Oh, he said it was sad how this all went down.
Honestly, who cares if you're sad about it, Jack. You egged him on at the time. You have some responsibility for this mess.
To be fair, around that time Musk had a high favorability rating within the whole industry. Musk seriously rotted afterwards. But prior to that time he was a different person, watch this video if you don't believe me [1].
Elon was always pretty sure he was some kind of Straussian wizard capable of Jedi mind tricks. Boring Company and Hyperloop were dick moves to try to stop rail and transit projects.
But having to cough up most of your personal liquidity (n.b.: not net worth) because you, mistakenly, thought you could trash talk your way out of a $44B deal for which you, personally, are on the hook could be classified a traumatic event.
Elon spent months publicly displaying that he did not want to actually pay for and own Twitter. And now he does. The opportunity cost to Elon is boggling. That kind of thing could make you meaner.
Musk didn't "rot". What happened is basically he's a talented fraudster who can speak about being on a mission from God to save humanity and transition Earth to this or that and this attracts immense amount of interest from capital and talent to bootstrap a company.
When this company is built from the ground up around Musk, there's a protective layer between him and the company, so that his bombastic narcissism doesn't leak out or hurt the company's management too much.
But Twitter wasn't built from the ground up for him, it was an existing company, he fired the top managers, the board, and 80% of the company, and then kept tweeting through every mishap he makes. We all saw him for what he always was.
Truly some epic level "behind the curtain Wizard of Oz" story here. And behind the curtain is an asshole with a lot of brazen lies and little to show for it in term of personal capability.
He's an "aligner". If he fools enough investors and workers that he's doing something big, they give him his money and their time & effort to make it happen, and it happens. He's good at starting things, but terrible at continuing them.
With respect, it depends on who you ask. I thought his behavior around investments was, at the most charitable, unsportsmanlike and gross. I thought the creation (and public admission of!) the boring company as a crowbar to get California HSR cancelled was disgusting.
They nee to get specific about "extending the light of consciousness"
Here is the problem -
1. Networks grew. Devices/Content creation got cheap.
2. Cost of Broadcast fell to 0. Cost to spam fell to 0.
3. Info Exploded. Attention got scarce.
4. To address the Info tsunami there is an Explosion of half baked Tools (page rank,news feed, collecting personal info, like counts etc) all of which get gamed as arms races for scarce Attention begin
5. Pressure to keep the tools free causes dependency on Advertising to build.
6. Advertisers change the focus of the tools to Engagement Maximization. Attention gets fucked further.
7. Never ending side effects and unintended consequences. Hack on top of hack to address each one. Throw in crypto, mindless market capture/empire defense wars. And people are furiously 24x7 on a road to now where.
Getting back control over Attention is all that matters. Any tool that doesnt focus on that as the primary goal is worthless.
8 comments
[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 27.7 ms ] thread[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOMcCNNdSl0
But having to cough up most of your personal liquidity (n.b.: not net worth) because you, mistakenly, thought you could trash talk your way out of a $44B deal for which you, personally, are on the hook could be classified a traumatic event.
Elon spent months publicly displaying that he did not want to actually pay for and own Twitter. And now he does. The opportunity cost to Elon is boggling. That kind of thing could make you meaner.
When this company is built from the ground up around Musk, there's a protective layer between him and the company, so that his bombastic narcissism doesn't leak out or hurt the company's management too much.
But Twitter wasn't built from the ground up for him, it was an existing company, he fired the top managers, the board, and 80% of the company, and then kept tweeting through every mishap he makes. We all saw him for what he always was.
Truly some epic level "behind the curtain Wizard of Oz" story here. And behind the curtain is an asshole with a lot of brazen lies and little to show for it in term of personal capability.
He's an "aligner". If he fools enough investors and workers that he's doing something big, they give him his money and their time & effort to make it happen, and it happens. He's good at starting things, but terrible at continuing them.
Here is the problem - 1. Networks grew. Devices/Content creation got cheap.
2. Cost of Broadcast fell to 0. Cost to spam fell to 0.
3. Info Exploded. Attention got scarce.
4. To address the Info tsunami there is an Explosion of half baked Tools (page rank,news feed, collecting personal info, like counts etc) all of which get gamed as arms races for scarce Attention begin
5. Pressure to keep the tools free causes dependency on Advertising to build.
6. Advertisers change the focus of the tools to Engagement Maximization. Attention gets fucked further.
7. Never ending side effects and unintended consequences. Hack on top of hack to address each one. Throw in crypto, mindless market capture/empire defense wars. And people are furiously 24x7 on a road to now where.
Getting back control over Attention is all that matters. Any tool that doesnt focus on that as the primary goal is worthless.
https://twitter.com/TitterDaily/status/1652134297590013952