(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
The Great Muskmelon isn't coming; it was all a Loss-Leading Business Expense for Fascism [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags']
Date: 2022-11-18
..Musky was just the sign-spinner out front that duped banks into footing a lot of the bill. (the business term "Loss-Leader" defined at the end of the article*)
Let me first say I'd be happy to be wrong about this: there could be no better proof of a higher power promising a brighter future of humanity than if The World's Richest Man (The Seeds of Whose Fortune Came From Colonial Apartheid Emeralds) trumpeted "free speech absolutism", then had his own platform live-stream his murder, fingers sawed off one by one, for disappointing his Fossil Fuel Monarch investor.
But let's assume that we won't get that literal metaphor of about six different flavors of human evils sluffing off humanity in real-time like a dead snake-skin.
In this less-just reality, it sure feels like Musk and the fascists bought twitter to destroy it -- maybe not as fast and as incompetently as it's happened, or maybe that's just the plausible deniability.
But that being said, there's a lot of things about the Twitter Debacle that I haven't heard people say. I'm sure people ARE saying these things, I just haven't personally read them; I'm not well-read. I’m also not well-write (well-written? Writer-ly?) so I'm sure people will have said these things better, but here we go anyway:
First: Twitter's role against Fascism / Authoritarianism:
It's fun to say "lolz social media site I don't use goes down", but remember when people were saying "Zelenskyy was the Twitter President"? That twitter was the slingshot which let him win the message playing field against Putin’s Russian Goliath, the kleptocracy whose FoxNews-y propaganda channels had full backing of not just the oligarchs, but from the state itself?
And the ways in which Twitter has aided other fights against oppression, like the revolution in Iran — a simple example being how people were able to upload video showing that the rebellion against Iranian Mullahs was wide-spread enough that Mullahs have stopped wearing their Religious Dictatorship Hats in public, because their Religious Dictatorship Hats were being knocked off.
That's a loss: both for the now-defunct concept of "A Trusted Organization Has Granted A Blue Checkmark" for countries and heads-of-state, and because dictatorships couldn't block a big business like Twitter without blow-back, or at least without it being noticeable internationally. Those same countries will have no problem silently turning off, or hacking, or throttling access to any small social media players until the arrival of another service with former-Twitter's reach.
Even if his authoritarian backers didn't pay Daddy Apartheid Emeraldbucks to fricassee the blue goose that laid the golden eggs this fast, and just wanted to be able to ask him for "a favor some day" whenever they had an account taken down or a revolution they wanted de-platformed, it’s pretty much the same result.
Second: The Muskyboys that I assumed were Trolling us with Ayn Rand-ian Ubermench "ONLY HE CAN SOLVE IT" Nonsense…
..might actually believe what they're saying. I find that so much sadder.
I don't want to call out the worst of the stupid shit people have said, especially in the past few days as Twitter's downward spiral accelerates. Well, I mean, I totally do; but when you get to the high end of fawning rationalizations and as the stages-of-grief goes from anger to bargaining, each up-is-down, failure-is-success argument is unique enough to trace back to an individual post:
at first I thought they were annoying, but as the ground falls out from under them, it's become pitiable. My unsolicited 44 billion dollar free advice?
Stop it. Get some help.
Anyway.
Those are the things I haven't seen people say; I tried to summarize them to the best of my ability (which ain't much). Any of that make sense to anyone? Better yet — use the comments to link to someone making those points who can write worth a damn.
*: Loss-Leader = something a business loses some money on, but doing that helps it make more money elsewhere. Like when Wal-Mart has the cheapest TV under-priced, so it can OVER price all the rest of the TVs. If you buy the cheapest TV, you at least came through the door and will probably buy other stuff. If the cheap TV convinces you “oh it’s just ($X), I could buy that… hey this one’s just a few dozen bucks more!” you're paying too much... but because the cheapest TV was Under-priced, you feel like you're saving money.
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/11/18/2137152/-The-Great-Muskmelon-isn-t-coming-it-was-all-a-Loss-Leading-Business-Expense-for-Fascism
Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/
