I’ve given Elon Musk a lot of grief in the past over how he’s run Tesla Motors. Suffice it to say I’m not a fan. Deep down I’m supremely distrustful of Musk because he is, at best, a mercurial figure who is difficult to read.
He’s become the richest dude in the world partnering with governments to build some of the biggest hype machines in history. So, his offer to buy all of Twitter and take it private can cynically be seen as just another moment of ego from the 21st century’s best reincarnation of P.T. Barnum.
That said, however, strange things happen, when you acquire the kind of Fuck You Money that Musk has.
And it seems to me if you connect some dots that Musk has been planning this move for a while. Last year he came out in favor of Bitcoin. Then he took a memecoin, DOGE, and turned it into the crypto ‘flavor of the month.’
Musk’s ego is something to remain skeptical of, but it’s also hard not to respect a guy who is completely free at this point, or least free enough that he has zero fucks left to give to the regime that made him what he is.
So, when he cashed out a massive amount of money from Tesla at the peak recently it looked to me that he was getting ready to go from Elon Musk Reality TV star to the Real Elon Musk.
Most people, especially clueless bitches like Elizabeth Warren, don’t understand that most rich people are asset rich, but cash poor. Jeff Bezos may have billions of Amazon stock, but he really can’t sell a lot of it without giving a vote of no-confidence to the company itself.
It runs counter to his fiduciary interest as a board member. This isn’t to say Bezos doesn’t have money. He does, but he also doesn’t have nearly the amount of money you think he has.
So, Musk, freed from Tesla’s financial, shall we say creativity, now has real Fuck You Money. Not stock. Not assets. Cash.
And that cash he’s putting on the line today to force the moment of Twitter’s malfeasance as a public entity to its crisis point.
He has succeeded brilliantly.
He doesn’t even need to actually take control of Twitter. He’s already won.
By forcing Twitter’s board, who doesn’t own any shares in the company, to adopt a Poison Pill strategy, Musk has revealed them to be more interested in maintaining Twitter as a social control response engine rather than as a public company with a responsibility to shareholders.
The fact is, Twitter is a poison pill for society at large, all Musk did was put a price on it.
And I have to give Musk his due here, he’s performed one of the greatest public services in recent memory exposing the lengths to which Davos et.al. are willing to go to maintain their power. Because that’s what mass media to them is, a conduit of their power.
This goes far beyond Twitter’s obvious censorship and editorial bias. Musk is absolutely right that Twitter is broken. But the board and its investors willfully broke it years ago to serve a larger agenda.
The Skinner Box Bot Army
He’s also exposed just how seductive the power Twitter wields is to the people who work there. The histrionics of the employees, treating Musk’s offer like Armageddon itself, tells you they see Twitter as their personal Skinner Box to shock people into submission to their warped and solipsistic worldview.
This is the true face of stakeholder capitalism. It’s the future they have planned for us through ESG, no different really than the tyranny of the Human Resources Officer or the Compliance Officer.
When news of Musk’s bid went viral, the voices of a million Wesley Mauch’s cried out in protest.
After all, they have a revolution, or at least personal revenge fantasies, to carry out to inject poison pills into the public discourse ad nauseum.
Twitter has become a plaything of big money oligarchs using it to fuel a bot army to enrage you and waste your time. Simultaneously using those distractions to pursue a policy of blatant bias while hiding behind a broken regulatory model.
Tucker Carlson pointed out in his recent monologue that Musk has risked far more here than it looks like at first glance. The hatred and vitriol he’s uncovered goes all the way up to the SEC and the DoJ who are now investigating Tesla, further proving that these institutions are about protecting the government from the people rather than the people from thieves.
But it’s also yet another example of just how brittle and unstable these control systems are. Because who owns Twitter shouldn’t be this important. But it is.
Control systems work best when they are invisible.
Like the Doomsday Device from Dr. Strangelove which only works if everyone knows about it, Twitter as social control system only works if everyone doesn’t know it’s being used that way.
Forget the cartoons like Max Boot, Julia Ioffe, Brian Stelter and the rest of the blue-checkmarked Stasi in the media who still think they have power, the real threat to the public discourse is the unaccountability of functionaries who work at these anti-social media companies and the people who empower them.
The Persona’s The Thing
I know it’s all cool and edgy to hate Twitter, but used properly micro-blogging is a powerful tool. On the other hand, I’ve been post-Facebook for over four years and I don’t miss it a bit. I identified it then as fake intimacy and:
… a pale simulacra of real life interactions with people you are supposed to care about.
But, I don’t care about 99% of the people I went to high school with. I went to college 1100 miles from those people and barely looked back. The people I truly value from that part of my life mostly feel about Facebook the way I do.
That’s what makes them people I value.
They value the value of their closely-held opinions and don’t dilute it by publicly sharing their banality. They realize that being friends is more than dropping political stink bombs in someone’s digital living room and saying, “I dare you to not breathe.”
So, here you are on a platform that is supposed to be all about you and the last thing anyone really wants to be on Facebook is … themselves.
But Twitter is different, it’s a brilliant tool for advertising and networking. It’s also the place where the battle for ideas should play out. Twitter isn’t about being you, it’s about preparing a face to meet the faces that you meet, to quote T.S. Eliot. Used as a means to build a public persona who is both you and not you is part of its inherent charm.
Unfortunately, it’s been co-opted by culture warriors whose ideas can’t stand up to public scrutiny for the purpose of turning the public sphere into a 24/7/365 struggle session.
And this where Twitter’s real value lies and what Musk must restore if he wins this fight, in puncturing the veil of moral superiority, virtue signaling and ‘the latest thing’ of its NPC sycophants and spit in the eye of the naked emperor.
I believe Musk understands this perfectly, since he’s created the perfect Twitter persona, the billionaire of the people who can leap tall narratives in a single tweet.
It’s why they fear him and why we should back his play.
Not for his ego, but for ours.
Residual Poison
It’s been a year since r/WallStreetBets took us on a wild ride in Game Stop. Now Musk can take his finely crafted persona and turn it into an army ready to take the front lines of the culture war from the chat room to the board room.
There are many ways to beat a poison pill strategy adopted by Twitter’s board. The main one being what Musk’s already done, offer them more than the company is worth. The other is to gather a coalition of investors ready to overthrow the board without triggering the poison pill itself.
And if the board and Twitter’s Skinner Box Commandos would rather burn it to the ground than let it fall into the hands of their enemies, then so be it.
At that point, we can let a thousand flowers bloom in the ashes of Twitter’s dumpster fire.
This is the path to unlock Twitter’s value to society and free it from all editorial constraints and government censors. Force the poisoners of society to take the poison pill themselves and let the truth free.
If Musk is successful he should rebuild the company culture from the ground up and build the tools necessary to allow people to naturally curate content they want, their way and let the best ideas win.
Win or lose, are we all not entertained?
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Excellent. Nothing to add. Will share. Always looking for the insights of those with talent yet who have a specialty and experience that differ from my own. Interestingly, we reach many of the same conclusions, via different paths. Your world view very much echoes my own. Thank you for your work, Tom.
I am most certainly entertained by watching the dumpster fire that was created by Jack Dorsey and continued by Parat Agrawal the Post-hole Digger who thinks he knows more about anything that anyone.
But enough about the POS.
Twitter is a better forum that Bookface, since it allows for the anonymity factor, among other things. It’s just been mismanaged, mainly to get people into their realm, rather than using it as a vehicle for advertising.
I look at Elon Musk as being someone who is an insider to the Davos Crowd, and someone who hates what they have become. But he certainly has displayed more American values than any of the other scum that have floated there. Just like Putin: He may not be the best person at the front, but he frustrates the plans of Klaus Schwab as often as possible.
Regarding the poison pill strategy Twitter is attempting to employ: It won’t work.Their plan was created after Musk’s taleover offer was made public. That alone will neuter it. The one negative Musk did was state that this was his “first and final offer.”
I don’t know if Marty Lipton (the creator of the poison pill) is still alive, but his biggest enemy in those fights was Joe Flom ( who unfortunately is no longer above ground). Joe kicked Marty’s ass every time through the 1980’s and 1990’s.
Maybe Musk figured the shit storm he created was enough he didn’t need to buy it. Maybe he is really just an autistic nihilist with an unhealthy love for technology, and felt that there was an opportunity to troll twitter.
One opinion I will not forget about Musk was given by John McAfee in an interview he did in 2020. When asked whether he thought pictures of Elon talking to Gislane Maxwell amounted to anything, he said something to the effect of “most likely no. No space program has yet managed to make itself cost effective by landing and reusing it’s boosters until SpaceX came along and did it. Anyone who has managed to make that work has too much real tasks on his hands to be tied up with the globalists very deeply. He probably just wanted attention from a powerful person.”
I think Musk is allowed to do what he is allowed to do because he delivers on technologies the globalists want while they themselves are incompetent, mediocre people. This puts him in a similar position to Donald Trump. Was Trump /ourguy/? No. His daughter is married into the Kushner crime family for fuck’s sake. BUT, Trump was a man who was allowed throughout his life to participate in the west economy in a big way who was not in the inner circle or even fully aware that the circle was as serious as it is, and he has a lot of money and his own point of view. He was, therefore, an agent of chaos. Musk is again being an agent of Chaos.
It is difficult to keep running an empire of lies when keeping the veneer of sincerity requires allowing some wealthy people freedom but keeping the lies consistent requires complete control. There is an apparently Russian expression I have heard years ago and it still holds true: “Lying can bring you forward but it can’t take you back”.
Cthulhu…I don’t disagree with your DESCRIPTION of Trump, but I’m curious about your ASSESSMENT (ie, Was Trump /ourguy/? No). In your opinion, who are good candidates for /ourguy/ ???
I could not agree more with regard to facebook on this part of the article:
… a pale simulacra of real life interactions with people you are supposed to care about.
But, I don’t care about 99% of the people I went to high school with. I went to college 1100 miles from those people and barely looked back. The people I truly value from that part of my life mostly feel about Facebook the way I do.
I also de-activated my account at facebook. The fact check bots with a conflict of interest kinda pissed me off, zuckerbucks interference in campaigns, but on the other hand, the country has political herpies at this time, asshats like pelosi continue to be reelected for whatever magical reasons.
A buddy of mine whom is a doctor out in california and also a somewhat misguided magatard actually had people in his family unfriend him over political speech. This also caused him to eventually leave the platform as well, seeing that it is not a place that really cares about free speech and their to promote an agenda.
Another thing that bothered me on facebook was the whole “I’ve been vaccinated thing” that people would actually add to their profile picture. A friend of mine and several others added to his profile picture”I don’t care if you have been vaccinated”. Even worse, was that I have friends whom are medical professionals endorsing the shots. As a mechanical engineer, I am not allowed to promise you a camry and deliver a yugo. My core reason for avoiding the shots is that the men in my family typically die from heart disease, which in some ways is a quiet blessing compared to cancer or dying in agony.
I found myself in agreement with Tom here, I did not want to be contacted by people from high school. People have different experiences of it, my attitude is yeah, that kinda sucked, lets move on. I also found that I did not want to know the intimate details of what everyone is doing, because I do not really like even carrying a smart phone, because I have my own priorities and I do not want to be accessible all the time. I only got one for the reminders on airbnb, since I run one.
Love your analogy “promise a Camry and deliver a Yugo”. Very appropriate.
A well written piece. But, IF Musk actually garners control, we don’t know if he will be the bastion of free speech we all crave. His parents and grandparents, his lineage, his talking up UBI for many years, his shady government contracts…all this is enough to know he’s a globalist and can’t be trusted. Also, if he’s not allowed to purchase it, will anything really change? Will people shut down their accounts en masse? Will the stock being cut in half stop their censorship? I’ll take anything these days that slows down the Davos death march….
It doesn’t matter if he is or isn’t. Just that he ripped the bandaid off is enough. Enjoy the ride ffs
Perhaps he knows the central banks are no longer going to print money and give him free dollars to prop up his failing clown car company, and so he is planning to get some value out of it by making an offer that includes a lot of shares?
Swap $50bn of Tesla shares for Twitter just before the shares become worthless – is that a possibility?
Maybe the Davosians have asked him to transition from running a dollar heatsink to selling them data.
Yup. He’s going to swap Tesla for Twitter.
His dollar heatsink clown car business is about to be competed to death by actual car companies, so he’s decided to move across to a business with a future – selling our data to government.
From money launderer to government snitch – he’s a real prince.
If I was finally ready to start persecuting patriots with hate speech laws, I would need one of my stooges to take over a big platform and change its policies so as to allow that “hate speech” to happen.
You live in Europe. We don’t have anything like what y’all have, which is why they needed to take over the corporations to outsource around the 1st amendment
Again Ivor, your arguments betray your complete lack of understanding about how the US operates. Musk is blowing the control system wide open.
Elon seems to be off-script this time around. Normally you would expect to see him take advantage of current events and announce a new corporate startup. Something like:
Introducing Ammo-X, the first corporation in the world to offer environmentally friendly ammunition. Ammo-X’s Low Emissions Ordnance, actually removes carbon from the atmosphere, with each round fired!”
ahh It’s all like one big soap opera at this point. :)
Musk is the Globalist I like. He is doing the right move and levels the field for ideas which may come from freedom of speech. Slows down the Dictators and lunatics with fake science
Sundance over at conservative tree house makes a fascinating case demonstrating that the real issue here is that Musks efforts will reveal that Twitter can only possibly exist undernits current business model by running on US government servers:
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2022/04/14/elon-musk-make-a-massive-proposal-offers-to-purchase-twitter-for-41-billion-with-plan-to-take-company-private/
“Twitter is not a platform built around a website; Twitter is a platform for comments and discussion that operates in the sphere of social media. As a consequence, the technology and data processing required to operate the platform does not have an economy of scale.
There is no business model where Twitter is financially viable to operate…. UNLESS the tech architecture under the platform was subsidized.
In my opinion, there is only one technological system and entity that could possibly underwrite the cost of Twitter to operate. That entity is the United States Government, and here’s why.”
This article on American Thinker gives additional food for thought:
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/04/elon_musk_runs_into_the_twitter_poison_pill.html
“If it’s true, it would explain the callous behavior of the Twitter board toward its small shareholders, and its indifference to company profit and value in general. ”
Does anyone think the US government would be above such activity, including controlling the public narrative?
Regarding social media, I decided when the very first platforms first came out that I wouldn’t be giving up my privacy. I’ve never had involvement with any of them..
When you think about what government want to know, it’s….
What we say
What we think
Who we know
What we buy
Where we go
So that’s Twitter, Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple.
When you think about what CIA Director Robert Dewey said to tech wunderkind Aaron Kalloor in the 2016 film “Jason Bourne”, you start to wonder whether these organisations have been government operations right from the start.
“You didn’t care about privacy or freedom when we funded your startup and made you a billionaire”
And of course if they are government operations, then why would the NSA need costly data centers with inconvenient Congressional oversight, when backdoors into five systems gives you all you need.
Makes you wonder about Snowden and why he didn’t get the full Assange Experience – maybe they just pay him to pop up every six months to remind us about the data centers so we’ll keep giving our data to the Five?
It’s been said many times that one of the aims of the West’s sanctions against Russia was to harm the oligarchs so bad that they hire people to “take Putin out”. After all, the only real power the West has is bribing people with their funny money, and their total control of the propaganda narrative (which they seem best at). Seems like Elon is trying to get control the propaganda narrative part, but why not use his funny money to hire people to take out those trying to destroy the world? I can’t think of a better use of that funny money while it’s still worth something. This entire charade against the world would be over in less than a month, and the ones lower on the totem pole waiting in the wings that aren’t taken out will think twice if it’s done horrifically enough.
Beyond brilliant!
Thanks for your insights…what about Bill Gates and the whole pharma + banking agenda people? Or MIC + big oil wealth? I imagine they easily have the money when combined to outbid Musk. Are the royals in the Mideast interested? What about China? I assume they all have reasons to maybe want to control Twitter and they obviously have the money. So do various Europeans–heck even India if they wanted has the money. If the Democrats keep control over Congress they will attack Twitter if Elon takes over. If the GOP takes over Congress, are there enough members to do the bidding of elites to do the same as Democrats?
The reality as it stands now is that the global liberal elite controls social media owners currently by either co-opting them or threatening them with various form of lawfare–or who knows what kinds of more private threats.
Elon has all that to get through if the liberal global elite are as concerned about Twitter as so many believe them to be. In others words, he would have to pay off a lot of people in government in order to take on the establishment as it currently stands. Politicians in the global liberal establishment are almost all bought off if they have any real political ability to influence the agenda of the elite agendas.
And besides that there is organized crime who are used by elites to do their dirty work when political means do not suffice.
You have to be brave to take on the establishment or like Putin have your own advanced and powerful military and security services. Elon is either brave, stupid, or the establishment is not as concerned with him or Twitter as many people believe. Time will tell.
To really take on the liberal elites and have a chance of winning (besides someone like Putin or China), you need an American president on your side, at the least.
What says you?
I suspected from beginning that Elon is not alone and he has probably powerful team behind him in the shadows.
Elon is wise enough not to launch one man war against entire global elite.
I worked for those people for a long time and I can tell that there is massive opposition inside the system. Soros and the rest of Swamp Elders are like Stalin. Lot of their own coworkers want those almighty lunatics gone.
So Elon may get a lot discreet but effective assistance like Stalin buddies made conspiracy against him.
Here’s hoping you are correct. I don’t think Musk is acting alone either. Remain both hopeful and skeptical at the same time.
“You have to be brave to take on the establishment or like Putin have your own advanced and powerful military and security services. Elon is either brave, stupid, or the establishment is not as concerned with him or Twitter as many people believe. Time will tell.”
…- Elon *does* have his own personal, private fleet of *potential* ICBMs at his disposal, so he has that much going for him, at least…
– Heck! – Damn things’re *reusable*, even…
;)
Musk is the only thing in America that’s funny and entertaining. Everything else is the, “death of a sad sack culture.”
“The hatred and vitriol he’s uncovered goes all the way up to the SEC and the DoJ who are now investigating Tesla…”. I wonder if the public (We the People) have the brains to observe that The Government wasn’t interested in investigating Tesla UNTIL Musk did this thing with Twitter. Apparently Tesla was just fine as far as the Dept. of InJustice was concerned until they got the word from their bosses.
Love him or hate Elon Musk he is delivering. Same as Trump, without people like those life would be dreary. He is modern Privateer of the 21 Century. Works alone or with the government and pay his due.
Absolutely brilliant summary. Thank you. Found it on Twitter via @ZeroHedge – why no BSV wallet? Would gladly make a small donation for your work. Cheers.
I think we are starting to see the inevitable cracks developing in the Davos/Elite crowd. Musk may or may not be a card carrying member – I suspect he is way too rogue. And he actually may be interested in building something although I have the same concerns about him feeding at the government trough chasing electric car paradise before it’s ready.
Everything in life works until it doesn’t – including plans to control the world. At some point it is inevitable that infighting and stupidity will lead to the crumbling of the Davos crowd. Faster please. Evil can only take you so far.
Big names write letter supporting Big Tech and censorship…link to letter in article…lines drawn…
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/former-intelligence-officials-citing
Elon Musk… nor jeff bezos, nor bill gates, nor warren buffet… NONE of these tycoons of industry are “the richest man in the world.” that title belongs to the rotschilds, who collectively control THE LION’S SHARE of the ENTIRE “national deficit” they have – through their allies, junior partners, and bribed, blackmailed, and cowed politicians, media, finance, industry types, FORCED on to American taxpayers. They divvy up some portion – of $33 TRILLION – with their closest CENTRAL BANK, wb, imf, bis allies – the warburgs, schiffs, lazards, montefiores, goldsmids, goldmans, sachs (etc.) – but let’s say they “only” control half – that would be $15+ TRILLION dollars. Read the Frederick Morton AUTHORIZED 1960 family biography of the clan – he (and they) GLOAT that they DO NOT PAY ESTATE TAXES when one of the senior family members die. When idiot prince charles said on video “governments CAN NOT fix this (“debt”) crisis… but I know someone with TRILLIONS of dollars who could…” that’s who he was talking about. See Eustace Mullins “Secrets of the Federal Reserve” – http://whale.to/b/mullins5.html esp. Ch. 5 “The rotschilds” (German for “red shield”)
All of America’s financial dynasties STARTED in the 1800s in either the SLAVE TRADE or the similar OPIUM TRADE to China… causing MISERY for MILLIONS of victims was a PREREQUISITE to “join the club.”
In particular, at the end of WWI, AMERICAN BANKERS had made MILLIONS (billions in today’s value) financing AND Supplying both Britain and France and U.S. in WWI… they took ALL THE GOLD & WEALTH it had taken Britain & France 200 years to loot, extract, extort out of their subjugated colonies…. but a mere decade later (1919 > 1929) these SAME BANKSTERS told us, the American people, “THEY HAD NO MONEY” to feed, house, employ MILLIONS of unemployed Americans? IT WAS A SABOTAGE “short selling” SCAM!
In 3 1/2 short (but awful) WW II war years – 1942-Aug 1945 – we Americans PRODUCED MOUNTAINS of costly war material & supply – hyper-expensive aircraft FILLING the sky, HUGE CONVOYS and armadas of ships COVERING the ocean as far as you could see; MOUNTAINS of material to SUPPLY OUR ARMIES… AND our ALLIED armies on far side of the world.
the “great depression” was PURE SABOTAGE run by the richest people in the world.. they are BRAGGING they are out to REPEAT with their treasonous “BUY UP then SOBOTAGE OUR MEANS OF PRODUCTION” “great reset” just exactly as they did in the 1930s. The American ppl are unbelievably stupid.