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A to-the-point explanation for why Musk bought Twitter [1]

['Rob Beschizza']

Date: 2022-11-19

There's a lot of speculation about why Elon Musk really bought Twitter, and why he seems to be running it into the ground so quickly. It's hard to see where reasonable analysis ends and conspiracy theory sets in. I think Matt Binder nails it in this thread. It accomodates the madness while keeping things simple, and arrives at a forthright, mercifully incomplete answer from which everything else flows:

All the "why Elon Musk bought Twitter" theories are overthinking it. It's simple. Musk is in a right wing filter bubble. He bought Twitter believing their problems were real and that others felt the same.

all the why Elon Musk bought Twitter theories are overthinking it.



it's simple.



Musk is in a right wing filter bubble. he bought Twitter believing their problems were real & that others felt the same



this is what happens when you have a lot of money & live in fantasy land — Matt Binder (@MattBinder) November 18, 2022

just look at Elon Musk's private texts that were released



this isn't some strategic genius move



it's a bunch of out-of-touch weirdos angry at "woke culture" and thinking the rest of the world shares their bizarre fixations on this stuff https://t.co/mdEMuNHRg4 — Matt Binder (@MattBinder) November 18, 2022

Be sure to read the rest. Binder points out something that went almost unnoticed, that Musk posted that Twitter is the world's top driver of referral traffic to other sites. But this hasn't been true for a decade, and even in its traffic-driving heyday Twitter was inconsistent compared to, say, Facebook and search engines. Thinking Twitter is the be-all and end-all of traffic to news media is among key diagnostic criteria for right-wing brain worms.

I'd add two more things, because I can't help myself:

Engineer's Syndrome is in play. Because engineers like machines and are clever, they always want to rebuild things from scratch on the basis of simple assumptions about how things should ideally work. The law, the human mind, group behavior, morality, all end up reimagined from first principles, ready to be dashed on the rocks of real life. At which point the really hard stuff can be avoided, because there's always a shiny technical problem to hide in. People mock Elon for posing as an engineer, but I propose that the sheer burning light of his engineers' syndrome proves he must be one.

The damage doesn't matter: mismanagement is fine, in the end, because it gets Twitter to the place intended for it: an "everything app" without the wokes. It's just going to be made from scrap instead of by careful product development (and will likely be smaller and less profitable than what his backers and fans imagine). So the only real game is between him and making sure the current audience stays while and after Twitter is beaten into its new shape.

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