Why? When I wrote about Musk’s tweeting earlier this year, I leaned toward the idea that Twitter alone had led him to a 280-character indifference. I described Twitter as the highest street from your feet to your mouth. But now that the company is owned, things have taken a turn for the worse—and apparently on purpose. Musk appears to have modified his Tesla-style navigation system to appear in his trap. The definitive answer to why they are doing this can be found inside the big brain of the man who controls Tesla, SpaceX, brain implants and tunneling startups, and now Twitter. I can’t comment on Twitter because Musk has fired his PR team. People around Musk who I contacted did not respond. The answer I got was from his friend and co-founder of OpenAI Sam Altman. “I don’t know,” Altman says.
One of Musk’s supporters spoke with tweets: Joe Lonsdale, an investor and Palantir cofounder who knows Musk and says he advised him on Twitter to save. As a recent guest on CNBC, Lonsdale raved about how “the opportunity is amazing” for Musk and Twitter. But when his colleague Andrew Ross Sorkin brought up Markey’s tweet, he had the same concerns I had. “I don’t understand!” Sorkin said. “Democrats control the Senate, that guy runs multiple committees — with limited power! … Isn’t he putting himself in real danger?”
Lonsdale defended his colleague by saying the tweets proved “how important it is to Elon’s success.” It’s close freedom. “In China, if you do that, you’re out,” Lonsdale said, waving his hand like a Maoist assassin. “It’s proving to everyone that it’s possible we have a free country, and you can push back, you can defy the people who attack you, and you can still win. And it’s amazing! They say we’re free and I’m not doing this like a Communist dictatorship.
This comment would have been better if Musk hadn’t immediately publicly shot down – and then laughed at – any employee who tried to write anything about it that was more serious than just talking about his greatness. Since Twitter CEO Musk is leading a masterclass in authoritarianism, I reject the Lonsdale Theory.
Another theory is that Musk has lost his mind. So we should see all his Twitter activity as crazy like Queeg. That doesn’t work anymore. These critical tweets are not a new trend. Remember in 2018, when Ayesha casually called the man who brought the Thai children out of the cave a “heartfelt man”? Musk won a defamation lawsuit that saved him, but he paid the price of confusion and notoriety for his gratuitous derision. And he continued to go. Or how about that time of the same year when he wrote, “I’m thinking of taking a private Tesla for $420. Funding is offered.” Apparently, the money was never found. Also, there was confusion as to whether the tweet was a joke, since April 20 is known as Grass Day, the time to burn oil. In any case, The US Securities and Exchange Commission did not laugh. Musk and Tesla both had to pay $ 20 million to settle the complaints of the organization, and Musk had to resign as the chairman of Tesla. But outside of Twitter, Musk does not show madness. Since the tweets of 2018, he has worked the best running Tesla and SpaceX, so one would think that he is the same person who is not crazy now. Only crazy in his tweets.
