The 51-year-old self-described memelord had some fun the first few hours after the deal, posting facebook-level memes that echo someone unironically posting le troll face in the year 2022. He was basically trying to taunt his detractors on Twitter with a “U MAD BRO,” except that everyone was like “dude, you just spent 44 billion dollars to post this.” Then, in full view of everyone on a platform that enjoyed making fun of him BEFORE this happened, he proceeded to step on a series of poo-covered rakes.
He fired half the workforce of twitter without advance notice, triggering a labor suit, only to have to try to hire them back so they could actually explain how the site worked. He announced that verification would now be part of a monthly subscription service, only to get pissy like a petulant child when people explained they were not going to pay for that. Finally, with a spike of completely unmoderated content, advertisers began to pull out en masse, since they no longer had any guarantee that their ads about new Oreo flavors weren’t going to be sandwiched between memes about “shekels” from groyper accounts. Musk immediately blamed this on social justice warriors and claimed he was going to pursue a tortious interference claim against… the users of twitter? For boycotting a business? Which, of course, is concrete, definitive, protected free speech.
If the whole website blows up, it’ll be, on some level, sorely missed. For now, though, at least, let’s sit back and watch the fireworks implode.