15 ms·

Dumbest of all, why did Musk even start this clown show of pretending to want to acquire Twitter in the first place? Even after the drops in tech stocks, he ha

Dumbest of all, why did Musk even start this clown show of pretending to want to acquire Twitter in the first place? Even after the drops in tech stocks, he has enough money to fund the takeover if he really wants it. Did he not even consider that possibility? Twitter having bots is not surprising to anyone even a tiny bit informed. Their public records and filings have this data. Did he not even read those? The whole thing is just bizarre and stupid, yes.

dna_polymerase 4y ago
He does not have enough money to fund the takeover. That's pretty obvious. If we would sell $42B worth of Tesla stock the stock would simply crash. There is no way for him to just get the money out of the markets, especially not right now when liquidity is already drying up.
petesergeant 4y ago
He's going to end up having spent $1bn of his $140bn (in fees, if I understand it right) to have been a major news story for a few weeks. I could see that representing good value-for-money
- gchadwick 4y ago
  I don't think Musk is exactly struggling to maintain a big media profile. This story might keep him in the headlines more but it's hardly making him look good. Rather I'd say it seriously damages his reputation as a serious player. He looks more interested in sounding off on twitter and messing around. Following this mess if he approached you with an offer to buy your business how seriously would you want to take him?
  - petesergeant 4y ago
    > if he approached you with an offer to buy your business how seriously would you want to take him Not seriously, HOWEVER, I would now worry about him a lot more as a competitor or enemy as he's shown he's happy to blow what is -- to me -- an unthinkable amount of cash on whimsy and for the lulz.
- sWW26 4y ago
  He can't just choose to pay the $1bn to get out of it. It's basically a fine he'd have to pay if he is unable to complete the deal due to his financing falling through or a couple of other extremely unlikely things.
vanattab 4y ago
Am I the only one who thinks it's obvious he was pretending to buy Twitter to try cover his cashing out of massive amounts of tesla?
- skohan 4y ago
  Could it be that he actually wanted to buy Twitter at a discount, but mis-calculated how much TSLA stock would drop? Maybe it was attractive at 10-20% of his net worth, but the price got too high.
  - pmorici 4y ago
    This is my thinking, he didn’t anticipate the market would tank as bad as it did and now the math on the deal isn’t what it was before all the multiple compression both for Tesla and Twitter. People saying he wasn’t serious about it from the start are off the mark.
    - throwaway0a5e 4y ago
      Exactly. Everyone is serious at one price and a tire kicker at another price. Due to the market drop the dollar figure is now more expensive relatively speaking. I would not be surprised if some lawsuits fly back and forth and the deal winds up going through at a valuation that is similar in relative terms to the offer when it was made but different numerically.
      - HWR_14 4y ago
        > a valuation that is similar in relative terms to the offer when it was made but different numerically. I have no idea what that means. You think they negotiate to 53.69/share so Musk can save some face?
        throwaway0a5e 4y ago
        Both Twitter's value and the value of the stuff that underlies Musk's wealth has dropped. So they could agree to a new lower price and Twitter shareholders would still make the same money relative to the recent value of the stock and Musk would take a similar ding relative to his net worth. It's like if you agree with someone's heirs to buy something after the current owners croaks but the current owner takes long enough to croak that the market for that thing changes. The typical path forward is to re-adjust so the deal is just as fair for both parties as it used to be and get on with it. But because of the dollar figures involved here the parties will sue each other instead of exchanging emails/texts like normal people looking to buy and sell stuff do.
derefr 4y ago
Presumably, he just wanted access to the very information he's getting access to now; and didn't care for the company otherwise.
- bryanrasmussen 4y ago
  it seems a very expensive way to buy information, he could have just offered them 10 million for the data as to how many bots they have.
- brokensegue 4y ago
  Basically anyone can buy access to the firehose of tweets. Maybe he has access to more but it's not worth billions
hellotomyrars 4y ago
It raised his profile with the current conservative news media/pundits which ate it up. Whether or not that was the purpose is speculation but being held up as a champion of free speech (as if) I’m sure did great things for his ego too.
- phs318u 4y ago
  Let's hope if he ever has a tilt at president, his campaign lasts as long. Then again, I kind of feel like we've been here before...
  - sime 4y ago
    He’s ineligible
    - LightG 4y ago
      - jstummbillig 4y ago
  - rmbyrro 4y ago
    President of South Africa? He wasn't born in the US, a prerequisite for being president there.
    - ant6n 4y ago
      Well, he’d need to be “natural born citizen”. I think at birth he was Canadian and South African, and naturalized to the US much later. …maybe they’ll change the law one day and he can run against Schwarzenegger.
      - zamalek 4y ago
        Schwarzenegger is a governor, not a president. Elon could run against him today.
wellthatsawrap1 4y ago
- VaxWithSex 4y ago
  He sure was thinking one thing and is saying another.
- timeon 4y ago
bmitc 4y ago
Musk knows Twitter has a lot of bots and that they're used for all sorts of purposes. Pro-Tesla bots have been around for over a decade. As is usual, he likes to control the narrative to only benefit whatever it is he's going on about at the moment. https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-04-12/musk-is-off-the-twitter-board-of-directors-the-tesla-twitter-bot-army-marches-on https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-04-12/musk-is-of...
ano88888 4y ago
- zerohp 4y ago
  Elon is not a natural born citizen.
  - bloqs 4y ago
    Neither was arnie
    - zerohp 4y ago
      He also cannot be president of the United States.
      - NexRebular 4y ago
        "Even though he was not born in this country, his popularity at the time caused the 61st amendment which states..."
        hef19898 4y ago
        Demolition Man was great documentary, wasn't it?
- i_no_can_eat 4y ago
  Musk was born in South Africa, he's not eligible to run for US president.
  - vkou 4y ago
    Ted cruz was born in Canada, but that didn't stop him from running.
    - piva00 4y ago
larryett 4y ago
He is just trying to find a way to lower his offer because market conditions have changed that quickly and the original offer is a bad deal at this point. This is all a side show and negotiation tactics. Really not bizarre at all. The original offer is at least 10 billion or so too much now.
prepend 4y ago
> why did Musk even start this clown show of pretending to want to acquire Twitter in the first place? To me it seems like griefer [0] behavior. The goal is to just duck with Twitter and derive joy from others pain. Musk is a gamer and I’ve played a lot of games. It’s pretty common to see people who are bored or max level or whatever who just mess with other players like a cat does with a mouse. They expel more of their own energy to cause discomfort to their target. An example may be spending 10 gold pieces to make the target lose 1 gold piece. It “doesn’t make sense” rationally until you take into account the value of the confusion, pain, negative experiences for the target as a sort of currency. So it seems perfectly common for me to see Musk spend a few billion in fines or whatever to make life worse for Twitter. One theory I’ve seen to explain why Musk wants to buy Twitter is to shut it down. If that’s the goal then it’s actually much cheaper not to pay $40B to acquire it and shut it down, but to do this sort of thing that seeds uncertainty so when he pulls out the stock price plummets and Twitter dies from an acceleration from it’s likely path. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griefer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griefer
- tinyhouse 4y ago
  That theory doesn't make any sense. He is borrowing so much money and looking for outside investors to help with funding in order to shut it down? Seriously... Not to mention he has close to 100MM followers on the platform, which he uses to market his other companies among other things.
  - prepend 4y ago
    It makes sense if he never intends to close the deal, just look like he’s closing. Musk has lots of followers and was marketing snakeoil perfectly well before Twitter and will be fine after Twitter. I think Musk’s Twitter count is based on his activity, not the other way around. He’s not rich because of Twitter. But it’s just a theory and there could be other reasons. Could be that Twitter just had bad management and by cutting lots of staff and establishing a clear ToS they can plaster ads everywhere and let trump back on to drum up activity. Who knows? It’s kind of boring to me and I try not to follow it, but it leaks into my feeds. I just noticed the behavior and it reminds me of encountering griefers in games I’ve played.

dna_polymerase 4y ago

He does not have enough money to fund the takeover. That's pretty obvious. If we would sell $42B worth of Tesla stock the stock would simply crash. There is no way for him to just get the money out of the markets, especially not right now when liquidity is already drying up.

petesergeant 4y ago

He's going to end up having spent $1bn of his $140bn (in fees, if I understand it right) to have been a major news story for a few weeks. I could see that representing good value-for-money

gchadwick 4y ago
I don't think Musk is exactly struggling to maintain a big media profile. This story might keep him in the headlines more but it's hardly making him look good. Rather I'd say it seriously damages his reputation as a serious player. He looks more interested in sounding off on twitter and messing around. Following this mess if he approached you with an offer to buy your business how seriously would you want to take him?
- petesergeant 4y ago
  > if he approached you with an offer to buy your business how seriously would you want to take him Not seriously, HOWEVER, I would now worry about him a lot more as a competitor or enemy as he's shown he's happy to blow what is -- to me -- an unthinkable amount of cash on whimsy and for the lulz.
sWW26 4y ago
He can't just choose to pay the $1bn to get out of it. It's basically a fine he'd have to pay if he is unable to complete the deal due to his financing falling through or a couple of other extremely unlikely things.

vanattab 4y ago

Am I the only one who thinks it's obvious he was pretending to buy Twitter to try cover his cashing out of massive amounts of tesla?

skohan 4y ago
Could it be that he actually wanted to buy Twitter at a discount, but mis-calculated how much TSLA stock would drop? Maybe it was attractive at 10-20% of his net worth, but the price got too high.
- pmorici 4y ago
  This is my thinking, he didn’t anticipate the market would tank as bad as it did and now the math on the deal isn’t what it was before all the multiple compression both for Tesla and Twitter. People saying he wasn’t serious about it from the start are off the mark.
  - throwaway0a5e 4y ago
    Exactly. Everyone is serious at one price and a tire kicker at another price. Due to the market drop the dollar figure is now more expensive relatively speaking. I would not be surprised if some lawsuits fly back and forth and the deal winds up going through at a valuation that is similar in relative terms to the offer when it was made but different numerically.
    - HWR_14 4y ago
      > a valuation that is similar in relative terms to the offer when it was made but different numerically. I have no idea what that means. You think they negotiate to 53.69/share so Musk can save some face?
      - throwaway0a5e 4y ago
        Both Twitter's value and the value of the stuff that underlies Musk's wealth has dropped. So they could agree to a new lower price and Twitter shareholders would still make the same money relative to the recent value of the stock and Musk would take a similar ding relative to his net worth. It's like if you agree with someone's heirs to buy something after the current owners croaks but the current owner takes long enough to croak that the market for that thing changes. The typical path forward is to re-adjust so the deal is just as fair for both parties as it used to be and get on with it. But because of the dollar figures involved here the parties will sue each other instead of exchanging emails/texts like normal people looking to buy and sell stuff do.

derefr 4y ago

Presumably, he just wanted access to the very information he's getting access to now; and didn't care for the company otherwise.

bryanrasmussen 4y ago
it seems a very expensive way to buy information, he could have just offered them 10 million for the data as to how many bots they have.
brokensegue 4y ago
Basically anyone can buy access to the firehose of tweets. Maybe he has access to more but it's not worth billions

hellotomyrars 4y ago

It raised his profile with the current conservative news media/pundits which ate it up. Whether or not that was the purpose is speculation but being held up as a champion of free speech (as if) I’m sure did great things for his ego too.

phs318u 4y ago
Let's hope if he ever has a tilt at president, his campaign lasts as long. Then again, I kind of feel like we've been here before...
- sime 4y ago
  He’s ineligible
  - LightG 4y ago
    - jstummbillig 4y ago
- rmbyrro 4y ago
  President of South Africa? He wasn't born in the US, a prerequisite for being president there.
  - ant6n 4y ago
    Well, he’d need to be “natural born citizen”. I think at birth he was Canadian and South African, and naturalized to the US much later. …maybe they’ll change the law one day and he can run against Schwarzenegger.
    - zamalek 4y ago
      Schwarzenegger is a governor, not a president. Elon could run against him today.

wellthatsawrap1 4y ago

VaxWithSex 4y ago
He sure was thinking one thing and is saying another.
timeon 4y ago

bmitc 4y ago

Musk knows Twitter has a lot of bots and that they're used for all sorts of purposes. Pro-Tesla bots have been around for over a decade. As is usual, he likes to control the narrative to only benefit whatever it is he's going on about at the moment. https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-04-12/musk-is-off-the-twitter-board-of-directors-the-tesla-twitter-bot-army-marches-on https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-04-12/musk-is-of...

ano88888 4y ago

zerohp 4y ago
Elon is not a natural born citizen.
- bloqs 4y ago
  Neither was arnie
  - zerohp 4y ago
    He also cannot be president of the United States.
    - NexRebular 4y ago
      "Even though he was not born in this country, his popularity at the time caused the 61st amendment which states..."
      - hef19898 4y ago
        Demolition Man was great documentary, wasn't it?
i_no_can_eat 4y ago
Musk was born in South Africa, he's not eligible to run for US president.
- vkou 4y ago
  Ted cruz was born in Canada, but that didn't stop him from running.
  - piva00 4y ago

larryett 4y ago

He is just trying to find a way to lower his offer because market conditions have changed that quickly and the original offer is a bad deal at this point. This is all a side show and negotiation tactics. Really not bizarre at all. The original offer is at least 10 billion or so too much now.

prepend 4y ago

> why did Musk even start this clown show of pretending to want to acquire Twitter in the first place? To me it seems like griefer [0] behavior. The goal is to just duck with Twitter and derive joy from others pain. Musk is a gamer and I’ve played a lot of games. It’s pretty common to see people who are bored or max level or whatever who just mess with other players like a cat does with a mouse. They expel more of their own energy to cause discomfort to their target. An example may be spending 10 gold pieces to make the target lose 1 gold piece. It “doesn’t make sense” rationally until you take into account the value of the confusion, pain, negative experiences for the target as a sort of currency. So it seems perfectly common for me to see Musk spend a few billion in fines or whatever to make life worse for Twitter. One theory I’ve seen to explain why Musk wants to buy Twitter is to shut it down. If that’s the goal then it’s actually much cheaper not to pay $40B to acquire it and shut it down, but to do this sort of thing that seeds uncertainty so when he pulls out the stock price plummets and Twitter dies from an acceleration from it’s likely path. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griefer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griefer

tinyhouse 4y ago
That theory doesn't make any sense. He is borrowing so much money and looking for outside investors to help with funding in order to shut it down? Seriously... Not to mention he has close to 100MM followers on the platform, which he uses to market his other companies among other things.
- prepend 4y ago
  It makes sense if he never intends to close the deal, just look like he’s closing. Musk has lots of followers and was marketing snakeoil perfectly well before Twitter and will be fine after Twitter. I think Musk’s Twitter count is based on his activity, not the other way around. He’s not rich because of Twitter. But it’s just a theory and there could be other reasons. Could be that Twitter just had bad management and by cutting lots of staff and establishing a clear ToS they can plaster ads everywhere and let trump back on to drum up activity. Who knows? It’s kind of boring to me and I try not to follow it, but it leaks into my feeds. I just noticed the behavior and it reminds me of encountering griefers in games I’ve played.