Good Luck Getting Elon Musk to Cease Tweeting

Why do it? After I wrote about Musk’s tweeting earlier this 12 months, I leaned towards the concept that Twitter itself had led him into this 280-character recklessness. I described Twitter as a superhighway out of your foot to your mouth. However now that he owns the corporate, it’s gotten worse—and seemingly extra intentional. Musk appears to have programmed his Tesla navigation system to zoom straight into his personal babbling entice. The definitive reply to why he’s doing that is solely accessible inside the massive mind of the person who guidelines Tesla, SpaceX, mind implant and tunneling startups, and now additionally Twitter. I can’t ask Twitter for a remark as a result of Musk fired its PR crew. Folks round Musk I surveyed aren’t offering solutions, both. The one response I did get was from his good friend and fellow OpenAI cofounder Sam Altman. “Really no concept,” Altman says.

One in every of Musk’s surrogates has addressed the tweets: Joe Lonsdale, an investor and Palantir cofounder who is aware of Musk and is rumored to be advising him on the Twitter rescue. As a latest visitor on CNBC, Lonsdale gushed about how “the probabilities are superb” for Musk and Twitter. However when cohost Andrew Ross Sorkin introduced up the Markey tweet, he had the identical considerations I did. “I don’t perceive it!” Sorkin mentioned. “Democrats management the Senate, that man runs a complete variety of committees—with subpoena energy no much less! … Doesn’t he put himself in some sort of actual danger?”

Lonsdale defended his good friend by saying the tweets proved “how necessary it’s that Elon wins.” It’s about freedom. “In China, if you happen to try this, you’re positively out,” mentioned Lonsdale, waving his hand in a chopping movement like a Maoist executioner. “It’s proving to everybody that it’s attainable we now have a free nation, and you may push again, you’ll be able to mock people who find themselves attacking you, and you may nonetheless win. And that’s superior! He’s saying we’re free and I’m not going to deal with this like a Communist dictatorship.”

That comment might need landed higher if at that very second Musk had not been publicly firing—after which making enjoyable of—any worker who dared to publish something about this that was extra important than a genuflection to his greatness. Since Twitter CEO Musk is main a dictatorial masterclass, I reject the Lonsdale Concept.

One other supposition is that Musk has misplaced his thoughts. We should always subsequently regard all his actions at his Twitter as Queeg-like lunacy. That doesn’t work both. These troublesome tweets aren’t new habits. Bear in mind 2018, when Should recklessly referred to as the man who bought these Thai children out of the cave a “pedo man”? Musk received the defamation lawsuit filed in opposition to him by the rescuer, however paid a worth in distraction and status for his unjustified slur. And saved going. Or what in regards to the time that very same 12 months when he tweeted, “Am contemplating taking Tesla personal at $420. Funding secured.” Seems the funding was not secured. Additionally, there was confusion over whether or not the tweet was a joke, since April 20 is called Weed Day, a time to fireplace up a fats spliff. In any case, the US Securities and Alternate Fee was not amused. Musk and Tesla each needed to pay $20 million to settle the company’s grievance, and Musk needed to step down as Tesla’s chair. However exterior Twitter, Musk has been exhibiting no indicators of madness. Since these 2018 tweets, he’s carried out a fairly good job at working Tesla and SpaceX, so one would possibly assume he’s the identical not-crazy man now. Solely loopy in his tweets.