In 2022, Elon Musk signed a proposal to purchase Twitter at a price much higher than its market price. Number 54.20, a magic number to Musk just on the same level with 69, is used as the price per Twitter share by him. He was willing to buy Twitter at $54.20 per share and turn it into a private company to, in his way of saying, save the freedom of speech.
The Point of No Return
When Musk published his proposal on Twitter, there was a huge panic among both Twitter shareholders and users. People first started thinking whether this was a joke or not, considering what type of public figure Musk has been showing up as. Then, after realizing this might not be a joke, people started doubting whether Musk can afford buying the whole Twitter or not. Once they realized that he can actually afford it, lots of people were shocked with how much money the one percent has in this country. Throughout the discussion, the center has never been Musk himself from the beginning, however, he has always been wanting to be the center and feeling he is the actual center of this whole deal.
After realizing he what proposed is much higher than the market, Musk tried back out of the deal at some point. Even though he is “the” wealthiest person on Earth, his properties are not all cash, but most of them are properties such as shares of Tesla and Cryptocurrencies. He had to liquidize his securities to be able to afford buying Twitter, and there are limits on the process. He created memes to mock Twitter and whoever was not supporting him. However, a signed proposal is a signed proposal, he had to buy it regardless how funny his memes were. When Twitter tried to bring him to court after his distractive influence on Twitter’s stock, Musk agreed to purchase Twitter as in his original proposal.
Once Twitter was purchased, Elon Musk immediately executed his power by firing executives. Twitter CEO, CFO, and the Legal Chair who made the decision to indefinitely ban Donald Trump, were all gone in one day. Engineers were locked out from modifying Twitter code base and asked to print out their code for pair reviewing with Musk. Musk asked Tesla engineers to work on a mission impossible where they have to review the core Twitter code. Incoming layoff with 75% of employee stated by Musk in press. Without a clear plan, Twitter is completely chaotic under Musk’s leadership.
More controversially, the first business decision Musk made as the owner of Twitter was charging each “Blue Mark” $20 per month to be in status. This status was previously used by Twitter to distinguish public figures, politicians, and official accounts to avoid misinformation spread by impersonators. It was awarded based on necessity. Now, Musk is willing to sell this status to anyone who is willing to pay for $20 per month after critical advertisers on Twitter either paused or cancelled. The whole Twitter went more chaotic after this decision. The peak point of this chaos was the ironic one-side argument between Musk and Stephen King happened. With Musk’s great self negotiation skill without any involvement from King’s side, the price for a “Blue Check” was reduced to $8 per month. Now, anyone can buy one’s way in, to be a verified account where their replies and tweets will be prioritized on Twitter, including bots and spams.
Musk’s Narcissism and Entitlements
There is no doubt that Musk believes he is the true hero here, and he is likely quite proud of being a person who is against everyone to accomplish something no one understands its importance. He has been pretty obvious with this. Musk enjoys being pictured as a savior of the world, not from others, but from himself. He needs to convince himself that he is the saving the world all the time.
Before Twitter, Musk has been active in auto driving cars and rockets. These were not drawing him too much attention, but it was enough for him to continue the belief that he is saving the world. It is debatable, but one can argue that electric vehicles help reduce fossil foil consumption, and rockets help us explore outer space. However, the good-feeling taste of being entitled does not last very long. He was making some noise but not enough anymore. After all, not everyone owns a Tesla, and space garbage does not bother everyone’s daily life. People kind of let go of his crazy behaviors because they were not damaging everyone’s daily routine too much. However, Twitter is something different, and it is something ordinary people use on a daily basis. His deep thoughts on how he is better than everyone else, thus he knows what is the best for everyone and people will be thankful to him after this all even they do not realize it now, give him the feeling of being strongly entitled. With his needs of constant stimulation to his entitlements, Musk made his move to become the center of everyone’s conversation.
The superior thoughts from the deep part of Musk’s heart is driving his moves. He started arguing with people on small things which should never ever be brought up by anyone who is on CEO level. His entitlements are from his insecurities. What if he was wrong. Everyone who is the center of an argument against thousands of people on a daily basis probably has this type of thoughts at least for once. Then, he needs the affirmation to prove to himself, but no one else, that he is correct, by showing more insecurities in public and arguing on small things on Twitter. He cares what others are talking about him, as he actually reads tweets which tag him, but he is afraid of people knowing it.
Delusions From Dropout Engineers
The current situation Musk is facing is comparable to giving a Computer Science undergrad who is fresh out of high school and believes college level classes are too stupid for them, an actual industrial level project. After all, they already know how to program and build a project, what else one needs to learn to be able to work in the industry? Isn’t industry just writing code like they have been doing in the high school? Why does someone who will be an engineer in the future has to learn art history and philosophy?
These engineers who could not bear with boring college classes dropped out and became engineers currently in this field. They have been doing fine most of time so far because they are not working on the most critical infrastructures. In other words, the error tolerance for them is high. If they messed up with some ideas, people won’t even remember because they would just be one of those Silicon Valley startups which did not work out. However, Musk is in a different situation. On top of thinking a complete education is stupid, he is also rich.
Because of his wealth, Musk can make a lost battle look like a victory. This works very similar to how the Chinese government operates their press. He is panicking, scared, and so afraid to admit that he does not have a plan and have no idea what to do next, but he is too arrogant to admit that he needs help from others. His admirers believe the opposite without any solid evidence. The best they could argue is Musk has successfully built Tesla and SpaceX, and he made a lot of money throughout the way. Their logic is simply more money implies being more successful. Regardless whether this logic is true or not, Musk did not make those money, his father did. He has never been an engineer building and struggling on actual products even for one day in his life, but buying others’ work and making others work for him.
Something these engineers and Musk are missing here is being able to bear with the boring side of any process, either college courses or industrial projects. There is always a bad side for any process including getting a degree in college. The course might be boring, the professor might be unqualified, classmates might be not helping but sabotaging each other, these are all parts of the process to achieve something better. If an engineer cannot stand with the bad side of getting a college degree and quit because they think it is stupid, they are not qualified engineers. Life is not always sunshiny, one has to accept the down side of it to actually accept life itself. Back to Twitter, if Musk wants to please everyone while being so afraid of criticism and accepting his shortcomings, he is not there yet to run Twitter successfully, or to achieve anything successfully. It does not matter how much money he has, one cannot gain self awareness, security, and determination through money.
The sad part of going through these college classes is making these people know how much they don’t know. Some people find knowing something they don’t know exciting, but not for Musk. He is scared that he might not be the smartest person on Earth, and this is probably one of the reasons he dropped out from Stanford where he had his one chance to become an actual engineer.
Other Investors in Twitter Purchase
Even though Elon Musk is the wealthiest person on Earth, he could not make a 44 billions cash purchase solely by himself. He had to take out loans from banks and get money from other investors. These investors, of course, do not enter with no string attached.
One major investor in Musk’s Twitter purchase is CZ, Changpeng Zhang, who wired Musk 500 million for his Twitter takeover. CZ holds one of the largest cryptocurrency trading companies, Binance, and has a very deep connection with China. Regardless whether CZ has any connection with the Chinese government, it is very easy for people who were educated under Chinese dictatorship environment to be willing to support another dictator to rule Twitter. The education system in China has never supported freedom, diversity, equality, nor challenging authority; instead, it supports people to become a part of the dictatorship and survive under it. The goal of Chinese education is never aimed at abandoning dictatorship, in order itself to transform into democracy, but how to become a dictator. It normalizes the existence of dictatorship; thus, everyone’s life goal is becoming a dictator to rule over others either within a group, a company, or a country. CZ clearly has the intention to become the dictator and rule the cryptocurrency world, and he has kept his old habit to worship dictators who outrank him, who currently is Elon Musk.
Besides CZ, there are many other investors in shadows with intentions no one else know about but Musk. Considering his negotiation skills, people should be deeply worried about the damage Twitter will cause to the technology field under Musk’s leadership.
It Is not the End of the World
People have been putting too much attention on Twitter both before its takeover and after. Twitter itself has never been a tool to protect free speech and never will be, we human beings are. In a way, as long as humanity survives, free speech comes along. Twitter is simply a company, a social platform, and it will be nothing without its users. We lived just fine before Twitter and will live just fine after it. Of course, Elon Musk can buy Twitter and turn it into whatever he wants it to be, but he cannot buy people.
Some might argue that anyone can be bought with right price, but the “right price” usually has nothing to do with money. Because, the most important thing in humanity can never be purchased using cash. Humanity will survive, and so as free speech. It doesn’t matter whether it is on twitter or newspaper, as it never mattered throughout our history.
This Twitter takeover will eventually become a small dot in the history, and it will not matter much in the future. It feels somewhat painful if one has to get rid of a social media at first, but everything becomes ok after some time, maybe days. Just look at how many young generations are using Facebook now. So calm down, this is definitely not the end of the world, but just a pity billionaire who doesn’t understand anything about humanity and believes he can buy love using money.