[mandmandam]

> she was not to blame.

Fall guys bear some of the blame in the fall.

My long-held [0] personal theory - borne out by everything Musk has done, and by who bought Twitter - is that it was bought to curb the possibility of large positive social movements along the lines of OWS or BLM.

Enabling that can entail being useless at your supposed job, while doing your actual job (which deserves some amount of blame, from a number of perspectives).

0 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36685384

[jjfoooo4]

I think Elon truly believed in the subscription model, which would free him from advertiser content influence. That and being terminally addicted to the platform himself, and being an impulsive gambler. I really don't think we've gotten where we are due to any (successful) master plan

[reactordev]

This. He was addicted to Twitter. He saw value in it and thought he could run it better. He wanted to be “The Place” where things were talked about. Where he could control the narrative.

History has shown us, the more you try to control it, the more it slips through your fingers. The best surfers know, you ride the wave, not fight it.

[ToucanLoucan]

See my only counterpoint to this theory is Musk has a long and well documented history of being absolutely stone desperate to be cool, which is the only thing he can't buy, and he simply revels in his ownership of Twitter even as he comprehensively runs it into the ground as a business.

Now, would he be upset about such efforts being derailed as a result, or is he even slightly bothered about his website now being packed to the tits with Nazis? Absolutely not. But I do think as unbelievably cringe as it would be if true, I really think he bought the damn thing because he just wanted to be the meme lord.

Mainly I just struggle with giving him as much credit as your theory does in terms of long term planning. He's an overgrown man-child.

[JohnBooty]

I think you and the parent poster are doing a good job of describing the same thing from different angles. Both observations are true.

Musk wanted to steer culture toward his own ends as the parent poster described and he wanted to be seen as some kind of.... cool vanguard of that, as you say.

It's really different facets of the same thing, right?

[ToucanLoucan]

I guess what I struggle with is seeing Musk taking that kind of top-down strategic view of things? Which that could entirely be a me problem. I think there's an inherent bias in the way a lot of people think where they assign these Machiavellian motives especially to the super-privileged and those in positions of power, the 5D chess type shit, and I tend to bias in the other direction where... a lot of times these guys are just fucking losers and they don't think terribly dissimilarly from your weird uncle who doesn't come to the reuinions anymore.

Ultimately though, this is a bit of a weird aside to go on I fully admit. The "solutions" so to speak for people like this are basically the same whether they are dark-room schemers or dickheads with far too much money and not nearly enough accountability.

[JohnBooty]

Yeah, I don't think it was 5D chess at all.

I think he saw a good (to him) opportunity to steer public discourse by tossing a big stack of cash at probably the most influential social media network in terms of mindshare, to push whatever ideas were careening through his mind at any given point.

He may not have even been sober, much less playing 5D chess.

[Zigurd]

He is an overgrown manchild in a playground full of overgrown Randian Straussian manchilds. They are lucky 90% of the normies don't care, yet.

[mandmandam]

> He's an overgrown man-child.

Damn near every mega-billionaire is, almost by definition. If the best thing you can come up with to do with money is make more of it at other people's expense, then you're not even close to what I'd call mentally mature.

That doesn't stop many oligarchs from making cunning plans with layers and layers of depth, or being excellent at misdirection and media manipulation - both of which Musk also has a long and well documented history of showing. It also doesn't stop them from hiring people to make and/or refine those plans. Shit, there's probably cunning bootlickers out there, like Yarvin, just pitching this shit to them all the time.

> I just struggle with giving him as much credit as your theory does in terms of long term planning

As far as plans go, "buy Twitter and destroy it because it threatens our class interests - but pretend you're doing it for free speech or whatever" isn't especially complicated. Just piss off advertisers, users, and your staff, in plausibly deniable ways. It's not like corporate media are going to call you on it.

[dzhiurgis]

Sorry, what money did billionaires took from you?

[mandmandam]

If you're serious, I recommend you take a look at this [0] and really have a good long think about it.

0 - https://www.oxfam.org/en/takers-not-makers-unjust-poverty-an...

[woah]

It's conspiratorial thinking to assume that everything that happens in the world is perfectly executed by omniscient villains with 20/20 hindsight. Maybe a formerly-brilliant but drug-addled rich guy just bought a social media platform with bad fundamentals at the height of its valuation and then mismanaged it while flailing around with other ventures and political adventures. Occam's razor.

[quantified]

You are conveniently omitting his reason to buy it. Personal megaphone and shortly thereafter LLM training data are the simplest reasons.

[woah]

Maybe he just spent a lot of time shitposting on there.

[rgreek42]

He did not want to buy it. He took an arrogant joke far enough that the Delaware Court of Chancery forced him to do it. He never wanted it earnestly.

[stephen_g]

Buying a 9.1% stake in a company before making an unsolicited (but formal) offer to buy out the rest of it is weird behaviour for somebody who didn’t actually ever want to buy it…

[contrast]

I think the GP is suggesting a simple explanation of why it went badly, since that is the subject of the thread, rather than an explanation of why Musk bought Twitter. No need for conspiratorial accusations of conveniently omitting anything.

[scns]

> formerly-brilliant

When?

[Zigurd]

TBF going from the cobbled together roadster to actually mass producing cars was an accomplishment, as was giving his engineers the latitude to keep trying to land a Falcon 9 booster.

Then he started to think it was his brilliance that made those things successful. Cybertruck is his baby. So is Starship. He's telling his people to make it work with a little or no moderation of his concepts.

[evan_]

It’s not clear to me that he had any hand in the actual successes of Tesla and SpaceX. Stories abound of the lengths to which each company went to to manage his whims. He’s apparently burned through all of those firewalls and now both companies are exploding, figuratively and in literally.

[saagarjha]

That's what the comment you're replying to said.

[numpad0]

Wasn't elonjet the turning point? There are some arguments around that he might not have clear cognitive distinction between verbal accusations and physical violence. Maybe that was the missed shot from rooftop for him. Elon before those events was a Steve Jobs Junior figure, that is to say, he was not problematic enough for the rest of the world including myself to focus on the crazy side.

[cschep]

I'd love to hear why this is being downvoted? Not agreeing is one thing, but it seems like a reasonable thing to suggest?

[spankalee]

> It's conspiratorial thinking to assume that everything that happens in the world is perfectly executed by omniscient villains with 20/20 hindsight.

Because the original comment isn't doing this. It's not talking about everything, it's talking about one specific thing in a very plausible scenario.

It wouldn't even need to be a very complicated or widespread "conspiracy": Just Musk and a few VC guys in a Signal or Telegram thread saying

> someone should just buy Twitter and downrank all these crazy leftists

> Hmm

> I'll help line up financing.

> Ok!

This isn't flat earth, chem trails, lizard people, or weather weapons. It's not even Illuminati, Masons, or Skull and Bones. We've seen some of these chats already.

[anigbrowl]

Because Musk has provided abundant evidence of his political orientation over the last several years.

[greedo]

Witness his entire Boring Company being a sock puppet project to derail California's High Speed Rail system.

[larkost]

Can you provide more about this idea? I see the Boring company as being pretty feckless, and at the same time extremely boastful. They have gotten hopes up in a number of places about solving city traffic problems, only to go dark when the rubber (should have) met the road.

But I don't see any of those having impacted the California High Speed Rail. Rather that has been harmed by lots of different groups throwing roadblocks up, sometime for ideological reasons (lots of this from State and National Republicans, sometimes with reasons, but often more political), and a whole lot of NIMBY (see: Palo Alto). What do you see the Boring Company having to do with that?

As a side note: there are some really poorly thought through parts of the project, for example they don't have a plan for actually making it over the mountains into Los Angeles. I still want it to happen, but...

[jazzyjackson]

The CHSR thing is a bit apocryphal (no evidence, just according to his biographer) since hyperloop never really competed in any way with CHSR. He did, however, play a very big role in fucking up a potential Chicago connection between downtown and O'hare, as the Boring company actually did win the bid to use the abandoned cavern below the Washington Red/Blue line stop, promising to run a hyperloop up to the airport. It never went anywhere, and the cavern below block 37 remains abandoned.

https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/elon-musk-ohare-airport...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Express_Loop

[stephen_g]

It was the silly and obviously unworkable Hyperloop idea that was pushed as an attempt to stop CAHSR, according to Musk’s biographer [1].

1. https://www.disconnect.blog/p/the-hyperloop-was-always-a-sca...

[greedo]

Hyperloop was a stunt Musk spun up to mess with the HSR, and the Boring company to fight against subway type systems. I mixed the two up.

[andrewflnr]

He's provided evidence of being an impulsive fool for even longer. I defended Musk as a useful idiot for a while until be fully showed his true colors, but it has always been clear he's not a wise man.

(His vigorous and pathetic efforts to get out of the purchase also push against it being a big master plan, FWIW.)

[freejazz]

> perfectly executed by omniscient villains with 20/20 hindsight

Is a strawman, to which the conclusion is also defied by the plain evidence of everything Musk has done on Twitter

[schmidtleonard]

You are missing the forest for one very odd tree. Yes, the tree is wacky, but

* Every private media company has beneficial owners * Those beneficial owners are rich * Rich people who own things for a living have incentives opposed to those of most people, who work for a living

These are not conspiracies, they are just basic facts of capitalism.

[psunavy03]

Better to put "facts" in quotation marks considering that is clearly a statement of opinion, and a fairly caricatured one at that.

[qhiliq]

That there are a select few who own the capital, and that those people generally do not overlap with the people who work, is more or less the original definition of capitalism. And I don't think its controversial or a caricature to imply that those two groups will have different incentives.

From Wikipedia [0]: `The initial use of the term "capitalism" in its modern sense is attributed to Louis Blanc in 1850 ("What I call 'capitalism' that is to say the appropriation of capital by some to the exclusion of others") and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in 1861 ("Economic and social regime in which capital, the source of income, does not generally belong to those who make it work through their labor")`

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism#Etymology

[quantified]

I haven't downvoted you, I am curious. Why do you disagree? In what relevant ways are their interests aligned?

[steveBK123]

Pretty good theory

[harikb]

hmm... I am drawing a parallel between your theory on 'controlled opposition' from the linked thread from 2023, to the current M vs T fight. Plausible...

[yibg]

Thing is, she failed at being the fall person. It's clear to everyone who was calling the shots, so ironically she was ineffective as the fall person.

[breppp]

My conspiracy theory was that because of Musk's involvement in OpenAI he had foreknowledge of the impeding release of ChatGPT. In that context, Twitter as a source for AI training can be far more valuable than a rage filled social network. However he still failed horribly to time the market

[debugnik]

> Twitter as a source for AI training can be far more valuable than a rage filled social network

Isn't Twitter the go-to example of a rage filled social network?

[foobarchu]

I took them to mean it can be both things at once, and one is more valuable than the other. Not that being an ai training source would make it a rage filled social network.

[debugnik]

> I took them to mean it can be both things at once

Thanks, now I get the intended reading.

> Not that being an ai training source would make it a rage filled social network.

I clearly didn't mean that would be the cause, though. Twitter's current state had been cooking for a decade.

[fpia]

nah, that's 4chan

[claytonjy]

how would you explain how hard he fought to NOT buy twitter?

people seem to forget he was legally forced to buy Twitter after he tried for months to get out of his joke bid, primarily through claiming he was misled about the extent of bots on the platform

[breppp]

The entire idea is to buy an undervalued platform using insider information, if the stock price plunges after he committed to a price then it's no longer undervalued. This has happened between his bid and termination announcements.

I also roughly remember he had his Tesla holdings as collateral creating some liquidity crisis for him.

This elaborate explanation does not mean it isn't wrong and the original theory of idiot-with-money does not hold

[sleepybrett]

He just had to pay what 1/50th of his bid to exit the buy. He'd make that bill back in what a month?

[PaulHoule]

Nothing positive can come out of Twitter for McLuhanite reasons.

Zohran Mamdami's greatest attribute in media is that if you see him in video you see him listening to people. Even people who aren't inclined to agree with him talk to him and say "he was so nice, he listened to me." High-D [1] billionaires who support High-D candidates such as Clinton, Cuomo and Adams are driven crazy by this. [2]

Even though Twitter does provide a back channel and a Twitter user may really be a nice guy who listens and replies, the structure of the thing is such that you don't see that user listening and in fact the user interface on Twitter makes it really hard to see that conversation for outsiders in the way that the heavy Twitter user doesn't get. Not least because the heavy Twitter user might not realize that people who aren't logged in don't see anything at all (pro tip: just don't post links to Twitter on HN, you might see a great discussion with a lot of context, the rest of us just see a single sentence floating in space without any context)

On video though, the person who listens listens visibly, you see the microexpressions in real time as they react to what the other person is saying. It's a thing of beauty. (Coalition leaders such as Chuck Schumer and Nancy Peloci do a lot of listening as part of their job but constituents only see them talking!)

The above is a second order concern compared to the general compression of discourse in Twitter which is talked about in [2]. Twitter addicts spend 4-5 hours a day traversing graphs to follow discussions and understand (or think they understand?) context, the rest of us just see "white farmers" which means one thing if you're racist, another if you're "anti-racist", and just means "move along folks, nothing more to see here" for the great silent majority. When Twitter is at equilibrium every movement creates and equal and opposite amount of backlash, nothing actually changes except polarization increases, there is more and more talking and less and less listening, and the possibility of real social change diminishes.

Burn it down.

[1] https://darkfactor.org/

[2] for once good NYT content that isn't paywalled: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/28/opinion/ezra-klein-show-c...

[gsf_emergency_2]

Style: Manhattan

Generation: Zohran

https://indianexpress.com/article/fresh-take/zohran-mamdani-...

High time the left reinvented memes their own way, "mutability over machismo" (& not a shred of maudlin)

Better link for dark factors imho https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=9935796152480174745...