Maybe Killing Twitter Was The Point

It makes perfect sense.

They’re calling him Space Karen.

It’s perfect.

Elon Musk has driven a stake through Twitter’s heart. After laying off half the company, the vast majority of those remaining have decided to quit rather than commit to working there “extremely hardcore.” The platform is running on autopilot now.

On the surface, it looks like Elon doesn’t know what he’s doing. He’s making rookie mistakes. That’s undeniably true. Anyone who can read knows the guy is a terrible boss, with a long history of firing and/or alienating the people he depends on the most.

Maybe that was the point.

Maybe Elon was supposed to buy Twitter and drive it into the ground. Maybe none of this was an accident.

I don’t want to believe it, but it makes sense.

It’s not so crazy.

Think about Twitter for a minute.

What is Twitter?

It’s a platform that allows ordinary people to share information with each other. They can share information about dangerous diseases. They can share information about climate change. They can share information about labor unions and strikes, and protests.

They can use it to organize and help each other.

Sure, there’s a lot of noise on Twitter. But I’m reading through tweets and seeing a lot of grief over the loss of the platform. A lot of people didn’t use it just to spout off about nonsense. They used it to stay informed. Tweets about wildfires and earthquakes could actually travel faster than the threats themselves. It was better than local news when it came to alerting people about threats like hurricanes.

There’s a lot of smug elitists pontificating about the destruction of Twitter. Some of them actually sound happy about what’s happening. None of them get it. They don’t think about how ordinary people used this tool to protect themselves, and each other.

Twitter saved lives.

Now think about the super rich.

What do the super rich want?

They want a population of semi-educated, ignorant consumers who do nothing but work all day and night and then watch dance videos on their time off. They want everyone to scroll their favorite celebrity’s beach photos while quietly hating themselves.

That’s how they make money.

Super rich people like Elon Musk don’t want a platform where some ordinary person has the same influence they do.

They hate that idea.

So that leaves two options.

If you’re super rich, then you can try to turn Twitter into your own tool, or you can break it. That’s the same logic of a mean kid, by the way. If you can’t have a toy, then nobody can. They’d rather everyone lose something than one person gain an advantage.

More on that in a minute…

Now:

We know Elon’s rich friends put him up to buying Twitter. They egged him on. Those friends include Peter Thiel, a billionaire who’s trying to build an underground bunker in New Zealand.

We also know that Elon didn’t buy Twitter with his own money, at least not completely. He had backing from investors like Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Al Saud, a billionaire from Saudi Arabia and the first Saudi king’s grandson. Multiple politicians and intelligence experts have said this poses a national security risk. They’re not wrong.

Alwaleed was arrested in 2017 for bribery and extortion.

So, he’s not a nice guy.

He’s no friend of democracy.

This is the kind of company Elon keeps. He hangs out with other shady billionaires who want to take over the world.

They’re his friends.

Botching Twitter makes sense.

Maybe the world’s shady billionaires decided they don’t like Twitter so much. Sure, it makes money. It sells ads. It’s also a hotbed of liberal activism. Workers have used it to organize labor unions. Epidemiologists and immunologists have used it to challenge dominant narratives about the spread of disease. Climate scientists are using it to share accurate information about our existential threats.

In short, Twitter has been a thorn.

Destroying Twitter probably wasn’t Plan A. No, Plan A was to capture it for fascists. They wanted to make it a tool for spreading hate under the disguise of “free speech.” That plan isn’t going so well right now. Just like every evil control freak with fantasies of world domination, there’s always a backup plan.

Always.

It looks like Elon’s backup plan is to bankrupt Twitter and make it completely dysfunctional. If he can’t scare off all the liberals, all the unions, all the climate activists, then he’s going to destroy it. Nobody will be able to use Twitter anymore.

Who does that hurt more?

It hurts us.

Sure, it’ll embarrass Elon Musk. I’m sure he doesn’t like being called a Space Karen. It won’t necessarily ruin him though, not if he can play the country’s financial laws to his favor. He’s been doing that his entire life. It’s probably the only thing he’s good at it. When you think about it, bankrupting Twitter is actually kinda brilliant if a bunch of other billionaires are going to bail you out.

It’s a smart play.

It’s incredibly Machiavellian.

Think about the real story here.

Elon Musk is still worth nearly $200 billion. He’s using other people’s money to play with one of the world’s most important venues of public discourse. Maybe Elon Musk and his friends didn’t wildly overvalue Twitter. Maybe we wildly undervalued it. Maybe we’re the ones who don’t understand the worth of a public platform like this.

It’s almost priceless.

Anyway, breaking it won’t hurt him at all.

Elon Musk could set all of his companies on fire right now, sell his stocks, and then live comfortably for the rest of his life on a private island. There’s literally one reason he hasn’t done that yet.

He would get bored.

Elon Musk isn’t doing any of this for the money. In his own perverse way, he finds all of this highly entertaining.

He’s having a blast.

He’s having fun in the only way that miserable rich white guys can have fun, by making everyone miserable.

He loves this.

Say what you will about Twitter. Sure, you can spend too much time on there fighting with trolls. It can mess with your mental health. On the other hand, millions of decent human beings use Twitter to share information and organize. They use Twitter to build support networks. It helps them feel less isolated, and less alone.

This app has helped a lot of us stay informed outside the loop of traditional mainstream media. It gave us a voice.

We’re going to miss it.

It’s not easy to create and maintain a network like that.

It requires huge resources.

Killing Twitter doesn’t really hurt corporations. They can always advertise somewhere else. They can drive up prices on essentials. It’s going to be harder to recreate the networks that activists and journalists use to fight for the planet, and for human rights.

It’s not hopeless.

If Twitter dies, other platforms can rise up in its place.

For starters, there’s Mastodon.

If I were you, I wouldn’t leave Twitter just yet, but I’d definitely be getting on these other platforms.

We need to be ready. Things are happening fast. I’m not sure anyone can predict exactly what’s going to happen with Twitter. Elon Musk himself isn’t acting like a very stable genius right now.

Just know:

Killing Twitter won’t hurt Space Karen.

He’s secretly enjoying it.