Elon Musk Has Ruined Twitter, Himself, and His Reputation: And Needs to Step Down From “X” and Go Away Forever

‘America Rises’ Post #24: Saturday, November 18th, 2023

As anyone who follows the news or still uses Twitter can tell you, Elon Musk’s takeover of the platform a little over a year ago has been the biggest, most unbridled and unparalleled disaster in the history of social media ownership. The man who only became immersed in the culture wars and pushing anti-trans memes because his ex-wife was at one point dating a trans person and who has been disowned by his own trans daughter due to his transphobic rants has exposed himself as the world’s most thin-skinned, bigoted, and impulsive moronic disgrace.

Let’s be clear. Any person who describes themselves as “neither left nor right wing” is right wing. Any person who describes themselves as “moderate” is right wing. Anyone who describes themselves as “a free speech absolutist” is an aspiring demagogue that wants to be the purveyor and overlord of unmitigated hate speech and disinformation. Musk has never been a single thing that his most steadfast trolls assert him to be. He’s never been even remotely intelligent (let alone anything approaching “genius”). He’s never been “a king of innovation.” And he has never cared about freedom of speech for a single moment. He’s just been a mediocre white guy who inherited a shit ton of money and then made the rest by defrauding investors. As I often tell people, “Elon Musk wants people to see him as Tony Stark from Iron Man (just look at his profile pic). In reality, he’s Lex Luthor from Super Man, minus the looks and intellect.” I have never seen a person “rise” to real life cartoon-villain-level status in the span of just a few years as Elon Musk. Unfortunately for him, he has demolished himself, his reputation, and his net worth in the process.

In the year since Musk’s takeover, nearly 80% of advertisers have fled. The platform’s value has plummeted to less than a third of what he paid for it. He has fired more than half of the staff responsible for keeping it running; eliminating critical departments for combating disinformation; protecting the safety of users; and most importantly, moderating hateful conduct that violated the company’s longstanding Terms of Service (TOS). In addition to protecting users from vile and hateful harassment, TOS are in place to assure companies who choose to place ads on a platform of the presence of “brand safety,” meaning that they can showcase their product without fear of it appearing next to a post praising Hitler or calling for the extermination of all the Jews, for example. However, since virtually no one is left to enforce Twitter’s TOS, brand safety is essentially non-existent. And that’s why so few brands continue to advertise on “X.”

Just this past week, though, Elon decided to go full mask-off white supremacist. And it did not go well.