Elon Musk has one too many toys
The world’s richest man never ceases to surprise us. In his latest endeavor, Elon Musk bought Twitter at $44 billion with the aim of promoting absolute free speech — but not before trying to back out of the deal and negotiate a lower price first. In short, his big mouth landed him in the boss chair of one of today’s largest social media companies. Don’t get me wrong, Musk isn’t all bad. His push for sustainability and contributions in driving the world of technology are admirable, but his arrogance and spontaneous ideas have led him to make careless and even stupid mistakes that don’t go without consequences.
Within 12 hours of Musk finalizing his purchase, the use of the n-word on Twitter increased by nearly 500 percent. But seeing how he named his son, I’d say social norms and political correctness don’t really apply to him. Now Musk’s got holocaust deniers and racists celebrating his takeover and about half the world hates him — including even Tesla stock owners.
Among the newest anti-Muskers are Twitter’s former executive board members and about 3,700 employees whose jobs are being threatened by the layoff process and replacement with Tesla engineers. Those who haven’t been fired have been working extended hours without extra pay. Now you might be thinking, “Oh no, a bunch of millionaires were fired! Big deal,” and you’re perfectly right about the executives. However, for the engineers who were laid off as major tech companies such as Amazon, Meta, Alphabet and Apple froze their hiring, Musk couldn’t have been more insensitive.
After seeing immense success in his tech ventures, Musk seems to believe he can find a better way to run any business. After all, he founded SpaceX with no prior knowledge of building rockets and self-learned astrophysics. Running a social media company, on the other hand, isn’t rocket science, which sounds like good news until you remember that understanding people is as natural to Musk as decency is to former President Trump. Besides, it’s all fun and games until tin-foil hat wearers start to spew paranoid tweets about Musk controlling minds with StarLink or NeuraLink — I’m sure it’ll happen eventually.
To his credit, it’s truly a wonder how Musk remains so optimistic about people. At every step of the way, his work with Tesla has been met with resistance from oil companies, combustion engine car manufacturers and non-believers. SpaceX almost went bankrupt after too many tests ended in failure. If anyone has the resilience to revive Twitter, it’s Musk, but he really shouldn’t have dabbled with it in the first place.
With nothing but an ideal and $44 billion, Musk has begun to mansplain the concept of absolute free speech on a high profile social media platform. If he had just kept his mouth shut, and focused on his preexisting goals — you know, the easier ones, like sending a person to Mars — Tesla stock wouldn’t be plummeting, AOC wouldn’t be complaining about an $8-a-month subscription plan and my news feed wouldn’t be inundated with Musk’s name. Jokes aside, he has much greater plans to attend to than tinkering with social media.
But I suppose even geniuses blunder from time to time. It’s just that in Musk’s case it cost him a fortune and a massive publicity headache. Hopefully, he’s learned his lesson and we’ll just leave it there, because I’m sure he hasn’t. But who knows, maybe he’ll turn things around and incorporate Twitter software into Tesla cars. If Musk could use Twitter features and charge a subscription fee, that could help with his debt and bolster his growing tech empire. And that’s not even considering the political influence he now wields as the owner of the online town square. It’s amazing what Musk has accomplished so far and, whether amazing or atrocious, his work with Twitter will be another one for the history books. Whether it ends in success or not, it’s time that he buckles down and focuses on more pressing goals than toying with new projects.