This piece has been sitting in draft form for two months, waiting for enough stability in the events to take stock of what the hell was going on. On where we are at with the human conundrum that is Elon Musk. At first, he just wanted to be on the Twitter board, but when he decided instead to try to buy the entire company for US$44 billion – our whole audience, and indeed the entire collective of Online People, had a visceral reaction to this news. Things quickly started to get derailed though, and now after months of back-and-forth about spam accounts, legal threats, sexual harassment allegations, and stock plunges for both Twitter and Tesla… Musk has officially, finally backed out of buying the cursed-and-beloved platform. Maybe.
So it’s only now that I can let out the metaphorical breath I’ve been holding to ask: why is it that everything Elon Musk does feels so off? A billionaire buying a huge digital platform would always be newsworthy no matter who it was. But no one’s business dealings generate such anxiety and excitement (both genuine) quite like Musk’s.
Having ridden the ups and downs of this news story, I think I’ve figured out why. Stick with me on this one.
Twitter Deal Is Proof It’s Not About Money
Though Musk’s Twitter deal is rescinded for now, it’s important that we all understand this wasn’t ever going to be a ‘good’ business deal.
The platform reportedly has 450 million users and despite generating $5 billion revenue in 2021, Twitter had a net loss of $221 million last year. In fact, it has only actually made a profit twice (2018, 2019) in the eight years since it became a publicly listed company.
Its business model is the same as every other social media platform you’re using – sell ads, show them to users. Changes to the platform that would increase user engagement with ads would increase the money Twitter makes… but this never seemed to be the focus for Musk. Many experts pointed out the obvious: paying stacks of money for a business with a fairly straightforward model that has never been able to find financial success is a bad idea.
Even if theories are true that this ‘termination’ of the deal is just a strategy for Musk to buy Twitter for a cheaper price, from a business perspective it will almost certainly still be too much money. It would have been paid for by a collection of equity loans – again, for a company with no clear path to profit.
And anyway, Musk himself said owning Twitter “is not a way to make money.”
He’s a billionaire already! The world’s richest man, according to Forbes! If he doesn’t need the money, and it’s not a smart business move, why try to buy Twitter?
Elon Musk saying that his Twitter purchase offer is about the future of civilization, and not a way to make money, is one of the most terrifying things I have read recently. I’d feel much better about it if it was just a way to make money. Much better.
— Grim Milestone (@GrimMilestone) April 15, 2022
Very Murky Motives
Musk claimed the whole thing was about free speech. If we believe that reasoning (big if), spending billions of dollars to improve freedom of speech on one social media platform could be interpreted as doing something ‘for the greater good’.
But looking at Musk’s record of doing things for the common good doesn’t provide a lot of comfort. Remember when he said he would donate the $6 billion needed to end world hunger if the U.N. could explain how it would be spent? And when they did, he (as far as we know) just ghosted?
Or when his SpaceX and The Boring Company engineers built a specialty submarine as a back-up option to rescue the 12 children stuck in a Thailand cave? When one of the cave explorers who was involved in the rescue mission criticised Musk, the billionaire called him a “pedo”. And then paid a private investigator $50,000 to dig up dirt on the man.
Any good Musk does has a condition: it must also feed his ego. As one Reddit user put it, “most importantly of all he wants it be him that does it, and he’ll do anything to [get that].”
It all comes down to a question of motives. A theory that makes more sense to me is that Twitter already makes a lot of money for Musk, personally. Combined with the cult of personality that surrounds him, Musk has effectively used Twitter to manipulate stock markets, adding to his own personal wealth (Dogecoin is just one example).
Even if it doesn’t directly put money in his pocket, tweeting weird shit generates headlines, which increases his personal relevance, and that ultimately increases his value and the value of his companies, too. Owning the platform would, as Garbage Day’s Ryan Broderick wrote, give him “complete control over the pipeline with which he delivers that propaganda.”
Twitter might be a weird platform for mostly strange people (myself absolutely included) but it still drives an enormous amount of Internet culture, and therefore mainstream culture. The idea of one person taking control of that for seemingly no other reason than their own individual gain – regardless of the consequences for the rest of us – is scary.
Speaking of Elon Musk–an update:
— Andrew (your visible friend) (@1secheretic) July 9, 2022
249: Number of days since Musk promised to spend billions to fight world hunger if given a specific plan.
15: Number of days it took to the UN to present the plan.
0: Musk’s known contributions, so far.
210 billion: Musk’s estimated wealth. pic.twitter.com/9LxDCqXSzM
His Experiments Affect Us, For Real
It leaves us with two potential answers for why Elon Musk is like this: either he has no clue, or he’s a genius.
On one hand, he is someone who is completely detached from ‘normal’ human behaviour who is using his immense wealth to control things that impact people in ways he doesn’t understand. It’s like being in a car speeding down a freeway, with someone who doesn’t know how to drive. You’re in serious danger of a bad outcome, but there is nothing you can do.
On the other hand, say he really is a mastermind. Someone who understands better than anyone else how our brains and the digital platforms we’re addicted to really work, and is intentionally using his immense wealth to control and manipulate it all. His track record of doing almost anything for the ‘greater good’ is so patchy that we’re still in danger of a bad outcome. And there is nothing we can do.
It’s impossible to tell from his wildly unpredictable words and actions which scenario is closer to the truth. Whether it’s buying Twitter, trying to plant a flag in Mars, or reinventing public transport, it’s not clear if he is doing it for us or for him.
And so, with every new announcement tweeted half-jokingly, anyone who is not a Musk stan is left with anxiety about the real-world impact of his Rich Guy experiments.
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