Item — HN Reader

IMHO (my first and I hope last Elon comment), at a higher level of cognition, Elon is just playing two simple games: maximum buzz (media game), and maximum control (politics game).

All his public persona, including all that pre-acquisition drama, is just for maximum buzz (Who cares about a few hundred millions ?)

All this post-acquisition drama is just for maximum control (over Twitter and ?).

If this is the case, some superhuman resilience and confidence are certainly needed. And if you have them, it is just mind-boggling how you can generate and control such a colossal level of human activity and attention by using a few words here and there.

I'm not trying to be condescending or original here. I'm really just refusing the idea that the inner-Elon is really as conflicted as it appears, so I'm refusing to react to his games (because as I can afford to, not like twitter employees for sure)

2 comments

I wouldn't give him credit for doing all this intentionally. Elon being incredibly impulsive seems to explain everything pretty parsimoniously.

Quick question: is that proper usage of "parsimoniously"? I've only seen it used as a synonym for "stingy," which is close, but not quite the same as the "succinctly" synonym usage here. But I'm aware that regions and time periods drift in word usage, so you aren't necessarily wrong.

Occam's Razor is also known as the Principle of Parsimony; I was using it in that sense.

Occam's Razor? interesting. I thought I was applying this one: the simplest mental strategies able to propel you to the top of the capitalist and media elite. "Being incredibly impulsive" may seems straightforwardly "true" but it does not look "sufficient" as explanation to me.

Maybe The truth is somewhere in the middle. I don't know.

"Do you not know, my son, with how very little wisdom the world is governed?"

Agreed.

But this is not about wisdom. It is about how you get to the top by being strategically calculating and manipulative, all the fucking time. These people are there because they are a herd of wolves, not sages.

He already has maximum control of Twitter.

There is nothing more he can do to control Twitter. He is at maximum Twitter control.

Twitter is not just a corporation you buy. At the very least, it is also the life and labour of all it employees. So you can never have absolute control. There is always resistance.

Maybe the real Twitter was the friends we made along the way.

If his goal was control of the hearts and minds of all the employees in the company, he's going about that poorly.

The only people I see speak positively about what he's doing are people not working for Twitter at all.

> Maybe the real Twitter was the friends we made along the way.