are making the decision to like, well, I'm just going to take the severance and try to build something else or try to get a job in another startup or like try it

because why wouldn't you if you were capable of making the next big social media app? why wouldn't you take the money, leave Twitter, and just try to do it rather than try to do it through fucking Twitter, which is a goddamn disaster right now? Yeah. Anyway, that's more or less where things are. Welcome. I'm Danny Trejo. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America.

From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite

has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people.

I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba.

He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian.

Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with.

His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Ches Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network,

available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Parente. And I'm Jimei Jackson-Gadsden. Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. you're probably thinking, yay, I can finally buy a new phone. But you also have a lot of questions like, how should I be investing this money? I mean, how much do I save? And what about my 401k? Well, we're talking with finance expert Vivian Toot, aka Your Rich BFF, to break it all down. I always get roasted on the internet when I say this out loud, but I'm like, every single year, you need to be asking for a raise of somewhere between 10 to 15%. I'm not saying you're going to get 15% every single year, but if you ask for 10 to 15 and you end up getting eight,

that is actually a true raise. Listen to this week's episode of Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. get your podcasts yeah and i think that the other thing is refreshing yourself the people who are left at twitter like don't know how the site works like musk has no idea how the site works no like you know this is like on the sort of back-end infrastructure end and so like we are like we've we've already had there there was there was a thing people found out where like twitter ads are storing people's like most of the digits of people's credit cards in plain text um like the the site is physically falling apart it's already started it's probably just going to continue and like we are probably not that far away from just watching the actual

site just physically fall apart and so you know maybe i mean real question like elon is taking a step back from ceo yeah he's looking to probably hire some competent people instead uh because he's realized how hard it is and it's not fun anymore like it's that's true but there's kind of a problem here which is that like there's a lot of like a okay like i i i really doubt twitter as like very very good i mean its documentation is probably okay but there's a lot of people who understand how critical stuff like how critical stuff works where it's gone right and it's not as easy as just like you can like you know just socket in another person who's like oh who like knows how programming works right like

you you need the expertise from those people who had deep understandings of how it works and like you know maybe there maybe there's enough time to sort of like fill in the gaps and like take it out of its tailspin. But I, I don't know, especially like with, you know, the number of people who are just increasingly leaving. Yeah.

Nobody really does know. And I, you know, it's one of those things we'll all, we'll all watch. Is this, is this shakes out? I don't know if I think the whole site's going to actually fall apart.

I think the bigger, I think the thing that is, I think when I, when we talk about it falling apart, the thing that's actually likely is that there will be increasing security breaches due to the fact that

there are less people minding the store, folks' data will be exposed. I cannot emphasize enough, do not attach your fucking credit card to Twitter. Yeah, absolutely not. Or do not like message,

like a lot of us use twitter for reporting i get dms all the time for people who want to leak stuff people who want to talk to me about stuff some of which might not be legal where they are like don't fucking do that on twitter.com anymore uh you ask message someone ask for signal ask for proton mail do something like that yeah like it that could be very dangerous for some people yeah there's a lot of shit that could go wrong as a result of this for people. But I think it will probably be a series of scandals and fuck ups like that, as opposed to just the site goes offline one day. Now, that said, it's not impossible that like, because Elon is a guy who is, shall we say, somewhat mere curial.

It's possible the site will lose enough money that one day he's just like, fuck it, and turns it off. He does technically have that ability. That would be kind of a fascinating thing to see happen. I don't know. I think that's a much lower likely scenario. Yeah, well, I think it's worth pointing out, like when I say the site breaks,

like it's probably not going to be there's one day where it just doesn't load. But what we've already been seeing like they i i think by accident basically broke a bunch of how to two factor authentication worked because they shut down the micro yeah and like they're gonna keep doing stuff like that and there's just gonna be like random stuff that just stops working oh absolutely yeah like that that's already happening i mean twitter's already been kind of a piece of shit like even when it had an actual staff and And now it's like, yeah, it is important to note the people who were running Twitter prior to Musk taking over were not great at their jobs.

But yeah, as evidenced by the fact that Twitter lost two hundred and twelve million dollars last year. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. In the meantime, there's there's an account that documents all the dogs at the UC strike, which is sick. Yeah. So good. Yeah. Yeah. It's so good. Yeah. I'm picking dogs. Get involved in that. That does go back to... As this is happening to Twitter,

Meta is also going through a series of devastating layoffs and is similarly impacting their functionality and pivoting very hard away from the news-driven approach that they've been doing the past few years. and pivoting very hard away from the news-driven approach that they've been doing the past few years. So both the two main old guard social media sites, which would be Facebook and Twitter, are going under significant changes.

TikTok is, of course, owned by companies that are not great on your own data privacy. Instagram is owned by Facebook. And Mastodon is miserable. And Mastodon is... We're going to get yelled at so much by the Mastodon people, but I'm just... Look, I couldn't figure out how Mastodon worked

inside of 30 seconds, and that is all the time I will ever devote to learning how a social media site works. I'm sorry, guys. I'm sorry. The best critique I've seen of Mastodon is that, in a part, the 2020 uprising happened because the video of George Floyd getting murdered got circulated so much on Twitter. People saw it. They weren't able to look away from the atrocity. That could never happen on Mastodon.

Nope. And that's the biggest kind of thing for why Mastodon is not a replacement for Twitter. Because it will never... At this point, it doesn't look like it'll have the same cultural impact that Twitter can have. Now, of course, that could change.

Who knows? But at this point, it doesn't seem to get the same thing that Twitter can do. That doesn't mean it's a failure. Like, a lot of people use it. If you like it, if you find a community there, great. It's just not the same thing. It's not the same thing.

Like, that's all we're saying. That's why I was saying, like, replacement for Twitter. Yeah. They're different things. It doesn't mean it's not valuable. Just like if Twitter were to turn into just a site for sex workers to make money on, there's nothing wrong with that, but it would not be fulfilling the

same role that it currently does. I tried to overthrow my first government on Twitter. I tried to overthrow my most recent government on Twitter. There has to be a social media service that facilitates attempting to overthrow governments. And it sure as fuck is not going to be TikTok. Twitter is unique because it's

where a lot of people get their news it's where a lot of people learn things like if a celebrity is trending are they dead like you know what i mean like it's just like it's where a lot of collective information is and i don't think there is a site right now that can like even come even come close to how many people rely on Twitter just to learn things. I think it's not that that's where people get news. It's where a certain type of influential person gets their news.

Because a lot of people get their news via TikTok. They're just people my age or younger. A lot of people do get news on whatever they look at. The reason why Twitter's impactful is because Twitter's where a whole bunch of people who have influence in other areas get their information from. And that's why it's something that has interest. You know, in 20 years when everyone who's on TikTok is going to be in their like early 30s, who knows what the media landscape is going to be, right?

No, the most influential media, yeah. It's the same thing as how like back during the French Revolution, the most influential thing in media was this one chick's coffee house, right? Because it's just where all of the people that had the most people listening to them independently happened to hang out together. That's what Twitter's been for a while. And that's not always a good thing because everyone who hangs out on Twitter gets their brain broken in a very specific way. And we're watching it continue to happen to the wealthiest man in the history of the human race, which has been a hoot.

But also, I mean, and this is the thing people on Twitter talk about all the time. Twitter is like the only place in the modern world where you can actually interact with the ruling class and make their lives really worse. The only other thing you could possibly try to do in order to do that is get you and 700 of your friends to try to storm their mansion and they'll probably shoot you. Yeah. When I have a bad day, I can find the heir to the Habsburg fortune and i can tweet him a picture of the dead body of his cousin who after he was shot to death for carrying out a coup in mexico i can do that on twitter.com and no other websites yeah i will warn you that you do get banned for certain dead dictator memes i've had a few mussolini bands but otherwise yeah it's a glorious website it is yeah i'm just

enjoying pictures that people have responded to Nancy Pelosi's retirement thing with right now. And it's just, if you guys click the bottom link, there's an absolute banger. Yeah, unfortunately, I saw that before you. It's one of the most cursed things. That is like a horror movie level picture. No one described it.

Oh, no! Do not describe what it is. Oh, no. It says so much. Oh, no. No, no, no. Describe it. Oh, God.

They tell you to go. So imagine if you were doing a horror movie where people are in a haunted house and there's a demon in the walls and it at some point pulls out out like a man-sized demon comes out of the wall and pulls a person into the wall. It looks like that, but the demon in the wall is instead in a copy of the Constitution and he's cradling Nancy Pelosi,

but she has the body of a 20-year-old female college student. Oh, God. It is. Well, I feel like that's enough for today. Maybe we should break this down. Yeah, maybe yeah maybe no i think i think we have gazed into the twitter abyss for long enough it's been like about 40 minutes i think yeah this is enough we won't i promise we won't talk about twitter like this for another it's several weeks for a while we're pretty won't be here next time but enjoy

what it lasts yeah we're all gonna log off this and then go on Twitter. I'm not. I have to do my job. Yeah, I'm going to go write about Sam Bankman Freed. Happy Christmas, you fucks. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of right. An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, five-year-old Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez was found off the coast of Florida.

And the question was, should the boy go back to his father in Cuba? Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home, and he wanted to take his son with him. Or stay with his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jacqueline Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit Podcasts. at the end of a busy day. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Listen to Black Lit on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. AT&T, connecting changes everything. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly.

I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take phone calls from anonymous strangers as a fake gecko therapist and try to learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's very interesting. Check it out for yourself by searching for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.