So what does Elon Musk want with Twitter? The best-available guess is that he wants it to fade to black. Musk won’t have to work as much, and his other businesses might benefit."But Xmastime", you say in the voice of Craig “Ironhead” Heyward from those soap commercials (RIP), “didn't you posit something back in April about Twitter & this fucking waste of a human with money that you still 100% stand by as of this moment?"
More importantly, it’s his way out of Twitter on something close enough to his own terms. Musk will have no trouble getting right-wing media and other credulous individuals to treat him like a soldier in a just war. As onetime star journalist and current antagonizer of liberals Glenn Greenwald wrote on Wednesday of Musk’s advertiser dis: “This is exactly what people should tell corporate advertisers who try to control the content of speech from media outlets or social media platforms.” Greenwald doesn’t have to explain why not subsidizing speech with ad dollars is the same thing as trying to control it, and Musk doesn’t have to contort himself to justify himself to his adoring fans. At a $44 billion price tag, it will be the most expensive point anyone has ever made. But Musk will make it to people who desperately want to hear it.
Sigh. Yes I did, faithful reader
Unlike most liberals I have no delusions that Musk will slink away from Twitter penniless & ruined. I'm guessing - and by guessing I know this will 100% happen - that at some point he'll finally give up trying to be the high school football team captain & prom queen and will just want all of his Twitter headaches to go away overnight. Meanwhile, it's hard to imagine another superbillionaire being dumb enough to take it off his hands after watching the last year. And since as Americans we cannot fathom the idea of making a billionaire remotely uncomfortable or sad in any way, I'm guessing - and by guessing I know this will 100% happen - that HEEEEYY WHAT DO YOU KNOW, the US government will step in and bail him out, giving him back his entire $44B. They'll even come up with a warm & fuzzy way of covering for him: oh, we had to let Elon go back to focusing on Tesla/SpaceX et al (for which he's VERY used to getting hundreds of millions of dollars in government subsidies) as noble, jobs-creating projects in his quest to save humanity blah blah blah. Elon Musk has revealed himself to be an absolute dipshit throughout his Twitter debacle, but he knows that suckers like us will be there with a big sack of cash for him whenever he decides he wants it.
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