Elon Musk demonstrates why he is the wrong person to save the planet.
The world’s richest man wrote a check his myth can’t cash.
It’s on. Elon Musk has officially filed a lawsuit to terminate his own Twitter acquisition, and Twitter has called him out. Musk will appear in court. And, while things are only going to get rougher from here, Elon Musk has already made one essential decision: he doesn’t have what it takes to manage Twitter. And this is a scathing indictment of his own basic mythos.
We’ll get into the facts of Musk’s formal SEC filing in a moment, but first, remember what he’s said about the transaction and why he wanted to do it in the first place. It’s not like the world pushed the world’s richest guy to acquire a rather tiny social network. And Musk’s behavior surrounding the acquisition has been characterized by a great deal of blatant troll behavior. A rational person would conclude that he was never serious about it in the first place, which has already led to many Musk supporters and Twitter haters deducing a 4D-chess narrative that makes his gaffe appear purposeful. But.
There are some things Musk stated during the Twitter takeover frenzy that cannot be ignored. That’s because they get to the core of what made him famous in the first place: as a visionary, a daring businessman, a futurist, and maybe even the one who would solve climate change and multi-planetary society. Yes, he has recently worked relentlessly to gather a large network of social reactionaries and diverse right-wingers that care more about his trolling than SpaceX or Tesla’s aims. But Musk’s actual credibility — if he ever had any — came from becoming the face of truly massive and ambitious attempts to transform and improve the world.
He probably didn’t have to, but he applied the same enthusiasm to the Twitter deal:
- Musk stated that he was inspired by the fact that Twitter has become a “de facto town square” and that it is “very vital that people have both the reality and the illusion that they can talk freely.” (During this time, he frequently mentioned “free speech.”)
- Musk stated in a TED speech that the deal is not a method to earn money. “It’s about the future of civilization, but you don’t care about economics at all,” he said.
- Musk later told Twitter staff, “I want Twitter to contribute to a better, long-lasting civilisation where we better grasp the nature of reality.”
- “Twitter has amazing potential,” Musk says. “I’ll unlock it.”
These statements stand out above all others because (a) things important to the future of human life are not typically trolled about, and (b) this should be especially true if you are Elon Musk, who has spent his entire modern career since Tesla cultivating the idea that he is on a mission to save humanity’s future and spread civilization across the stars. Does he frequently tweet stupid memes? Yes. Was he joking when he sent an automobile into space? Sure. However, the tasks of his company are grave. The objective of Tesla is to “accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.” Neuralink hopes to create gadgets that would allow paralyzed persons to “regain freedom.” ” What about SpaceX? This is all about “allowing humanity to live on distant worlds.”
So Musk has spent his career purposefully pushing towards some of the world’s most difficult-to-solve challenges. He delivers a lot of keynotes, tosses out big ideas, and makes a lot of promises. In addition, his effort to rescue the planet gained him one of the largest and most active Twitter followers. And, let’s be honest, the man enjoys tweeting. Elon Musk is the only person on the planet who has been banned from Twitter and impeached twice by the United States Congress.
But keep in mind that Musk did not declare, “I want to purchase Twitter because I enjoy tweeting and have an army of users here.” He stated that Twitter is critical to the development of human civilisation. As a result, the transaction joined the ranks of the world’s Teslas and SpaceXs.
What type of issues would keep this individual from realizing Twitter’s full potential? To guide it and, alongside his other businesses, help mankind thrive in the future? In his SEC filing, he solely makes two claims:
- Twitter refuses to provide him with the information he needs to determine the number of spam bots on the network.
- Twitter laid off several employees and lost key executives.
This is weak crybaby stuff.
Musk has been vocal about the purported bot issue for some time, even engaging in public spats with Twitter’s CEO over it. I’m not going to go into detail about this feud — the Delaware Court of Chancery is set to look into it — but the TL;DR is that Musk wants to back out of a big agreement over an issue that every social media firm on the globe has been working on for decades. It’s just a fundamentally irresponsible approach from someone who wants to address world-changing issues like climate change.
But, just for fun, let’s pretend Musk is correct. After starting the agreement, looking beneath the hood, and laying out his intentions for Twitter’s workforce, he learned that Twitter’s bot population is more like 20% rather than 5%. What’s the big deal? What good is a user base of 90 million when TikTok and Facebook are billions ahead of you? If you believe Mark Zuckerberg is an unelected dictator of free expression, how would quitting Twitter help you take him on? And why would you claim in your SEC filing that active user revenue is at stake? That does not seem like “not caring at all about economics.” That sounds like you’re solely concerned about the bottom line.
And blowing the agreement because a few Twitter executives sacked employees while continuing to function regularly and put out new services (hello, co-tweeting!) — get real. You’re paying $44 billion for Twitter. It is now yours. If you choose, you may clean the house and fix or reverse all of the bad actions that led you to the platform in the first place. Nobody is going to stop you! Even the SEC couldn’t convince you to stop tweeting!
There are several ideas as to why Musk put himself, Twitter, and the rest of the world through this charade. In the end, though, Musk wrote a check that his fiction could not cash.
We’re left with two options. Either Musk does not believe he can accomplish the job he promised at Twitter, or he is not the world-changing force that has been portrayed. Or he was lying about the lofty aspirations and visions that fueled his businesses and persona.
What type of man trolls the world in search of a brighter future?