Elon Musk takes over Twitter

He does what he thinks will get people talking about his companies. ... because he thinks that any publicity is good publicity. As long as Twitter is getting stories written about it today, and people talking about him, he thinks it is a positive.

It's been his Tesla playbook for more than a decade. I used to point it out on that EV thread all the time.

He used to make outlandish promises about Tesla -- and because back then people thought he was a profit and a genius, a lot of people would fall for his bullshit, hook, line and sinker.

I always thought it was simply about garnering a headline that day and trying to build hype, because he knew that people would forget his old antics and move along to a new antics after it all faded.

I would bet with certainty that this is about 1) him getting attention and 2) him thinking that people talking about Twitter, no matter the context.

 

You are right, of course. I really just think he's clueless, like he buys into the P.T. Barnum maxim that there's no such thing as bad publicity. Or the Oscar Wilde version that there's only one thing worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. I think that is Elon Musk in a nutshell.

You are right. It would seem downright stupid to limit access to a social media platform that at least as of today is more advertising driven than anything in terms of the revenue it is pulling in. It also threatens to annoy some people enough that they leave and don't come back. And he needs that user engagement to drive revenue.

I think he's that short-sighted, though.