Ask HN: Why was Elon Musk forced to buy Twitter? It feels like they forced him to buy it, and now they are tarring and feathering him. |
Ask HN: Why was Elon Musk forced to buy Twitter? It feels like they forced him to buy it, and now they are tarring and feathering him. |
The “they” who are now criticising him for the way he’s running Twitter, are different people.
We gon' nail this son of a gun.
That's not correct: the penalty was only for failure to complete the transaction, Elon still had to go through with it.
Elon tried to create cause to stop the transaction (the weird bot fixation) and eat the penalty but that didn't get to discovery.
Alas.
I mean, you’re starting from a false premise; Naughty Old Mr Car was not forced to buy Twitter.
Who is ‘they’ supposed to be here?
nobody forced him to take direct control of it and proceed to run it into the ground
nobody forced him to do a costly rebrand that added no value and made it look like a porn site
nobody forced him to besmirch his reputation by conducting a scorched earth cull of twitter staff, having numerous public brawls and spats, making him look like a bad leader
nobody forced him to pick a fight with city councils and the owners of buildings he was renting over nonsense, cementing his reputation as erratic, untrustworthy and belligerent
nobody forced him to be repeatedly, vociferously transphobic, to complain bitterly about leftism, or to talk about how pizzagate was real and scare away all the wealthy twitter sponsors
nobody forced him to promote conspiracy theories
nobody forced him to openly court the alt-right
nobody forced him to do anything. He has been messing around and finding out for a while now, and now that he bought his own kool-aid and the stakes are so high that even a skilled team of people managing his numerous, constant screw-ups are not able to help save his image. This man went from seemingly a beloved Tony Stark like figure to a ranting lunatic all of his own accord.
Musk is an attention seeking narcissist. He is absolutely determined to turn himself into a clown show. He is succeeding.
No one has done this to him. He did it to himself.
I hate it when that happens. That's how I got stuck owning MySpace.
Well, let's think about it.
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If the above is not coming through, imagine you have a trusty old Ford Focus. Does the job, needs repairs from time to time, but you're about break even on it. You put money in it and get the same amount of value back. Its market price is about $4,000, because there's some craze about cars at that point in time.
So here comes Elon and says "I'll buy this car for $4,400." You're like "OK, let's sign an agreement". He signs.
Few weeks pass, he's not not sending money, and not calling. More time passes. The market conditions change. Now a car like yours costs $2,200. Elon is trying to say the agreement you signed is not valid, because he missed a giant scratch on the left side of the car, despite you discussed this scratch in detail last time.
You sue him. He pays $4,400 and gets the car, and is so mad, that he drives it into a tree immediately.
If they let Elon back out, there would have been shareholder lawsuits.
Management and users aren't relevant, the shareholders and the board make the decision, and they don't care what happens to the company after they've sold it because they've already got their payday.