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Elon, After Personally Driving Away Advertisers, Tells Them To Go Fuck Themselves (Repeatedly), And Says ‘Earth’ Will ‘Judge’ Them For Killing ExTwitter

Say That Again

from the that's-not-how-any-of-this-works dept

Thu, Nov 30th 2023 09:24am -

I’m not sure Elon quite understands the concept of “damage control.” Advertisers are bailing, and the rate increases every time he says something stupid or endorses this or that conspiracy theory. It’s costing the company tons of money, but he still can’t admit that he’s the problem. So, instead, he’s blaming everyone else. And sometimes suing organizations for daring to point out what a mess he’s made.

So I guess it should be no surprise that when Elon appeared at the Dealbook conference, he struck his usual defiant tone, which doesn’t seem likely to help Linda Yaccarino win back any advertisers.

“If somebody’s gonna try to blackmail me with advertising? Blackmail me with money? Go f—yourself.” He added, “Don’t advertise.”

He also implied that fans of his, and of X, would boycott those advertisers in kind. He specifically took aim at Disney.

“The whole world will know that those advertisers killed the company and we will document it in great detail,” Musk threatened.

The full video of the moment is way more damning.

It starts off with host Andrew Ross Sorkin talking about how it looks like Elon is doing an apology tour, and mentioning that he spoke with Disney boss Bob Iger earlier in the day, and Elon, looking unwell, says:

Elon: I hope they stop.

ARS: [pauses… confused…] You… hope…?

Elon: Don’t advertise.

ARS: [more confused] You don’t want them to advertise?

Elon: No!

ARS: What do you mean?

Elon: If somebody’s gonna try to blackmail me with advertising? Blackmail me with money? Go fuck yourself.

ARS: [perplexed] But…

Elon: Go. Fuck. Yourself. Is that clear? [Smug asshole look that isn’t nearly as smug as he thinks it is]. I hope it is. [Waves] Hey Bob, if you’re in the audience.

ARS: Well, let me ask you then…

Elon: That’s how I feel.

ARS: [Mouth open]

Elon: Don’t advertise.

ARS: [trying to bring the conversation around]: How do you think then about the economics of X, if part of the underlying model is… and maybe it needs to shift, maybe it needs to shift away from advertising… if you believe that this is the one part of your business where you will be beholden… to… uh… have this view?

Elon: G. F. Y. [Nods the confident nod of someone deeply wrong about something]

ARS: I understand that, but there’s a reality too, right? I mean Linda Yaccarino’s right here and she’s gotta sell advertising.

Elon: Yes, no, no, right. Yes. No. Absolutely so. No, no, totally. So, no, no, so. Actually what this advertising boycott is going to do, it’s going to kill the company.

ARS: [realizing that Elon seems to be encouraging a boycott that will, as he just said, kill the company] And you think that the…

Elon: But, the whole world will know that the advertisers killed the company. And we will document it in great detail.

ARS: But those advertisers are going to say “we didn’t kill the company…”

Elon: Oh yeah? Tell that to Earth!

ARS: [momentarily stunned] But… they’re going to say, Elon, that YOU killed the company, because you said these things and they were inappropriate things, and they didn’t feel comfortable on the platform. That’s what they’re going to say.

Elon: And let’s see how Earth responds to that. [Smug asshole look again]

ARS: So, let me… okay… this goes back to…

Elon: We’ll both make our cases, and we’ll see what the outcome is.

ARS: What are the economics of that for you. I mean, you have enormous resources, so you can keep this company going for a very long time. Would you keep it going for a long time if there was no advertising?

Elon: I mean, if the company fails, because of an advertising boycott, it will fail because of an advertising boycott, and that’s what will have bankrupted the company, and that’s what everyone on earth will know.

ARS: But you recognize, that some of those people are going to say that they didn’t feel comfortable on the platform. And I just wonder and ask you to think about that for a second…

Elon: Tell it to the judge.

ARS: But the judge is gonna be…

Elon: The judge is the public.

So much nonsense in so little time.

First off, advertisers choosing not to advertise on your platforms is not “blackmail.” It’s actually their free speech right of association not to associate with you and your nonsense.

Second, the advertisers your CEO is desperately pleading with to come back (and maybe spend more than $10) aren’t going to find you telling them to “go fuck yourself,” an enticing deal.

Third, if you really are so cavalier about it, why are you suing Media Matters for its report that you claim convinced many advertisers to leave?

Fourth, are you actually admitting that ExTwitter is being “killed” by advertisers leaving the platform? Because for months now, you and Yaccarino have claimed you’re on the verge of profitability. But now you seem to be saying that the company has been “killed” because advertisers exercising their own free speech rights want nothing to do with you.

Fifth, what kind of entitled, out-of-touch brat thinks that advertisers choosing not to give you money is some sort of statement on their culpability? No advertiser owes you money, you entitled billionaire. This is how lots of businesses fail. They don’t make enough revenue. Actively driving away the source of nearly all of your revenue is a choice that you, Elon, made, not something we blame on the advertisers. When newspapers go under because they couldn’t get enough ad sales, do we blame the advertisers? This all seems like evidence of someone who has never faced an ounce of hardship in his life and the first time he does insists it must be everyone else’s fault rather than his own failings.

Sixth, I’m sure that threatening to send your mob of drooling, sheep-like fanboys after advertisers is going to convince them to come back. Masterful gambit.

Seventh, how fucking high on your own supply must you be to think that “earth” will “judge” advertisers for “killing exTwitter” when the only reason they’re leaving is because of stupid, fucked up shit that you, yourself are doing?

Anyway, it would be nice if Elon could stop doing stupid shit for just like one day. It would let me move on to some of the many other stories I’m trying to write about.

Filed Under: , , ,
Companies: disney, twitter, x

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This comment has been deemed funny by the community.
Anonymous Coward says:

Elon, please stop sleeping on floor 3 hours per night and take some vacations.
One week, one month, one year, or more, as you need. You deserve it.
You’ll see that everybody will doing fine. Really, they’ll even doing great.
Maybe you’ll realize that nobody need you.
Really. Don’t wait for anybody to lock by force in an asylum, where you deserve to be.
Please, go f*ck in vacation by yourself.

This comment has been deemed insightful by the community.
Manabi (profile) says:

Re:

No, it’s most likely narcissistic collapse with part of it happening live on TV:

Narcissistic collapse happens when a person with narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) becomes unable to uphold their grandiose, confident image due to a perceived fatal blow to their reputation. This leads to a breakdown which manifests as angry outbursts, irritable or defensive behavior, and verbal or physical aggression. Internally the person with NPD feels a loss of sense of self along with perceived rejection and abandonment. It can result in harm to the person with NPD and those around them.

That explains everything about the video. This suggests things at Twitter are far worse than we think they are and that the end is nigh. Things had to have gotten so bad that they’ve forced Musk to admit to himself that he has failed, although he’ll never admit it to others. He’s only going to get worse from here and suicide is a real possibility.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re:

Maybe a decade or two ago, people might not have agreed. But looking at all the heavily unhinged people who fancy themselves to be rich and intelligent visionaries come apart at the seams, a moral argument can be made that at the very least we should probably stop treating people as holier than thou purely based on the reason that they have money. It just brings out the worst in people.

David says:

Re:

Oh please. Who wants fashion gossip on TechDirt? “Taylor Smith looked stunning in a low-cut gown and matching stilettos from St Laurent. Elon Musk was high, drunk and sleep-deprived in a dirty T-shirt and non-matching sneakers.”

Who cares what preparation it takes to make Musk be Musk? He was Musk. That’s what counts. Or in this case, counts out.

This comment has been deemed insightful by the community.
Stephen T. Stone (profile) says:

Re: Re:

I don’t know about you, but if I were an investor in Twitter and its actual CEO did an interview where he appeared to be impaired in some way, I’d be worried about whether he could actually run Twitter in a meaningful and productive capacity.

This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.

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Stephen T. Stone (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:2

That investor concern has been the rationale for the Yaccarino farce.

Nobody believes she has any actual power, not when Elon is still running the show. And while one might have been willing to write Elon off as an “eccentric” before, this interview puts that lie to bed: Elon Musk is suffering from, at a bare minimum, some sort of mental health issue that seems to be impairing his judgment and his ability to run Twitter. If I were an investor in Twitter, I’d be worried as hell about that.

PaulT (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:

Twitter is no longer a publicly traded company, and it’s arguable that some investors intended this outcome (e.g. did the Saudis expect a profit? Or, the dismantling of a service used by dissidents along with access to its database?).

I don’t think Musk intended to publicly disintegrate in this way, but I think it’s possible that the people who enabled him to follow through with his poorly thought out purchase were expecting it to fail.

This comment has been deemed insightful by the community.
HotHead (profile) says:

Beware the fundamental attribution error

If Twitter goes bankrupt then the advertisers’ boycott are to blame. If Twitter succeeds then Twitter’s good decisions get the credit.

Could be true. But probably not as well. Another possibility (slightly more libertarian): If Twitter goes bankrupt then Twitter’s decisions are to blame. If Twitter succeeds then Twitter’s decisions get the credit.

Not important to democracy either way. You know what is important to democracy?

If Trump loses the 2024 election, then voter fraud is to blame. If Trump wins the election, then Trump’s policy platform gets the credit.

This comment has been deemed funny by the community.
Anonymous Coward says:

I see it! I see the endgame!

Twitter will become profitable!

It will also be a phpBB forum being run out of the basement of some guy in Ojai, who is getting paid to keep Elon’s posts at the top.

It’ll be ultra exclusive, invite only! And it’ll be where you can say all those things that would get you banned on any other social media platform!

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Anonymous Coward says:

Re:

I’d joke that the same guy running the damn thing in his basement will eventually oust Elon from ownership because Elon wouldn’t want to pay the bills and uh, oh yeah, didn’t want to pay alimony, but…

The Elon version of the lowtax speedrun is going to weird places…

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Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re:

I feel like I have seen this exact comment posted verbatim on multiple recent TechDirt articles about X/Twitter and Elon Musk.

Of course you’ve seen this comment before, because those are my sentiments and I’ve posted them here at least half a dozen times. And I’ll repeat:

The user experience at xTwitter is better than ever.
There’s no longer overt suppression of politically unfavorable speech (of the kind TechDirt lustily supported).
Just as much breaking news is posted to Twitter as before.
Politicians and elected officials still communicate with their constituents and citizens as before.
There’s a vibrant discourse taking place in the digital public square that’s xTwitter that wasn’t possible before thanks to censorious scum like Yoel Roth.
And there are as many or more pictures and videos of cute animals and beautiful nature scenes and all manner of other cool stuff.

And the site is still free! 😀

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re:

And the site is still free

That doesn’t count for much when the site keeps asking me to create an account to sign in, just to read one update.

There’s no consistency over what or when that prompt gets flashed either.

Free doesn’t matter much when the user experience is so prohibitive it’s far easier to do without.

Staid Winnow says:

Just wait a couple of months

90+% of those he asked to fuck off will return, renewing their advertising spending.

Wish experts would dig into why, rather than just dismiss the guy as stupid.

Why is ADL on X, advertising after Musk blamed them for anti-Semitism and wanted to boot them off.

Is ADL as evil as Musk, or stupid?

PaulT (profile) says:

Re:

“90+% of those he asked to fuck off will return, renewing their advertising spending.”

How much, though? The last time there was an exodus, there was news of advertisers returning but one of them (VISA) spent a total of $10 in the period they were said to have returned.

“Why is ADL on X, advertising after Musk blamed them for anti-Semitism and wanted to boot them off.”

Posting isn’t the same as advertising. There’s an argument about whether they should remain there, but we’re still in the process of the network effect and until the audience has dissipated there’s still value in non-bigots posting among the bigots, if it reaches the people who need to hear the arguments.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re:

CEOs don’t typically head up crisis response teams. I don’t think it would be a problem.

If a plane goes down, the FAA Office of Accident Investigation and Prevention investigates, not the owner/manufacturers of the plane/components. I find it hard to believe NASA wouldn’t have a similar structure.

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Somewhat Less Anonymous Coward (profile) says:

Re: Re:

Under current regulation, the investigations in commercial spaceflight are led by the company and supervised by FAA. In case it’s a NASA certified vehicle, they’ll have their own process for re-certifying it for their needs.
The “good” news here WRT Elmo is that he’s so disconnected from the company, he didn’t even know what the fixes were after the first Starship flight. The bad news is, he nonchalantly asked FAA on Xitter to post the list the agency considered proprietary info of his own company and then gleefully admitted he didn’t even checked his email before asking. In other words, he’s not really thinking just what he’s doing and what it looks like.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re:

Unless you’re talking about “paying” the rent for your buildings, in which case you can just choose not to do that and call that a genius move in arguing that “actually contracts are kinda dumb”.

Funnily enough, Chozen hasn’t been showing up after that big brain play. Been thinking that he finally took the hint and injected horse dewormer into his veins…

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Dan says:

It would be nice if you would stop wasting *your* time on this

Mike, I love ya. But you gotta stop. What use is you writing 500 words explaining what an idiot/asshat Musk is when we’ve all known this for years?

Either he’s doing this on purpose to tank the company so he can finally be done with it and still sleep at night because he thinks he successfully blamed someone else, OR he’s just stupid/clueless. Neither is worth reporting or even commenting on at this stage in the drama.

Just install the Unspoiler extension in your browser to block all mentions of Musk, Twitter, etc, and get to writing about those other topics already.

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Stephen T. Stone (profile) says:

Re:

Nobody’s forcing you to read these articles. Hell, if you need some help in hiding them, here’s some custom CSS you can plug into the Stylus extension (or whatever you use for custom CSS on websites) that’ll hide any article on Techdirt’s front page with a title link that contains either “Elon” or “Musk”:

.storyblock.edition-techdirt:has(h1 > a[href*="elon"]),
.storyblock.edition-techdirt:has(h1 > a[href*="musk"]) {
  display: none !important;
}

Direct that userstyle at techdirt.com and you’ll hide the vast majority of articles about Elon Musk that are on the frontpage. Then you’ll never have the need to complain about all those articles ever again.

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Rocky says:

Re:

What use is you writing 500 words explaining what an idiot/asshat Musk is when we’ve all known this for years?

Because some train wrecks you really need to watch in slowmotion since they seem to defy reality.

Especially a train wreck that affects millions of people in some way…

PaulT (profile) says:

Re:

“What use is you writing 500 words explaining what an idiot/asshat Musk is when we’ve all known this for years?”

What use is you writing 100 words to complain about someone else’s blog?

“Just install the Unspoiler extension in your browser to block all mentions of Musk, Twitter, etc, and get to writing about those other topics already.”

Or… we continue to observe the failures in order to discuss the implications and recognise how to avoid future problems. From the escapade where he tried getting servers moved without considering the logistics to the disastrous rebranding to just being a toxic fool unable to understand even the sector in which the business operates, there’s lessons here.

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Somewhat Less Anonymous Coward (profile) says:

Honestly, having watched the whole thing, i don’t have it in me joke about this. The man looks completely disconnected from any normal logic and social cues, there’s no more self-awareness and self-control. It feels like mentally he’s way worse than ever.

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Manabi (profile) says:

Re:

Yeah, he’s almost certainly is seriously unwell due to undergoing and that can lead to suicide, so I don’t want to joke about it.

But at the same time I have no sympathy for him whatsoever. He’s a truly awful person who karma has finally decided to kick in on. He’s quite literally the sole person responsible for everything bad that’s happened to Twitter and himself since he bought it.

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Anonymous Coward says:

Elon is probably surrounded by yes men , they will not explain to him he is driving away advertiser’s because of his actions on twitter ,advertiser’s have plenty of choice to use other apps or websites to host advertising . big company’s don’t want ads to show up close to extreme nazi content or anti
Jewish trolls posting weird conspiracy theorys
There’s no blackmail going on here
Simply market forces in action
Big company’s like apple IBM do not want to place ads close to extreme offensive or racist content
He is not the best person to run a social media service he has sacked most of the staff who were supposed to moderate or remove
extreme content or misinformation
I presume he does not like Disney because they are seen to produce programs that may feature pro LGBT or woke political opinions
The problem with being a billionaire is that you may never meet anyone that is truly honest with you or someone that can disagree with you as to your political beliefs or you abrasive style of management
It’s easier to blame advertiser’s rather than admit you have made basic mistakes in the way you have managed twitter ,X

mick says:

It really is the advertisers' fault

I blame the fact that I’m merely a middle class guy on all the advertisers like Disney and the NYTimes and Sports Illustrated, because they haven’t thrown gobs of money at me even though I’m happy to make them look bad.

It really is their fault that I’m in this situation, and I think the Earth is aware of it.

Now what do I get??

That One Guy (profile) says:

So that's what Elon's psychotic break looks like...

Yes indeed, nothing looks better to advertisers to have the guy that was supporting antisemitism and conspiracy theories that got a pizza place place shot up respond to your pulling ads for the moment while the heat dies down doing a public interview where he tells you to fuck right off because he neither needs nor wants your money and it’s your fault if the company goes under because you don’t want to be associated with lunatics and bigots.

Bloof (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:

I don’t see that happening, usually board seats are a reward for being a good puppet politician like Tony Abbot, Paul Ryan or William Burck, people with experience and influence left to peddle. Linda has no connection to Fox, no political experience she can leverage and her time at Twitter is obliterating her rep in the advertising world.

PaulT (profile) says:

Re:

There’s the term “glass cliff”, which essentially means that a woman is promoted to leadership so that she can take the blame for failure, securing future positions for male successors. I’m fairly sure she was aware of the problems before she took the job, she maybe just underestimated the degree in which Musk would continue to publicly interfere while she was in the role.

But, she’s also pushing 60 and assuming she gets the money she’s likely owed, she might not be expecting anything other than a huge retirement fund.

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Bloof (profile) says:

All Elon needed to do was take a board seat after buying the first load of shares before he memed himself into a full takeover and do nothing but some minor belt tightening and he would be hailed as a genius who restored free speech and Twitter’s profitability. Twitter already protected right wing rule violators, the chuds were still running rampant across the site but they weren’t widely promoted, but Elon removed any plausible deniability that it was the case because, as his attire, behaviour and the Cybertruck have demonstrated, he’s not a man who does subtlety. He wanted to actively promote the far right and be seen doing so, and he believed the world would just sit by and let him, laud him for it, even.

Every misfortune that’s befallen them since his takeover is a direct result of his behaviour and even he knows that, but he has to keep trying to pretend otherwise, to push blame elsewhere, there is always a villain in his stories and it can never be him despite his massive power and wealth.

Narp says:

Earth

Musk’s invocation of “Earth” there suggests he’s gone full globalist, or megalomaniac. Greater than any mere nation state and beholden to none, he bestrides the globe (and space), a deranged colossus, his head increasing in size at a fantastic rate, calling for his 7 billion fans to rise up and tear limb from limb the evil non-advertisers who killed X/Twitter.

mechtheist (profile) says:

This has a strong Howard Hughs foreboding feel to it, Elon will end like Hughs, he’ll turn into a recluse [probably constantly cursing advertisers and all others who called him out for being, uh, Elonesque] and at death, well, it wasn’t pretty, as wiki describes Hughs’ state at death “His hair, beard, fingernails, and toenails were long—his tall 6 ft 4 in (193 cm) frame now weighed barely 90 pounds (41 kg), and the FBI had to use fingerprints to conclusively identify the body”

williamperry (profile) says:

I think we're gonna have to alter our approach to elon

I think he’s pretty clearly mentally ill, so i think yelling at the asshole is actually harming him, and just what he wants – if theyre not out to get you you’re nothing but sheeple, a food source.
Its the grandiosity and commitment to his (fantasy) plans. It’s (and im not a med, so i’m def using this incorrectly) diagnostic of mental illness. The variety is not important paranoid, bordeline, manic, thy all mean real pain for the sufferer, with poor odds on a cure or even long term cessation of the illnss.
MANY people with mental health issues present as assholes, or they’re alone somewhere pain. AND we have to ignore that, its a symptom. The entire twitter thing is just symptom after worsening symptom. He litterally doesnt know what or why he’s doing here, he’s just adhos surfing his mentally ill bad ideas as they manifest.
I hate saying this but we need to treat him like an injured person, who presents as a nazi asshole. Right? I think that what a not creep would do?

LostInLoDOS (profile) says:

Facts?

First off

The blackmail is in the threats, remove content or loose the advertising. He’s right on that even if you’d prefer a different term.

an enticing deal.

He doesn’t care.

why are you suing Media Matters for its report

Because they made the claim that an extremely rare occurrence (yes that it happens is against X) is some sort of regular thing.

Fourth, are you actually admitting that

Looks to me like he’s lashing out that companies are not supporting his (claimed, but not practiced) drive for free speech.

advertisers choosing not to give you money is some sort of statement on their culpability

Well, they don’t spend, revenue drops… they are directly correlated.

Sixth, I’m sure that threatening to send [childish name calling] is going to convince them to come back

That depends on how much of a boycott or protest campaign Evolves. It’s rare that protests and boycotting changes anything though.

“earth” will “judge

History will look back on this. Just not the way he thinks. Yes, the exodus of advertising is hurting the company, only a brain dead idiot would deny that. But it very much is
A) they don’t support free speech
And
B) few people will be in his favour of their choice of censorship.

That One Guy (profile) says:

Re: 'You can't stop buying from that store because the owner's a bigot, that's blackmail!'

The blackmail is in the threats, remove content or loose the advertising. He’s right on that even if you’d prefer a different term.

Oh please, by that logic if a local club developed a bigot infestation anyone who told the employees ‘so long as they’re here I won’t be’ would be ‘blackmailing’ the club.

If ‘Refusing to do business with a company because you don’t want to be associated with a particular selection of their customers and/or support one of their decisions as a business’ is ‘blackmail’ then that word has lost all meaning or impact.

That One Guy (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re: Might as well claim 'No shirt, no shoes, no service' is a threat

Yeah not really helping your case there. I’d be willing to grant that calling it a boycott might be appropriate but threat? ‘If I don’t like you I’m not giving you my money’ is not a threat that’s spelling out under what circumstances someone is and is not going to be getting the other person’s money.

To stretch the terminology of ‘threat'(or as that blithering idiot wants to call it ‘blackmail’) to the point that refusing to do business with someone would fall under it is to water the word down to the point where no-one will care when it’s used, but I suppose if you’re willing to shoot yourself in the foot like that have at it I guess.

That One Guy (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:3

Again, ‘If that content is here my money won’t be’ isn’t a threat it’s making clear the conditions that money is or is not going to change hands, all you’re doing by framing it as one is watering the term down to the point that no-one will care when you use it.

‘If the local bakery isn’t going to keep serving blueberry muffins I’m not going to shop there’ is not a threat.

‘If the bar is going to host the local chapter of the KKK on fridays I’m not going to be spending my money there that day or any others’ is not a threat.

And as it applies here ‘If you can’t ensure that our ads aren’t going to show up next to nazi content then we’re not paying for them to show up there at all’ isn’t a threat either.

I can certainly understand why someone as spoiled and self-entitled as Elon might think ‘consequences for his actions’ is some diabolical machinations but all it really is is his business partners setting clear requirements as to what it will take for them to keep giving him money. Either he prefers the nazis or he prefers the advertisers, they’re simply informing him that he doesn’t get to have both.

PaulT (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:

” Do what I say or I go elsewhere.”

Yeah, that’s usually how it works…. one dickhead causes problems for everyone else, you kick the dickhead out rather than forcing dozens of people to change to accommodate them.

” And musk made his opinion of that approach clear.”

His opinion means exactly nothing to people who don’t use the services he provides.

LostInLoDOS (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:2

When the “dickhead” Owen’s the platform, you can’t kick him out. Musk is far from a free speech advocate, but he tinkered with what he did and the results are what they are.
X is still a massively large platform. I don’t see it suffering, beyond the no longer public concern financials, given how small the ‘mass exodus’ turned out to be.
If it does, nobody looses but Musk. If it survives, blah, whatever.
But US advertising isn’t the only option for the platform.

Anonymous Coward says:

The blackmail is in the threats, remove content or loose the advertising. He’s right on that even if you’d prefer a different term.

Do you know why it’s not blackmail? Because exTwitters cutomers bought a service from them according to a specification, that specification wasn’t met and the customers choose not to do business with exTwitter until the problem is resolved to their satisfaction.

It’s kind of common when doing business, customers demand that what they paid money for actually adheres to what the contract stipulates.

Because they made the claim that an extremely rare occurrence (yes that it happens is against X) is some sort of regular thing.

They did? Funnily enough, finding those “extremely rare occurrences” is apparently extremely easy since a lot of people could get those “extremely rare occurrences” to happen with a minimal of effort.

Well, they don’t spend, revenue drops… they are directly correlated.

What was your thought behind this statement? Water is wet? Nada?

Anonymous Coward says:

Re:

What was your thought behind this statement? Water is wet? Nada?

Lostinlodos doesn’t have a thought, he just thinks that Musk’s lashing out is one of those “it takes two hands to clap” problems that can be solved if only, oh if only, everyone else was openminded enough to take responsibility on both sides.

You know, like it’s the house’s fault for being too flammable or the rape victim’s fault for not wearing full body armor.

LostInLoDOS (profile) says:

Re: Re:

A brick or stone building is less flammable than a wood building.

I’m not touching the tape idea. Many people far smarter than any of us here have linked our social repression of both sex and overt sexuality to such a degree it breeds explosive aggression.

advertisers choosing not to give you money is some sort of statement on their culpability

It is, just as much as wood burns and bricks (at normal surface based fire temperatures) don’t.

PaulT (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:

“A brick or stone building is less flammable than a wood building.”

Which is why so many places build houses with those materials.

The hilarious thing in these arguments is how the tides have turned. When the satanic panic happened and people tried banning movies, music, books, etc. that they disliked, it was claimed to be their right under free speech. Yet, people try banning bigotry, it’s anti-free speech.

In the same period, boycotting companies that performed certain activities was the “free market”, yet now it’s “cancel culture”. Indeed, a company deciding that it’s no longer commercially viable to pay someone else is now “blackmail”.

“Many people far smarter than any of us here have linked our social repression of both sex and overt sexuality to such a degree it breeds explosive aggression.”

It’s still the rapist at fault, you know? Whatever social or cultural things you talk about, it’s still the weak assed rapist who is at fault if they don’t agree with consent…

Grim says:

where do you talk from, critics ?

Elon is the richest man on this planet. You do not get that place and position by being stupid.

It is quite funny to see people drop comments here about Elon Musk, while none of you are nowhere near where Elon is when it comes to having power through money.

Look at yourselves in the mirror. If you are that clever and so much compared to Elon Musk, where are your lifetime achievements to show it if we compare those to what Elon Musk has built until now ?

You are laughable.

Elon wants Twitter to die. Because his next step will be to sue the corporations that helped kill Twitter in the amazing, so amazing United-States judicial system, and sue them for collusion in order to destroy another corporation.

Even if he loses, several of those corporations will not survive those lawsuits.

John Paul Misselwitz (user link) says:

Whew cause this sure as shit isn't about me

So I don’t have to worry about that sad limp carrot of a compensation package for making my mother believe me to be a pedophile and squashing my rights to justice and a fair trial. I thought it was big of me to walk away from that, quite literally. It seems to me that you have some growing up to do, my fair audience, that isn’t there.

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