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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 19, 2022

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So Musk polled his followers. Asking whether he should as CEO of Twitter. They said no and he said he'd abide by their vote.

My sense is that Elon didn't really want to buy Twitter after thinking it through, this was likely his real reason behind the "Twitter are hiding the amount of fake accounts/bots" argument. When that didn't come through, he ended up with the platform anyway. But being the CEO of Twitter is little more than a highly paid janitor function. You don't have any real power and your primary function is to act as a piƱata for vested and powerful interests. It's no fun.

The main challenge for him now is to not lose any money, but it appears to be a long-shot from where I stand. What are the lessons? Tech CEOs don't have much political power despite having loads of money. Even tech owners are surprisingly weak. It may be fun belittling government bureaucrats as do-nothing wordcels but the Twitter saga has conclusively proven they hold the whip hand when the chips are down.

While it may make more sense for most people to go for a STEM career over a humanities, this episode should serve as a warning sign to conservatives who have spent decades dismissing humanities are irrelevant (long before the "woke" era). The SJW campus liberals may be annoying, and perhaps even ridiculous, but ultimately they have more power than you in society. And that power can be leveraged even in STEM areas.

My sense is that Elon didn't really want to buy Twitter after thinking it through

He tried to get out of it, presumably because he woke up one morning and realized he'd agreed to buy a white elephant at a price that was well above its arguably inflated share price.

What are the lessons? Tech CEOs don't have much political power despite having loads of money. Even tech owners are surprisingly weak. It may be fun belittling government bureaucrats as do-nothing wordcels but the Twitter saga has conclusively proven they hold the whip hand when the chips are down.

The main lesson here is don't start believing your own bullshit. Musk came in and made a bunch of unforced errors, seemingly under the impression that he'd be able to 'fix' Twitter through sheer personal brilliance and force of will. The reality is that he seemingly has no idea what he is doing and has been governing twitter in an impulsive, personalistic, and reactive manner.

Or, for that matter, maybe it will pan out and Musk will come out looking like an unstable genius. So far Twitter doesn't seem to have had any critical technical failures despite sacking 2/3rds of its staffing. Now, there seems to be a shoe waiting to drop on legal/financial issues, but it is entirely possible that Musk will manage to radically slash prices, weather the storm of financial and legal troubles, and come out the other side with a functioning social media platform. Of course, scuttlebutt says he's trying to flog it off on Middle Eastern oil barons, so maybe not.

this episode should serve as a warning sign to conservatives who have spent decades dismissing humanities are irrelevant (long before the "woke" era). The SJW campus liberals may be annoying, and perhaps even ridiculous, but ultimately they have more power than you in society. And that power can be leveraged even in STEM areas.

I'm not sure why this is the takeaway. It's probably a good lesson for conservatives, but not for anything to do with this particular episode. In this particular parable hubris it is the market playing the role of Zeus, not SJWs.

What errors has Musk made?

a) bought Twitter at an inflated price with borrowed money (remember that Twitter is not a profitable company) b) annoyed advertisers with erratic behavior like the poorly thought out "verification" system c) annoys users (especially content creators) with capricious moderation policies that are walked back a short while later.

Ok thanks. Seems mostly like annoying people, but I am not sure that many of them wouldn't have been annoyed no matter what he did.

The inflated price is an error, depending on what the assesment of the value is (I don't think markets fundamentally price things well here, as the power of twitter to shape discourse, or even the info dumpe din the "twitter files" are completely unacocunted for when purchasing individual shares in a way that purchasng them all doesn't.