Elon Musk-owned social media company X could lose as much as $75 million in advertising revenue by the end of the year as dozens of major brands pause their marketing campaigns, the New York Times reported on Friday.
Why is this problematic for Elon? Has he ever explicitly conceded he needsX to be profitable? Isn’t it sufficient and necessary enough in the eyes of his investors to simply neuter it?
He’s said that he WANTS it to be profitable and as a clinical narcissist billionaire, he doesn’t cope well with not getting what he wants.
On a more practical level, the cesspit it’s become has increased scrutiny on his other companies and the main one, Tesla, is decidedly NOT weathering that well.
All in all, he’s lost over a third, maybe even as much as HALF of his still absurdly huge dragon’s hoard of wealth since he took over Twitter.
I think you’re overthinking it tbh. He’s not some evil supergenius, he’s just an extreme lucky idiot and bigot who’s finally getting a taste of the finding out after fucking around for most of his life…
Evil, yes, but in no way a mastermind. Barely even a mind.
He doesn’t need to be evil or a genius or even have a mind (although I think that is overly uncharitable to the point I have to depart in agreeing with you briefly, he is a smart guy but sometimes smart people can be the dumbest, I’m a living+breathing example of this), all he has to do is to take money from cunning evil people
True, and pay people much smarter and otherwise more capable to do the actual work required for making him money.
That’s the main reason why the whole Twitter thing has been such a dumpster fire: he’s taking a hands on approach rather than just pretending to by taking credit for the work of other people.
The fact that the nature of a social media company means that most of his mistakes and desperate attempts to rectify them are much more public sure doesn’t help either, given his narcissism…
pay people much smarter and otherwise more capable to do the actual work required for making him money.
That’s intense, its not like he has any kind of track record with that, does he? I dunno, I thought he was always already all of those things and worked 120-hour weeks “running” several companies one-man-show style like Nathan Fielder or James Franco('s Roast)?
Every billionaire claims that it’s all due to hard work, but their “work” is mostly just meetings where they get to just spitball bullshit that doesn’t even have to make any sense.
2-hour “business lunch” where you discuss business for 5 minutes? That’s work to a billionaire.
18 holes with your business buddies, whether that means golf or a meeting at a brothel? Work.
Tweeting from a building belonging to the company? Work.
Playing a ridiculous Elden Ring bulld in the office? Work.
Shouting at your ex wife while on company premises? Work.
Elon’s not personally designing battery chemistry or running aerodynamics simulations on bodywork at Tesla. He certainly isn’t bolting them together, though that would explain the poor finish quality I keep hearing about.
The leadership of a company of any significant size can only ever be doing a small plurality of the work at most, and can usually get away with much less than that. There simply aren’t enough hours in the day to outwork the hundreds or thousands of employees that are actually making the company most of its money.
Much of his wealth is held in shares of his publicly traded companies. If investors lose faith in his ability to manage and grow one company it could (and seemingly has) affect the value of all companies he’s involved with, directly decreasing his net worth. Making Twitter profitable would have gone a long way in demonstrating his ability to run a company, but he has done the opposite.
But technically no, I guess he doesn’t need Twitter to turn a profit. He could just watch it all burn.
…and unless you’re Elon, this is a problem why?
Why is this problematic for Elon? Has he ever explicitly conceded he needs
Xto be profitable? Isn’t it sufficient and necessary enough in the eyes of his investors to simply neuter it?He’s said that he WANTS it to be profitable and as a clinical narcissist billionaire, he doesn’t cope well with not getting what he wants.
On a more practical level, the cesspit it’s become has increased scrutiny on his other companies and the main one, Tesla, is decidedly NOT weathering that well.
All in all, he’s lost over a third, maybe even as much as HALF of his still absurdly huge dragon’s hoard of wealth since he took over Twitter.
There’s something fishy going on in my view. Its only conjecture as of yet and I don’t want to push it too much but none of this computes, so to speak
Elon spouts a lot of nonsense and “said” he wanted to buy Twitter initially
I think you’re overthinking it tbh. He’s not some evil supergenius, he’s just an extreme lucky idiot and bigot who’s finally getting a taste of the finding out after fucking around for most of his life…
Evil, yes, but in no way a mastermind. Barely even a mind.
He doesn’t need to be evil or a genius or even have a mind (although I think that is overly uncharitable to the point I have to depart in agreeing with you briefly, he is a smart guy but sometimes smart people can be the dumbest, I’m a living+breathing example of this), all he has to do is to take money from cunning evil people
True, and pay people much smarter and otherwise more capable to do the actual work required for making him money.
That’s the main reason why the whole Twitter thing has been such a dumpster fire: he’s taking a hands on approach rather than just pretending to by taking credit for the work of other people.
The fact that the nature of a social media company means that most of his mistakes and desperate attempts to rectify them are much more public sure doesn’t help either, given his narcissism…
That’s intense, its not like he has any kind of track record with that, does he? I dunno, I thought he was always already all of those things and worked 120-hour weeks “running” several companies one-man-show style like Nathan Fielder or James Franco('s Roast)?
Every billionaire claims that it’s all due to hard work, but their “work” is mostly just meetings where they get to just spitball bullshit that doesn’t even have to make any sense.
2-hour “business lunch” where you discuss business for 5 minutes? That’s work to a billionaire.
18 holes with your business buddies, whether that means golf or a meeting at a brothel? Work.
Tweeting from a building belonging to the company? Work.
Playing a ridiculous Elden Ring bulld in the office? Work.
Shouting at your ex wife while on company premises? Work.
Berating workers for wanting to unionize? Work.
Elon’s not personally designing battery chemistry or running aerodynamics simulations on bodywork at Tesla. He certainly isn’t bolting them together, though that would explain the poor finish quality I keep hearing about.
The leadership of a company of any significant size can only ever be doing a small plurality of the work at most, and can usually get away with much less than that. There simply aren’t enough hours in the day to outwork the hundreds or thousands of employees that are actually making the company most of its money.
Much of his wealth is held in shares of his publicly traded companies. If investors lose faith in his ability to manage and grow one company it could (and seemingly has) affect the value of all companies he’s involved with, directly decreasing his net worth. Making Twitter profitable would have gone a long way in demonstrating his ability to run a company, but he has done the opposite.
But technically no, I guess he doesn’t need Twitter to turn a profit. He could just watch it all burn.
Elon is probably one of the only people in the world to whom this is not too worrisome.