Speaker 1: I'm beautiful. That's how we start this episode of our
Speaker 1: professional podcast that makes it pays all of our rent.
Speaker 1: This is it could Happen here, a podcast about things
Speaker 1: falling apart, and today we're talking about Twitter because nothing
Speaker 1: embodies falling apart quite like Twitter. Um we have on
Speaker 1: the show today, Garrison Davis, Chris Sharene, James, everybody, the
Speaker 1: whole crew, except for the people who aren't here. They're
Speaker 1: not here, but I hate them, Yeah, I don't hate them.
Speaker 1: How's everybody, don't we all great? I just woke up,
Speaker 1: had my coffee scrolled on Twitter for an hour, so
Speaker 1: I'm ready to go this. This, this has been, This
Speaker 1: has been legitimately the best three weeks that we have
Speaker 1: had on Twitter since like like two. I feel bad
Speaker 1: for all the people who have like left because they're
Speaker 1: missing Twitter. So first off, I want to say, we're
Speaker 1: not gonna try We're gonna try not to get too
Speaker 1: into the weeds here if you're not a Twitter person,
Speaker 1: and most people are not Twitter people. The reason that
Speaker 1: number one, I want to start by explaining why we
Speaker 1: think this is worth getting into, which is that like
Speaker 1: Twitter as an undeniable command of like global news discourse
Speaker 1: it's where all of the journalists hang out, it's where
Speaker 1: a significant number of the politicians and wealthy business people
Speaker 1: hang out, and all of us are being broken by it,
Speaker 1: like it's one big opium den that we are all
Speaker 1: like engaging in an addiction that is destroying our brains inside. Um.
Speaker 1: It's not good for anyone, but it's undeniably important. And
Speaker 1: since Elon Musk took over, things have been things have
Speaker 1: been quite wild. So we're going to give an update
Speaker 1: on kind of some of the stuff that's been happening
Speaker 1: in Twitter at the end here, but I want to
Speaker 1: read a little lessay I wrote, just kind of looking
Speaker 1: at mostly a single post Musk made and some of
Speaker 1: the responses to it that I think says a lot
Speaker 1: about where we are as a species right now. On October,
Speaker 1: shortly after taking control of Twitter from its former shareholders,
Speaker 1: Elon Musk went on a frenzy of what you might
Speaker 1: call ill considered emphetamine derived tweets about his ideas for
Speaker 1: how the site should function. At one point, he noted
Speaker 1: that twenty dollars a month seemed like a fair price
Speaker 1: for people to pay to get or keep blue check marks.
Speaker 1: There was even talk of twenty dollars a month being
Speaker 1: the price to use Twitter at all and pay walling
Speaker 1: the entire site. Now, a lot of people thought this
Speaker 1: was bug funk, especially since like Hbo doesn't cost that
Speaker 1: much and it's and it's got and door on it.
Speaker 1: You can watch just Disney, both of both of the
Speaker 1: streaming services that I watch I stole from you Garrison,
Speaker 1: So really it's an incredible deal. So everyone made fun
Speaker 1: of the fact that Elon was suggesting this, and no
Speaker 1: one had a bigger laugh than Stephen King. Now, Stephen King,
Speaker 1: if you're not aware, is worth pretty close to a
Speaker 1: billion dollars. He is an unbelievably wealthy man, and like
Speaker 1: he has like actual money, not like stock made up money,
Speaker 1: that is cash. He has hundreds of millions of dollars
Speaker 1: in cash because people like his He has more like
Speaker 1: actual money than he probably liquid assets. He's a very
Speaker 1: liquid man because he wrote The Shining and the Stand
Speaker 1: and cou Joe and that's a clown book. So many
Speaker 1: he writes a new book every week. He's the only
Speaker 1: man who has successfully turned a painkiller addiction into putting
Speaker 1: out a best selling novel every single month. What a
Speaker 1: hero anyway, he tweeted, quote, twenty dollars a month to
Speaker 1: keep my blue check. Fuck that they should pay me.
Speaker 1: If that gets instituted, I'm gone, like in ron now.
Speaker 1: In addition to being the kind to wordplay for which
Speaker 1: Stephen King has become rightly famous, the reason that he
Speaker 1: got kind of piste off is actually sensible. Obviously, twenty
Speaker 1: dollars means nothing to someone with his kind of money,
Speaker 1: but he's not wrong about his central argument, which is
Speaker 1: that like Twitter ought to be paying people like him.
Speaker 1: He has nearly seven million followers, and he tweets very regularly.
Speaker 1: Massive accounts like Stephen King's are not Twitter's customers. They
Speaker 1: are the business itself. It is the product. I want
Speaker 1: to quote now from a report in Reuters. Quote, these
Speaker 1: heavy tweeters account for less than ten percent of monthly
Speaker 1: overall users, but generate of all tweets and half of
Speaker 1: global revenue. Heavy tweeters have been an absolute decline since
Speaker 1: the pandemic began. A Twitter researcher wrote in an internal
Speaker 1: document titled where did the Tweeters go? Now? Sonny, It's
Speaker 1: like Instagram or whatever. Once you're like, have a lot
Speaker 1: of followers, you can make money. So I think Twitter
Speaker 1: is different that way. It is. I I am the
Speaker 1: only person in the history of Twitter who was actually
Speaker 1: turned being a ship poster insway lucrative professional career. I
Speaker 1: am the only one. Everyone else that is drill drill
Speaker 1: was already like in in this like drivels already. I think,
Speaker 1: like in the scene doing stuff like well they done
Speaker 1: something has something to do with home stuck. But the
Speaker 1: point is that the people like Stephen King are what
Speaker 1: makes Twitter profitable. The idea that like they owe the
Speaker 1: company money to be able to tweet is kind of
Speaker 1: absolutely absurd, and in addition to that, like it it
Speaker 1: feeds into a serious problem the site is having before
Speaker 1: Elon bought it. They're they're they're they're attempting to answer
Speaker 1: the question of like, why are these people who are
Speaker 1: responsible for most of our money tweeting less? Because it's
Speaker 1: it's costing us like it is. There's a reason why
Speaker 1: Twitter has been on a profit down slope lately. Um
Speaker 1: the only profitable years the company has had I should know,
Speaker 1: we're two thousand eighteen and two thousand nineteen, in which
Speaker 1: they were doing reasonably well financially, and since the pandemics started,
Speaker 1: Twitter has reliably lost hundreds of millions of dollars per year.
Speaker 1: This research was which was attempting to answer the question
Speaker 1: why beat at concluded quote cryptocurrency and not safe for
Speaker 1: work content, which includes nudity and pornography, are the highest
Speaker 1: growing topics of interest among English speaking heavy users. The
Speaker 1: report found at the same time, interest in news, sports,
Speaker 1: and entertainment is waning among those users. Tweets on those topics,
Speaker 1: which have helped Twitter burnishing images the world's digital town square,
Speaker 1: as Musk once called it, are also the most desirable
Speaker 1: for advertisers. So basically, the things that advertisers like to
Speaker 1: see ads next to are becoming less popular on Twitter,
Speaker 1: and ship that is poisoned for advertisers has become more popular. Now.
Speaker 1: This is a problem for Musk because he loves crypto shilling,
Speaker 1: which is a huge issue for everyone who isn't a
Speaker 1: crypto weirdo. Um, there are some opportunities. One of the
Speaker 1: things that I thought wasn't a bad idea was Musk
Speaker 1: suggested ways in which to like monetize the site so
Speaker 1: sex workers could more effectively monetize their followings, which is
Speaker 1: a way Twitter might be able to make more money
Speaker 1: now is that likely to make the company money in
Speaker 1: excess of what they would lose in advertising for becoming
Speaker 1: known as the Fox site. Probably not, Probably broadly speaking
Speaker 1: of bad idea. Um So, in addition to Musk's outright
Speaker 1: hatred of journalists in reporting, it seems like just his
Speaker 1: general vibes might not be great for bringing back the
Speaker 1: advertisers he seems to be personally having fine. He seems
Speaker 1: to be personally inclined to like go after the things
Speaker 1: and support the things that are directly poisoned for Twitter's
Speaker 1: bottom line, which is fascinating for a guy who's spending
Speaker 1: forty four billion dollars on the side. Can can we
Speaker 1: can we mention for a second, by the way, the
Speaker 1: reason he spent forty billion dollars on the site was
Speaker 1: because he bought the stocks, the sites shares for a
Speaker 1: meme price that someone sugested on Twitter. Yes, it was
Speaker 1: like fifty four dollars and fifty four dollars and twenty cents,
Speaker 1: so there's a four twenty. Yeah, this is this is
Speaker 1: why you sent forty four billion dollars on this And
Speaker 1: he previously it's worth noting he previously did that with
Speaker 1: Twitter stock or with um Tesla stuff. He attempted to
Speaker 1: take Tesla private for four dollars to share heavily for
Speaker 1: that one. Because that's because it's very yes, exactly, because
Speaker 1: that was that was very illegal, we think, very not
Speaker 1: that funny. Yeah, it's also worth noting that like the
Speaker 1: one thing that he actually has he has created, right,
Speaker 1: he didn't invent Tesla, like he didn't even his is
Speaker 1: his reply guys. No, his his reply guys are like
Speaker 1: his unique asset, and and he's trying to price him
Speaker 1: out of being his reply guys. The cult of personality stuff, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but like that's largely built on Twitter, right, like his
Speaker 1: the whole cult around him, well and read it. But yeah,
Speaker 1: and just like the fact that like people think the
Speaker 1: genius x y Z whatever. Yeah, that is that's too
Speaker 1: big a tapping for today's episode and recently we'll see.
Speaker 1: But you know, we're not talking today about like Musk's
Speaker 1: broadly speaking, why Musk is a con man. Well, we'll
Speaker 1: talk about that. We've talked about that on plenty of
Speaker 1: other occasions. Nor is this supposed to be an exhaustive
Speaker 1: explanation for why Musk's Twitter is likely to fall apart.
Speaker 1: We don't have the end of that story yet. So instead,
Speaker 1: what I want to do is review a single tweet
Speaker 1: and particularly the responses to that tweet, because I think
Speaker 1: it is hugely interesting and kind of an important cultural artifact.
Speaker 1: So the tweet was a response by Musk to the
Speaker 1: Stephen King tweet that I I read earlier. Right King
Speaker 1: being like, I'm not gonna pay this, Musk responded simply,
Speaker 1: we need to pay the bills. Somehow Twitter cannot rely
Speaker 1: entirely on advertisers. How about eight dollars? Now, this is
Speaker 1: also very funny because you and you're like, whoa, there's
Speaker 1: nothing in there. There's nothing, but it's it's just bouncing
Speaker 1: around like a fucking bb and a goddamn dryer. Um.
Speaker 1: So the first comments to this response, or what you'd expect,
Speaker 1: there's a mix of anti Musk lib types laughing at
Speaker 1: his bad business sense, mocking the idea of making Twitter's
Speaker 1: most valuable users pay for the site. Um, you've got
Speaker 1: your Musk defenders insisting that Blue checks some sort of
Speaker 1: out of touch elite, which is one of my favorite
Speaker 1: bits of deranged right wing culture that like there's some
Speaker 1: sort of like yeah verse s I this there's like
Speaker 1: a there's an old left Twitter joke like like like
Speaker 1: literally it was like there was there was a running
Speaker 1: series of jokes about like the blue check bourgeoisie and like,
Speaker 1: and then somehow all of these people became convinced it
Speaker 1: was real and through a process that like I cannot
Speaker 1: even begin to understand the the process, and this is critical,
Speaker 1: is that you cannot tell jokes on Twitter dot com.
Speaker 1: That's true. Um, that that is that is the actual process,
Speaker 1: and that is the Yeah, that's that's that's what's happening here.
Speaker 1: So a representative Musk defender responses this comment by Douche
Speaker 1: Canoe Magoo and everyone ha ha ha ha ha. Dude
Speaker 1: worth five million who wants to tax the ricks rich
Speaker 1: can't play twenty dollars ha ha. Hey elon Musk, I'll
Speaker 1: play this pay this loser's twenty dollars a month. Now.
Speaker 1: I looked into it, and this guy is an anti
Speaker 1: vaxer with thirty four followers. If you're if you're curious
Speaker 1: on the lip side, you've got guys like Keith Olberman's
Speaker 1: subtweeting Musks to try and use like numbers in math
Speaker 1: to show that this business plan which was never a
Speaker 1: business real business plan isn't going to make money. The
Speaker 1: first interesting response there was a few comments down from
Speaker 1: Keith by a journalist named Hopewell Chinono. Good morning, Elon Musk.
Speaker 1: For a lot of journalists in Africa, verification has helped
Speaker 1: us to not fall victim to state tactics to use
Speaker 1: our names to spread propaganda. I have been to jail
Speaker 1: three times inside six months for exposing corruption. Few African
Speaker 1: journalists will afford the U S twenty dollars and attached
Speaker 1: to this tweet where images from Too Guardian articles about
Speaker 1: Hope Well. I'm going to quote from one now. Nno
Speaker 1: posted on his Twitter account that police had taken him
Speaker 1: from his house and said that they were charging him
Speaker 1: with communicating falsehoods. The arrest comes after Chennono tweeted that
Speaker 1: police had beaten an infant to death while enforcing COVID
Speaker 1: nineteen lockdown rules this week. Police later said the information
Speaker 1: was false. Before the latest arrest, Hinono was out on
Speaker 1: bail and separate charges of inciting violence as after he
Speaker 1: voiced support for an anti government protest in July, and
Speaker 1: also on contemptive court charges for allegedly claiming corruption within
Speaker 1: the country's National Prosecution Agency. Chanono is one of Zimbabwe's
Speaker 1: most prominent critics of President Emerson. I'm not gonna be
Speaker 1: able to pronounce that last name administration, accusing it of
Speaker 1: corruption and human rights abuses. The government denies the charges. Now,
Speaker 1: Hope Well is a Harvard Fellow. He is an award
Speaker 1: winning journalist and I had no idea this guy existed
Speaker 1: prior to this tweet. Uh. He is an extremely courageous
Speaker 1: person who, from everything I can read, is reporting on
Speaker 1: corruption within the Zimbabwean government has been very influential, recently
Speaker 1: led to the sacking of the very corrupt Health Minister.
Speaker 1: I would not have heard of this man without Twitter.
Speaker 1: He would not have had a voice capable of reaching
Speaker 1: a large number of people without Twitter. It's possible those
Speaker 1: Guardian articles about him and his struggle would not exist
Speaker 1: if it weren't for the prominence of his Twitter account. Um,
Speaker 1: and you know, it's also worth noting that if Twitter
Speaker 1: weren't the site that it is, he never would have
Speaker 1: had a chance to make his concerns public anywhere close
Speaker 1: to the CEO of that company. Many things about this
Speaker 1: interaction cry out for the very best about Twitter. The
Speaker 1: smallest and probably most valuable of the major social media websites,
Speaker 1: and at least a social level, we all call it
Speaker 1: the hell site, and a huge part of Twitter culture
Speaker 1: is despising it. But moments like this really do make
Speaker 1: a lot of the bullshit worthwhile. In the articles hope
Speaker 1: Will attached to his post, he's wearing a red and
Speaker 1: white striped shirt. The top response to Hopewell's replied a
Speaker 1: musk is by Jason Roeberg. A musk reply by Guy one,
Speaker 1: American News and Fox News commenter. He writes, why did
Speaker 1: they dress you like American Waldo, I'll pay for your subscription.
Speaker 1: Hopo replies, that is very kind of you. That is
Speaker 1: prison uniform. My imprisonment was triggered by tweets exposing state corruption.
Speaker 1: The ruling political elites use captured state institutions to punish
Speaker 1: analyst who exposed the looting of public funds um which
Speaker 1: I don't know. Another perfectly characteristic Twitter response and being
Speaker 1: like look at the way he's dressed and being like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a prison uniform. I was I just got out
Speaker 1: of prison for when I was doing amazing criminalism. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just very It says a lot there's a lot
Speaker 1: going on here. Yeah. Have you come across his I guess,
Speaker 1: I hope, Well, you know, no dot com which is
Speaker 1: not his website. No, Jesus Mark God, is it something?
Speaker 1: Is that like a government thing? Yes, it's a government
Speaker 1: I hope. But you don't know. He's very deceptives. He's
Speaker 1: the liar and dishonest person. Yeah. Yeah, so just wow,
Speaker 1: this is an incredible story website. Look at this. They've
Speaker 1: done some work. I love. The background is like a
Speaker 1: boat sailing in the star sol to see what the
Speaker 1: fuck they They're not doing their finest work over there.
Speaker 1: The first section is the title in all caps is
Speaker 1: and I quote Daddy Hope story that his Twitter handled that. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: his residence looks like a sex he then apparently okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know what they look like, but you could
Speaker 1: like it's it's obvious, like he's obviously like disinformation about
Speaker 1: him personally. It's a big fucking issue for this guy. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Dot com is just a great example of live verification
Speaker 1: on Twitter is an important it's a wonderful example of that. Garrison. Now,
Speaker 1: the responses to this guy continued to be pretty amazing.
Speaker 1: Another fun reply was simply I thought that in Zimbabwe
Speaker 1: they arrest only white folks. Oh, has that person got
Speaker 1: a picture of like a some kind of white guy
Speaker 1: very short shorts? And yeah, yeah he's some some some
Speaker 1: serious Rhodesian ship on that dude's timeline. Now, I want
Speaker 1: to note most of the responses to Hopeful are very
Speaker 1: positive um and all of the negative replies have multiple
Speaker 1: people attacking the people who are going after hope Well
Speaker 1: and defending him. Because Twitter works the way that it does,
Speaker 1: though this increases engagement provides an algorithmic boost to everybody involved.
Speaker 1: The whole situation in his replies is kind of as
Speaker 1: bleak and hopeless as Hopell's initial reply is itself hopeful.
Speaker 1: Scrolling down further, the applies to Musk's tweet. We get
Speaker 1: this gym from the skin doctor, and this is somebody
Speaker 1: just like tweeting his his advice to Ellen. How about
Speaker 1: privileged classes like white straight men and women upper cast
Speaker 1: Hindus pay a hundred dollars for their blue ticks. You
Speaker 1: keep eight dollars each from it and pay the rest
Speaker 1: ninety two dollars to oppressed classes blue tickers like rich communists,
Speaker 1: LGBT doll its feminists, left journals, vegans, peta fair. No,
Speaker 1: this one is quite the response that it has. It
Speaker 1: has seventy dred likes, which makes sense because the skin
Speaker 1: Doctor has more than half million followers. He is a
Speaker 1: Hindu dermatologist from Flower Mount, Texas who posts like pro
Speaker 1: Hindu fascist content Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. He also posts
Speaker 1: right wing sketch comedy videos about how a modern Titanic
Speaker 1: sinking wouldn't put women and children first because of wokeness. Um.
Speaker 1: He's an incredible account. I recommend following the skin Doctor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is the world that are our wants. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: this is like yeah. The responses of his to his
Speaker 1: tweet are another perfect microcosm of Twitter, because a big
Speaker 1: part of it is he has this like long fight
Speaker 1: with another right winger who doesn't get the joke and
Speaker 1: attacks him for being woke, and also gets thousands of yes,
Speaker 1: it's so good. Um, and it's probably you know, fair
Speaker 1: for me to talk just a little bit about the
Speaker 1: liberal lefty you know must reply guys, the ones who
Speaker 1: reply it to one of his posts, but attacking him.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about Eric Davis, a verified candidate for
Speaker 1: the North Carolina Statehouse with fifty four followers. Um, not
Speaker 1: a lot of followers. He is a Democrat. Uh, and
Speaker 1: he seems to be trying to draft off of Musk's
Speaker 1: replies to increase his own popularity. And that this was
Speaker 1: you know, prior to the election. Uh, we should check
Speaker 1: in on how Eric Davis did in North Carolina for him.
Speaker 1: And then I just love that, like all his replying
Speaker 1: just landed with people like it's very funny. Yeah, his
Speaker 1: reply shows a total lack of understanding about what's happening
Speaker 1: with Twitter. Quote. Wait, so Twitter was perfectly fine before
Speaker 1: the supposedly richest man took control, but now that it
Speaker 1: has even more money and got rid of many of
Speaker 1: the workers, so it's even cheaper to sustain now it
Speaker 1: can't survive without paying That is part logic for the
Speaker 1: Musk fan base. I guess, which is completely wrong. Twitter
Speaker 1: hasn't was not making money. Twitter was losing hundreds of
Speaker 1: millions of dollars a year and now makes even less money.
Speaker 1: But anyway, Um, it's got three hundred and seventy four likes,
Speaker 1: which is one of the biggest tweets this particular candidate
Speaker 1: has had, by the way, that that is h he know, Wait,
Speaker 1: what are we think the same guy? Did he win
Speaker 1: North Caroline his school board? Oh no, no, no for school.
Speaker 1: But in the general election he got eight thousand votes
Speaker 1: and lost by how much? He lost by by fifty
Speaker 1: two percent of the vote and got seventy six in
Speaker 1: his Yeah, if only, if only fully he tweeted more,
Speaker 1: if only he'd owned Elon Musko a little bit harder
Speaker 1: via tweet, that would have flung things. God, that's funny,
Speaker 1: so further down as a political cartoon, and I do
Speaker 1: not understand it, but I am. I'm going to force
Speaker 1: you all to to observe it. I could look at
Speaker 1: it like I can try to explain it. Drop it
Speaker 1: in the chat. So that's the that's the political cartoon. Okay.
Speaker 1: So it's the meme of the guy who's who's walking
Speaker 1: with his girlfriend and it's looking at the other woman,
Speaker 1: except all of their faces are cartoon faces of Elon Mutton,
Speaker 1: Elon Musk's girlfriend. It's wearing a Twitter shirt and he's
Speaker 1: looking over at a girl with a red TikTok. What
Speaker 1: does this mean? That's a hard question, Robert. You we
Speaker 1: could do a whole semester about what this means. Yeah,
Speaker 1: distracted by Aiden looking at Ellen. It's like ignoring Twitter
Speaker 1: because you're looking over at the red pill. I guess
Speaker 1: I don't know you're looking at Also, you like you.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's supposed to meet anything. They all
Speaker 1: have his face, which makes it so much more complicated.
Speaker 1: It's a lot going on there. I'm so happy that
Speaker 1: none of us have been on the internet enough to
Speaker 1: understand what this means. I'm so proud of us. And lastly,
Speaker 1: there's my very favorite reply from someone called doctor Disrespect
Speaker 1: with a staggering two point four million followers. Do you
Speaker 1: not know who this is? He's some video game player
Speaker 1: he wears like a plate carrier while he's playing video games,
Speaker 1: and also public sometimes Oh my god. Anyway, yeah, he
Speaker 1: tweets this to musk. Let the two X give you
Speaker 1: a thought. Allow face scan slash retinal scan into a
Speaker 1: blue check mode, similar to iPhone unlock through face scan,
Speaker 1: but in this case only while scan is active. A
Speaker 1: tweet is created alongside unique code coinciding with that instance.
Speaker 1: Let's wake up Ellen. This has eight thousand three two lines.
Speaker 1: Who the fund is this guy? Okay, so he's like
Speaker 1: he's like, he's an FPS streamer, right, like he was
Speaker 1: like a big condrom. He he does just like whole
Speaker 1: thing because he stopped. He's the first, he's the first
Speaker 1: person shooter streamer. He plays Call of Duty, among other things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he got banned from Twitch for doing something that like, well,
Speaker 1: I think she was she the guy who got bank
Speaker 1: he took a video and why are you asking us?
Speaker 1: I think he might be the guy who got banned
Speaker 1: for taking a video in a in a in a bathroom.
Speaker 1: I can't remember exactly. He's also okay. So one of
Speaker 1: the things he's most famous for is he's one of
Speaker 1: the people who are there's this entire cadre of like
Speaker 1: professional like Call of Duty streamers whose entire thing is
Speaker 1: that they don't want there to be ranked batchmaking and
Speaker 1: video games because they don't like playing against good players
Speaker 1: and they want to be able to stream pub stomps
Speaker 1: all the time. And they're really really mad about this
Speaker 1: and have been screaming at every game deav who has
Speaker 1: like ever existed for like multiple years now about how
Speaker 1: they suck. Like, so he's the guy video games, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he wasn't. He's also mad about people who are good
Speaker 1: at it. He's really annoying he's okay, okay, that's all.
Speaker 1: That's all. That's all we need to know about this fellow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the little thing that I wrote about that I
Speaker 1: couldn't get out of my head. I don't know why.
Speaker 1: I just found that specific post in the comments to it.
Speaker 1: It is fascinating because it both shows that Musk did
Speaker 1: not have a clear game plan on what's he wants
Speaker 1: going forward into this, like the twenty how fast the
Speaker 1: twenty twenty dollar a month thing got disregarded for eight
Speaker 1: dollars just because of one tweet because Stephen King didn't
Speaker 1: like it. Yeah, it's like, it's very clear he's just
Speaker 1: bouncing from one thing to another with no clear idea
Speaker 1: on what he's doing whatsoever. And then with the with
Speaker 1: the thing about the journalist, it really shows how Ellen
Speaker 1: does not understand what verification is or why it exists,
Speaker 1: and slowly, over the course these past few weeks, has
Speaker 1: understood why it exists and just replaced it with another,
Speaker 1: with a second checkmark beneath the first check mark, so
Speaker 1: you have your blue checkmark, that you have your official checkmark.
Speaker 1: It's it's just wild that he's he's slowly, he slowly
Speaker 1: over the course of mostly thousands of will impersonating him
Speaker 1: to make to make fun of him, he realized why
Speaker 1: why verification exists. And I mean, but it's telling that
Speaker 1: like he he did not know why it exists until
Speaker 1: until it was a personal until it was a personal
Speaker 1: problem that impacted him specifically. He doesn't care about the
Speaker 1: journalists from Zimbabwe. He doesn't care that that's going to happen.
Speaker 1: It only becomes a thing when it's going to start
Speaker 1: impacting him. Take a moment of silence for for our
Speaker 1: brave posters who went out in a blaze of glory
Speaker 1: impersonating bust and get getting getting their account band who
Speaker 1: who it was? That was funny, But that's less of that.
Speaker 1: So I want to I want to talk about sat
Speaker 1: what's actually like because people have funked around and had fun.
Speaker 1: A bunch of famous people got banned making fun of
Speaker 1: Elon Musk and it was you know, the funny part
Speaker 1: of this was that damage was done. Legitimate damage was
Speaker 1: done to a couple of companies Locheed Martin and Eli
Speaker 1: Lily and had damage to their stock price done, which
Speaker 1: is at least, you know, probably temporary, although they haven't
Speaker 1: yet recovered to the heights they were before the joke.
Speaker 1: What's less temporary is that as a result of those jokes,
Speaker 1: at least one company, Eli Lily, pulled millions of dollars
Speaker 1: in adververtising off of Twitter. So the eight dollar check
Speaker 1: mark did cause real financial harm to Twitter the company,
Speaker 1: and at least kind of a temporary financial slap on
Speaker 1: the wrist to some other people. Um it's kind of
Speaker 1: unclear what the long term impacts of that will be,
Speaker 1: but Musk has delayed the rollout of the blue checkmark
Speaker 1: plan on a more on a wider basis for like
Speaker 1: a month until they figure shit out, which they may
Speaker 1: not do at the present time. What you're seeing is
Speaker 1: he's fired and is continuing to fire everybody within the
Speaker 1: company who says anything negative against him. A couple of
Speaker 1: engineers were bold enough to like critique him or argue
Speaker 1: with him on Twitter, and there have also been people
Speaker 1: within the company who have kind of pushed out corrections
Speaker 1: to some of his posts through Twitter's bird watch, uh
Speaker 1: thing of the jig that have been critical of like
Speaker 1: things he said that we're not actually true and at
Speaker 1: the moment, kind of the holy pattern what we're kind
Speaker 1: of doing is sort of watching him purge most of
Speaker 1: the old staff of Twitter, as he seems to be
Speaker 1: in the process of trying to hire new people on
Speaker 1: um And one of the most recent thing that's happened
Speaker 1: is he's sent out a letter saying basically like we
Speaker 1: all have to everybody has to go into hardcore crazy
Speaker 1: mode to make the company profitable. Uh, if you don't
Speaker 1: want to do this, you know, here's the door. You
Speaker 1: can get your three months severance. And it kind of
Speaker 1: looks like the vast majority of the remaining engineers may
Speaker 1: take the severance. There's a good reason for this. So
Speaker 1: basically the kind of position they're in the way and
Speaker 1: this is this is heavily involved in how Silicon Valley works.
Speaker 1: The way to make a lot of money in Silicon
Speaker 1: Valley is to get equity in a company before it
Speaker 1: gets huge. Right. You can also get a big salary
Speaker 1: at a company, but salaries, a big salary for a
Speaker 1: dev might be for to eight hundred thousand dollars a
Speaker 1: year if you're really really good, Whereas if you get
Speaker 1: in on the ground floor of a startup that that
Speaker 1: goes public, you could make hundreds of millions of dollars. Right,
Speaker 1: big difference in those things. Musk is asking people to
Speaker 1: work like nightmares start up amounts, but they will not
Speaker 1: have any equity or any but like if they figure
Speaker 1: out Twitter two point oh and suddenly make it a
Speaker 1: website that a billion people use, which is what he wants, um,
Speaker 1: they will not have any share in that. So a
Speaker 1: lot of devs are making the decision to like, well,
Speaker 1: I'm just going to take the severance and try to
Speaker 1: build something else. So try to get a job in
Speaker 1: another startup or like try it, because why why why
Speaker 1: wouldn't you if you were capable of making the next
Speaker 1: big social media app, why wouldn't you take the money,
Speaker 1: leave Twitter and just try to do it rather than
Speaker 1: try to do it through fucking Twitter, which is a
Speaker 1: goddamn disaster right now. Anyway, that's more or less where
Speaker 1: things are. Yeah, and I think that the everything is
Speaker 1: refreshing yourself, the people who are left at Twitter, like
Speaker 1: I don't know how the site works, Like Musk has
Speaker 1: no idea how the site works, Like you know, this
Speaker 1: is like on the sort of back end infratructure end
Speaker 1: and so like we are like we we've we've already
Speaker 1: had there. There there was there was a thing people
Speaker 1: found out where like Twitter ads and storing people's like
Speaker 1: most of the digitous people's credit cards in plain text. Um,
Speaker 1: like the site is physically falling apart. It's already started.
Speaker 1: It's probably just going to continue, and like we are
Speaker 1: probably not that far away from just watching the actual
Speaker 1: site just physically fall apart. And so you know, maybe
Speaker 1: is taking a step back from CEL. Yeah, he's looking
Speaker 1: to probably hire some competent people instead because he's realized
Speaker 1: how hard it is and it's not fun anymore. Like
Speaker 1: it's that's true, but there there's kind of a problem here,
Speaker 1: which is that like there's a lot of like a okay,
Speaker 1: like i I I really doubt Twitter as like very
Speaker 1: very good. I mean, it's documentation is probably okay, but
Speaker 1: there's a lot of people who understand how critical stuff
Speaker 1: like how critical stuff works towards has gone right, And
Speaker 1: it's not as easy as just like you can like
Speaker 1: you know, just socket in another person who's like, oh,
Speaker 1: who like knows how programming works right like you You
Speaker 1: you need the expertise from those people who had deep
Speaker 1: understandings of how it works, and like you know, maybe
Speaker 1: maybe there maybe there's enough time to sort of like
Speaker 1: fill in the gaps and like take it out of
Speaker 1: his tails. But but I don't know, especially like with
Speaker 1: you know, the number of people who are just increasingly leaving.
Speaker 1: Nobody really does know, and you know, it's one of
Speaker 1: those things we'll all we'll all watch, is this is
Speaker 1: this shakes out. I don't know if I think the
Speaker 1: whole site is going to actually fall apart um. I
Speaker 1: think the bigger I think the thing that is I
Speaker 1: think when I when we talk about it falling apart,
Speaker 1: the thing that's actually likely is that there will be
Speaker 1: increasing security breaches due to the fact that there are
Speaker 1: less people minding the store. Folks, data will be exposed.
Speaker 1: I cannot size enough. Do not attach your fucking credit
Speaker 1: card to Twitter? Yeah? Absolutely? Do you not like message?
Speaker 1: Like a lot of us use Twitter for reporting. I
Speaker 1: get d ms all the time for people who want
Speaker 1: to leak stuff, people who want to talk to me
Speaker 1: about stuff, some of which might not be legal where
Speaker 1: they are. Like, don't fucking do that on Twitter dot
Speaker 1: com anymore? Asked message someone asked for signal lost approach
Speaker 1: on mail? Do something like that? Like it? That could
Speaker 1: be very dangerous for some people. Yeah, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of ship that could go wrong as a result of
Speaker 1: this for people. Um, but I think it will probably
Speaker 1: be a series of scandals and funk ups like that,
Speaker 1: as opposed to just the site goes offline one day. Now,
Speaker 1: that said, it's not impossible that like his Elen is
Speaker 1: a guy who is shall we say, somewhat mere curial.
Speaker 1: It's possible to site will lose enough money that one
Speaker 1: day he's just like fuck it and turns it off.
Speaker 1: He does technically have that ability. That would be kind
Speaker 1: of a fascinating thing to see happen. I don't I
Speaker 1: think that's a much lower likely scenario. Well, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think it's putting it like when when when I say
Speaker 1: the site breaks, like, it's probably not going to be
Speaker 1: there's one day where it doesn't load, Like but what
Speaker 1: we when we've already been seeing like they they, I think,
Speaker 1: by accident, basically broke a bunch of how two factor
Speaker 1: authentification worked because they shut down the micro Yeah, and
Speaker 1: like they're gonna keep doing stuff like that and there's
Speaker 1: just gonna be like random stuff that just stopped working
Speaker 1: absolutely like like that that's already happening. Twitter has already
Speaker 1: been kind of a piece of shp, like even when
Speaker 1: it had an actual staff, and now it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it is important to note the people who were running
Speaker 1: Twitter prior to Musk taking over, we're not great at
Speaker 1: their jobs because as evidence by the fact that Twitter
Speaker 1: lost two hundred and twelve million dollars last year. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And in the meantime, there's there's an account that documents
Speaker 1: all the dogs of the UC strike, which it's sick. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that does. As this is happening to Twitter, Meta is
Speaker 1: also going through a series of devastating layoffs and as
Speaker 1: sim really impacting their functionality and pivoting very hard away
Speaker 1: from the news driven approach that they've been doing the
Speaker 1: past few years. So the two, both the two main
Speaker 1: like old guards social media sites between Facebook and Twitter,
Speaker 1: are going under significant changes. Um TikTok is of course
Speaker 1: owned by companies that are not great on your own
Speaker 1: data of privacy. Instagram is owned by Facebook, and maston
Speaker 1: is miserable. So Mastedon is We're gonna get yelled at
Speaker 1: so much by the masted On people. But I'm just look,
Speaker 1: I couldn't I couldn't figure out how masted On worked
Speaker 1: inside of thirty seconds and that is all the time
Speaker 1: I will ever devote to learning how a social media
Speaker 1: site works. I'm sorry, guys, I'm sorry. The best critique
Speaker 1: I've seen of Mastodon is that, in a part, the
Speaker 1: kind of the twenty twenty uprising happened because the video
Speaker 1: of George Floyd getting murdered got circulated so much on Twitter,
Speaker 1: like people saw they weren't able to look away from
Speaker 1: the atrocity that could never happen on Mastodon. And that's
Speaker 1: that's the biggest kind of thing for why Mastodon is
Speaker 1: not a not a a replacement for Twitter, because it
Speaker 1: will never At this point, it doesn't look like it
Speaker 1: will have the same cultural impact um that Twitter can have.
Speaker 1: Now of course that could change, who knows, And it's
Speaker 1: it's at this point, it's just it doesn't It doesn't
Speaker 1: seem to get the same thing that Twitter can do.
Speaker 1: That doesn't mean it's a failure. Like a lot of
Speaker 1: people use it. If you like it, if you find
Speaker 1: a community there, great, it's just not the same thing.
Speaker 1: It's not the same thing. Like that's all we're saying.
Speaker 1: That's why I was saying, like replacement Twitter, different things.
Speaker 1: Do you mean it's not valuable? Just like if Twitter
Speaker 1: were to turn into just a site for sex workers
Speaker 1: to make money on, there's nothing wrong with that, but
Speaker 1: it would not be fulfilling the same role that it
Speaker 1: currently does. Yeah, I mean, like I tried to overthrow
Speaker 1: my first government on Twitter. I tried to overthrow my
Speaker 1: most recent government on Twitter. Like has to be a
Speaker 1: social media service and facilitates tempting governments, Like Twitter is
Speaker 1: like unique because it's where a lot of people get
Speaker 1: their news. It's where a lot of people learn things
Speaker 1: like if the celebrity is trending, are they dead? Like
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. Like, it's just like it's
Speaker 1: where a lot of collective information is. And I don't
Speaker 1: think there's a site right now that can even even
Speaker 1: come close to how many people rely on Twitter. Just
Speaker 1: let's see. I mean, I think it's it's it's it's
Speaker 1: not that that's where people get news. It's where a
Speaker 1: certain type of influential person gets their news because a
Speaker 1: lot of people get their news via TikTok. They're just
Speaker 1: people my age of younger like like like like like
Speaker 1: a lot of people do get news on whatever they
Speaker 1: look at. The reason why twitters impactfuls because twitters where
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of people who have influence in other
Speaker 1: areas get their information from. And that's why it's that's
Speaker 1: why something that has interest, you know, in twenty twenty
Speaker 1: years is when everyone who's on TikTok is going to
Speaker 1: be in there, Like early thirties, who knows what the
Speaker 1: media landscape is gonna be, Right, it's now the most
Speaker 1: influential media. Yeah, it's it's this. It's the same thing
Speaker 1: as how like back during the French Revolution, the most
Speaker 1: influential thing in media was this one chick's coffee house, right,
Speaker 1: because it's just where all of the people that had
Speaker 1: the most people listening to them independently happened to hang
Speaker 1: out together. That's what Twitter has been for a while.
Speaker 1: Um and and and that's not always a good thing,
Speaker 1: because everyone who hangs out on Twitter gets their brain
Speaker 1: broken in a very specific way. And we're watching it
Speaker 1: continue to happen to the wealthiest man in the history
Speaker 1: of the human race, which has been a hoot. Also,
Speaker 1: I mean, and this is the thing people on Twitter
Speaker 1: talk about all the time. Twitter is like the only
Speaker 1: place in the modern world where you can actually interact
Speaker 1: with the ruling class and like make their lives. Like
Speaker 1: the only other thing you could possibly try to do
Speaker 1: in order to do that is like get you and
Speaker 1: seven your friends to try to storm their mansion and
Speaker 1: they'll probably shoot you. When I have bad When I
Speaker 1: have a bad day, I can find the air to
Speaker 1: the Habsburg Fortune and I can tweet him a picture
Speaker 1: of the dead body of his cousin who after he
Speaker 1: was shot to death for carrying out a coup in Mexico.
Speaker 1: I can do that on Twitter dot com and no
Speaker 1: other website. I will warn you that you do get
Speaker 1: banned for certain and dead dictator memes. I've had a
Speaker 1: few Mussolini bands, but otherwise, Yeah, it's a glorious website.
Speaker 1: It is. Yeah, I'm just enjoying pictures that people have
Speaker 1: responded to Nancy Pelosi's retirement thing with right now and
Speaker 1: it's just you guys click the bottom link as an
Speaker 1: absolute banger. Yeah, unfortunately I saw that before. That's one
Speaker 1: of the most that is that is like that looks
Speaker 1: like a horror horror movie picture. No, God, So imagine
Speaker 1: if like you were doing a horror movie where like
Speaker 1: people are in a haunted house and there's like a
Speaker 1: demon in the walls, and it at some point like
Speaker 1: pulls out like a man size demon comes out of
Speaker 1: the wall and pulls a person into the wall. It
Speaker 1: looks like that, but the demon in the wall is
Speaker 1: instead in a copy of the Constitution, and he's cradling
Speaker 1: Nancy Pelosi. But she has the body of a twenty
Speaker 1: year old female college student. Oh god, it is well,
Speaker 1: I feel like that's that's maybe we should break this down.
Speaker 1: We have, you know, I think I think we have
Speaker 1: gazed into the Twitter abyss for long enough. It's been
Speaker 1: about this is enough. We won't I promise we won't
Speaker 1: talk about Twitter like this for another several weeks. Won't
Speaker 1: be here next time. But yeah, we're We're all going
Speaker 1: to log off this and then go on Twitter. I'm not.
Speaker 1: I have to. I have to do my job. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna write about Sam Bankman freed. Happy Christmas, eve Bucks.
Speaker 1: It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
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