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Elon Musk: Officially a fraud and piece of shit. Official or unofficial war criminal?


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I am hoping we are all missing something and that Elon Musk’s real motive is to genuinely improve society and that he succeeds.  Not because I like Elon Musk; no, it’s pretty clear to me that he’s just a giant piece of shit.  But I hope we’re all wrong, because if we are right, what an indictment of society that a person like that was allowed to accumulate that many resources and wield that much influence.  Fucking hell.

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38 minutes ago, Snake Diggity said:

I am hoping we are all missing something and that Elon Musk’s real motive is to genuinely improve society and that he succeeds.  Not because I like Elon Musk; no, it’s pretty clear to me that he’s just a giant piece of shit.  But I hope we’re all wrong, because if we are right, what an indictment of society that a person like that was allowed to accumulate that many resources and wield that much influence.  Fucking hell.

It’s luck. Luck meets seed money. 

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2 hours ago, Celery Man said:

Obviously this thread is mostly dunking on Elon, mostly by people who are happy to see his endeavors at Twitter fail, and sometimes whatever he’s doing is characterized through shit tinted glasses. But I just really don’t get how the story can be told that it was anythinf but incredibly fucking stupid to… spend $44bn on Twitter to do what this tweet sums up. Fire the staff, alienate the users, chase off the customers, remove the value, and fucking rebrand? You could hire any number of incels and people desperate for work visas in a way that would destroy much less value across all of your businesses and keep up the whole illusion. How does any of this make sense in a world where Elon Musk isn’t a dumbass?

The real irony is that all of those twitter employees he fired could have helped make X happen.  He fired an incredibly broad range of employees that could have helped him build a website/app that does an incredibly broad range of things.

Well, what could have made X happen is if he A) acquired the trademarks from Microsoft and Meta/Google and B) not spent $44 billion to turn Twitter into what is becoming a shadow of itself, but instead spent $44 billion buying up smaller companies/patents/hiring people/etc. that could have made all of the services he and the CEO are claiming X is going to do.   Maybe spend $15 or $20 billion on twitter for its userbase, but not to gut it and drive away some of the best products (users).

Just kidding, A) was never going to happen because Microsoft/Google/Meta were not going to sell those trademarks to Musk for his vanity project.

But he still could have spent far less to acquire the companies/products/whatever to make a decent chunk of X happen.

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2 hours ago, Celery Man said:

Obviously this thread is mostly dunking on Elon, mostly by people who are happy to see his endeavors at Twitter fail, and sometimes whatever he’s doing is characterized through shit tinted glasses. But I just really don’t get how the story can be told that it was anythinf but incredibly fucking stupid to… spend $44bn on Twitter to do what this tweet sums up. Fire the staff, alienate the users, chase off the customers, remove the value, and fucking rebrand? You could hire any number of incels and people desperate for work visas in a way that would destroy much less value across all of your businesses and keep up the whole illusion. How does any of this make sense in a world where Elon Musk isn’t a dumbass?

it's almost like this dude is on drugs

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5 hours ago, UpperWestside said:

Anyone willingly working for or supporting Musk needs a psychiatric evaluation. He is a con man. Nothing more, nothing less. The Boring Company thievery should have him and those running that scam in prison.


He is doubly frustrating to me because, as I have said before, telling everyone he has Asperger’s (He’s not even bright enough to know it should never be called that ever again due to the crimes committed by Dr. Asperger against autistic children in Vienna during the war.) while acting like a narcissistic psychopath gives the appearance that those of us who have this might be just like him. I am glad to be nuerodivergent, but I am not glad that this insidious clownfraud is as well. He could be doing some amazing work in the field of autism, but instead he chose the path of least resistance and love from some of the worst cretins that live among us.

To be fair, Asperger was a POS, as you note, so Elon should definitely have that moniker, not all those innocent kids.  Fuck him and his loser toadies that carry his water for him…

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https://gizmodo.com/meta-microsoft-own-x-trademarks-over-elon-musk-1850673517

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Patent attorney Josh Gerben told Reuters he counted close to 900 U.S. trademark registrations on “X” throughout a wide range of industries. Just within the tech sphere, Microsoft has a trademark on “X” because of its Xbox system branding. The company has owned that trademark since 2003, just a year after it released the first Xbox console. Meta also owns a trademark on an “X” logo for software and social media. 

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A cursory search through the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office database reveals some of these logo patents were filed as recently as last week, just a few days before Musk started mentioning his intent to rebrand Twitter. Some trademark logos are as simple as a big “X” in a square box. Others from firms like Brand X Co. include a more stylized X that could compare to Musk’s current choice of logo. That’s despite the design bearing a strong resemblance to the Monotype brand font and the Unicode character (U+1D54F).

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Companies could be incentivized to sue if they can claim there’s brand confusion. Per Gerben, X Corp.—the company that now owns Twitter—has filed for a trademark on the Twitter name itself. If Musk finds the potential litigation is getting too hot, he does have the option to switch back.

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Musk has said publicly he wants to get rid of “all the birds.” He loves the “X” brand so much that he’s naming the company conference rooms with the letter. The New York Times reported he’s renamed conference rooms to “eXposure,” “eXult” and “s3Xy,” because the billionaire has apparently never left the early 2000s when leetspeak was still a thing.

 

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ihvh3kh7t3eb1.png

also a quick cybertruck laugh:

https://www.thedrive.com/news/tesla-cybertruck-wrapped-like-a-ford-f-150-seems-like-a-factory-troll-job

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"This is the first truck that we're aware of that will have four doors, over a six-foot bed, and fit into a 20-foot garage," Musk said. "So, it's sort of biggish on the outside, but it's even bigger on the inside. One of the elements of good design is it should feel bigger on the inside than it looks on the outside. And this is no small car."

1 paragraph later:

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The Cybertruck's length was previously announced to be 231.7 inches, or just a tad over 19 feet long. This dimension may have changed with final tweaks, though Tesla has said that the Cybertruck is one of the only vehicles with a full-size cab and six-foot bed to fit in a 20-foot garage. A similarly-spec’d Ford F-150 with a 5.5-foot bed carries the same overall length.

 

Edited by NoName
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Obviously this thread is mostly dunking on Elon, mostly by people who are happy to see his endeavors at Twitter fail, and sometimes whatever he’s doing is characterized through shit tinted glasses. But I just really don’t get how the story can be told that it was anythinf but incredibly fucking stupid to… spend $44bn on Twitter to do what this tweet sums up. Fire the staff, alienate the users, chase off the customers, remove the value, and fucking rebrand? You could hire any number of incels and people desperate for work visas in a way that would destroy much less value across all of your businesses and keep up the whole illusion. How does any of this make sense in a world where Elon Musk isn’t a dumbass?

Twitter was a very helpful tool for journalists and activists. It was a bastion for Western-style democracy. Regretfully, it’s also vitally influential over our economy and stock market.

Fracturing it was a vital step for fascism and individual nihilists. Due to his ties to foreign money and authoritarian governments, Elon Musk should not have been permitted to purchase (and now destroy) this company.

Even this site is dependent upon this company for breaking news.
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17 hours ago, Celery Man said:

Obviously this thread is mostly dunking on Elon, mostly by people who are happy to see his endeavors at Twitter fail, and sometimes whatever he’s doing is characterized through shit tinted glasses. But I just really don’t get how the story can be told that it was anythinf but incredibly fucking stupid to… spend $44bn on Twitter to do what this tweet sums up. Fire the staff, alienate the users, chase off the customers, remove the value, and fucking rebrand? You could hire any number of incels and people desperate for work visas in a way that would destroy much less value across all of your businesses and keep up the whole illusion. How does any of this make sense in a world where Elon Musk isn’t a dumbass?

Right.

And I know it's not exactly in the spirit of this thread but you have shown a curiosity and growth mindset to business psychology (at least from what I infer from the pop psychology/business book thread) and so this might interest you: https://uxpsychology.substack.com/p/why-do-people-hate-redesigns

It's an interesting look at in general why people hate redesigns and how to minimize blowback, and while there is probably some of that going on with Twitter->X, it's not happening on this thread. This thread, like you have surmised, is now just a bunch of hammers who see anything Elon does as a nail, regardless of anything.

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27 minutes ago, Longhornsnus said:

Right.

And I know it's not exactly in the spirit of this thread but you have shown a curiosity and growth mindset to business psychology (at least from what I infer from the pop psychology/business book thread) and so this might interest you: https://uxpsychology.substack.com/p/why-do-people-hate-redesigns

It's an interesting look at in general why people hate redesigns and how to minimize blowback, and while there is probably some of that going on with Twitter->X, it's not happening on this thread. This thread, like you have surmised, is now just a bunch of hammers who see anything Elon does as a nail, regardless of anything.

Please stop or just get banned for the 30th time and get the fucking clue.

This isn't just piling on Elon because he Elon'd today. The guy isn't making good decisions. This tweet really encapsulates everything that Elon has done wrong with Twitter.

  

18 hours ago, NoName said:

Just to be clear, I don't follow this furry. The for you page thought I would find it relevant and guess what? I did!

 

If the guy made a good decision, it might get some credit. But anything good he might do, is getting outweighed by about 30 things that are just inexplicably dumb.

And Twitter > X isn't just a redesign, this is throwing away brand recognition that is at some rare level that most companies only dream about. There is nothing about THIS move that makes any sense. Hell, you didn't see Facebook throw away the brand with Meta, that just was a parent company name with Facebook under it.

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12 minutes ago, Captain Ron said:

Please stop or just get banned for the 30th time and get the fucking clue.

This isn't just piling on Elon because he Elon'd today. The guy isn't making good decisions. This tweet really encapsulates everything that Elon has done wrong with Twitter.

  

 

If the guy made a good decision, it might get some credit. But anything good he might do, is getting outweighed by about 30 things that are just inexplicably dumb.

And Twitter > X isn't just a redesign, this is throwing away brand recognition that is at some rare level that most companies only dream about. There is nothing about THIS move that makes any sense. Hell, you didn't see Facebook throw away the brand with Meta, that just was a parent company name with Facebook under it.

He's trying to make a financially fledgling social media company into Tencent/WeChat. Will it fail? Probably, because Elon is screwing it up. But it's a transformational gamble which isn't that much of a gamble relatively speaking for the world's richest man who, last I read, lost like $13bn in one day the other day, and is still $20bn+ richer than the Louis Vuitton guy in 2nd place. So who cares? 

From my perspective, ultimately Twitter wasn't a growth business and struggled to be profitable and there wasn't a path for wild success/riches as an organization. Elon is trying to turn it into the aforementioned Tencent/Wechat catchall and it will either 10x for him or zero out. The only people that seem to care that Elon is risking (and likely going to lose all of) his $44bn are the people that hate him. Why is that?

Also, I guess people feel entitled to their toy (old Twitter) and are mad that someone bought it and tanked it and are really trying/hoping that Threads makes it.

Edited by Longhornsnus
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5 minutes ago, Captain Ron said:

And Twitter > X isn't just a redesign, this is throwing away brand recognition that is at some rare level that most companies only dream about. There is nothing about THIS move that makes any sense. Hell, you didn't see Facebook throw away the brand with Meta, that just was a parent company name with Facebook under it.

if it was any other poster in this thread i would have responded to him with something along those lines.

a redesign is what he linked to - let's upgrade font, tweak some things, etc

a rebrand is changing the logo, company name, the verb tied to it, the color scheme (it's black so you know it's edgy), the website name, etc.

except that it was the most halfassed rollout of a re-branding in forever. let's use the cheapest possible logo (at least pay some dude on fiverr man, they have more pride in their work than to slap a unicode symbol with a non transparent backing on top of a black background), but not roll it out all at once (still have lots of blue and tweet and twitter on the website), and at the same time not roll it out at all on any apps (which still are fully twitter-ized with the twitter cyan color + old name + old logo), not understand how redirects work (you redirect twitter to x.com, not x.com to twitter you dolt!), not rebrand your subscription service (it's still called twitter blue. the logo is still a blue with the old twitter logo in it, etc) and do it all overnight because you are worried someone is going to get the scoop on you re-branding the whole thing even though you have had this weird obsession with the name change forever

here is a smarter playbook:

  • collect a bunch of logos from users, offer to buy it for twitter equity so it isn't real money
  • have users vote on the new logo (remember only subs can vote lol)
  • roll out the new logo
  • roll out the new color scheme and do the work to switch everything over away from the twitter cyan/blue color scheme to black (so you know it's edgy) and white.
  • frantically do the work on the back end to change as much as possible x.com and refer to X and edit the help/support articles as well
  • do a real roll out with a prerecorded (short) video to announce and show it all
  • flip over the website, color scheme, apps, etc all on one day so it appears you even kind of know what you are doing

all they did was flip the background color to black. everything that was blue still is. it still references tweets everywhere. the help center is still all twitter, including the fucking bird logos all over the place.

as bad as the rebranding of the company is, the rollout of the rebranding is somehow significantly worse. it's impressive that this is even possible.

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11 minutes ago, Longhornsnus said:

fledgling social media company

If twitter were a person it would be eligible to vote in the next presidential election. This may go down as the most mismanaged acquisition in history. Already the most expensive self own IMO

I mean tweeting is now a verb. Tweets are what people call social media posts. It’s like get me a kleenex or go xerox this for me and grab me a coke while you’re over there. This stupid fuck is throwing that away

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4 minutes ago, Sawbonz said:

If twitter were a person it would be eligible to vote in the next presidential election. This may go down as the most mismanaged acquisition in history. Already the most expensive self own IMO

I mean tweeting is now a verb. Tweets are what people call social media posts. It’s like get me a kleenex or go xerox this for me and grab me a coke while you’re over there. This stupid fuck is throwing that away

Yes, there is a ton of social equity and capital in the name/logo/company. Trying to monetize and turn that social "IP" into dollars was a struggle for some of the most interesting business minds (Dorsey, Bret Taylor, Elon), so it's a rip the bandaid and sink or swim transformation. 

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2 minutes ago, Longhornsnus said:

I thought he did have the permit after all though. 8.5/10 on the dunk.

he quite obviously does not. as evidenced by the fact the building still has "ER" and the twitter bird still on the top of the building.

Quote

“We received two complaints about this work and are awaiting guidance from City Planning as to whether a permit is needed to change copy (text) on an existing sign,” said Patrick Hannan, a department spokesperson. “Removing or relocating the sign would require a building permit.”

The city’s database shows that no recent permit applications related to the sign have been filed. X didn’t immediately provide a comment.

The company’s 2011 lease also states “any and all modifications” to the exterior sign “shall be subject to Landlord’s prior written approval.” Shorenstein and JPMorgan Chase own the property, and a Shorenstein spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

ultimately it doesn't matter because they pretty clearly didn't get approval of landlords.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/elon-musk-twitter-sign-x-s-f-permits-18258611.php

 

4 minutes ago, Longhornsnus said:

He's trying to make a financially fledgling social media company into Tencent/WeChat. Will it fail? Probably, because Elon is screwing it up. But it's a transformational gamble which isn't that much of a gamble relatively speaking for the world's richest man who, last I read, lost like $13bn in one day the other day, and is still $20bn+ richer than the Louis Vuitton guy in 2nd place. So who cares? 

From my perspective, ultimately Twitter wasn't a growth business and struggled to be profitable and there wasn't a path for wild success/riches as an organization. Elon is trying to turn it into the aforementioned Tencent/Wechat catchall and it will either 10x for him or zero out. The only people that seem to care that Elon is risking (and likely going to lose all of) his $44bn are the people that hate him. Why is that?

Also, I guess people feel entitled to their toy (old Twitter) and are mad that someone bought it and tanked it and are really trying/hoping that Threads makes it.

you really are showing your ass here, for the millionth time. not shocking but you don't know shit. you haven't on your last like 10 usernames and you don't now.

there is no appetite for Weixin in the United States. if there was, wouldn't someone or anyone have had any level of success or tried to roll it out in the last 12 years since Weixin was first available? how many attempts have any large company made at this? not even fucking Meta with platforms that could all be rolled into 1 and with growth slowing have tried. Meta, who has Instagram, Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Facebook Marketplace, Whatsapp and now threads hasn't tried. they have all the parts to do it and haven't. why? because nobody outside of fucking China wants it all in 1 app.

it's going to fucking fail because ultimately he isn't a trustworthy person and typically people don't like giving their entire financial lives over to someone who can't (or worse, doesn't) pay his bills. if this was his goal the whole time why did he fire entire engineering teams without consideration for who was on them or trying to keep people who could fix back end to convert twitter to x.com all over the codebase? why did he fire whole teams working on things like spaces? the video player?

why did he get rid of those selling ads, almost across the board? why did he go through so many trust and safety leaders? why did he cut back access to everyone, across the board.

he. has. no. real. plan.

if he had a plan, wouldn't he start and fund it all himself so he owned the product instead of bringing in institutional lenders and nation states as partners?

if it wasn't a gamble and he was so confident why did he spend $44b on the product instead of spending say $10b on seed money to set up the product from scratch, with a better and more secure messaging system, non shit video player and audio space alternative, with a commerce and payment tool set up from the very start? without existing huge contracts ($200+m to GCP) and a huge amount of leased space world wide?

"it's not that much of a gamble, he only paid $44b for the asset, then complained about it losing money, after he loaded it up with a billion and change in debt service per year, and how is worth somewhere south of $14b in less than a year"

Quote

Also, I guess people feel entitled to their toy (old Twitter) and are mad that someone bought it and tanked it and are really trying/hoping that Threads makes it.

of course you don't understand why there is so much anger about a rich asshole buying the thing they love and use all the time, wrecking it up in every way, and bringing back actual, literal, real nazis and white supremacists. it's an extremely basic concept that you don't understand.

i bet you were a huge fan of fucking Kevin Morgan and probably go out of your way to spend money at the Eskimo Hut. i bet you thought the website would be way better once he owned it...right?

fuck off.

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8 minutes ago, Longhornsnus said:

Yes, there is a ton of social equity and capital in the name/logo/company. Trying to monetize and turn that social "IP" into dollars was a struggle for some of the most interesting business minds (Dorsey, Bret Taylor, Elon), so it's a rip the bandaid and sink or swim transformation. 

if you think Jack fucking Dorsey is an "interesting business mind" you haven't read jack shit about him or how he does business.

of course you, of all people, think Jack Dorsey is some brilliant business mind.

go read Hatching Twitter if you think he is anywhere close to some brilliant person, much less a brilliant business mind. you have what a ton of people actually think of him very clearly outlined in it. the fact that Noah, Biz and Evan don't talk to him at all anymore kind of says it all.

fuck off.

Edited by NoName
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49 minutes ago, Captain Ron said:

Hell, you didn't see Facebook throw away the brand with Meta

Just a note, they did: Meta eventually became the name of the parent company, but before that, they stupidly renamed Oculus to Meta, and achieved similarly terrible results. Oculus had already become synonymous with VR, and it actually killed their professional line, which was announced dead just a few days ago. Companies were still asking about "Oculus" when they'd talk to Meta, despite the brand name "oculus" no longer existing.

That's partially why this X shit is so dumb. If you look at Meta, they made the exact same mistake in an even smaller market and ate shit for it. Yet here goes musk.

Edited by DickSolomon
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3 minutes ago, Longhornsnus said:

Yes, there is a ton of social equity and capital in the name/logo/company. Trying to monetize and turn that social "IP" into dollars was a struggle for some of the most interesting business minds (Dorsey, Bret Taylor, Elon), so it's a rip the bandaid and sink or swim transformation. 

You’re making my point. He never had to buy the fucking thing. If his goals for this company are what you have described he could have done all that as a startup or under the auspices of one of his existing companies for a lot less than one billion dollars much less 44. He bought it and it is worth a fraction of what he bought it for, because he vastly overpaid for it, because he and has made seemingly the worst decision at possible every step of the way since he acquired it. 
 

Hey I want to corner the ketchup market. I’m going to call it ‘T’. Let me get started by buying Coca Cola 

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  • blacklab changed the title to Elon Musk: Officially a fraud and piece of shit. Official or unofficial war criminal?

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