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He's realised it's not in his best interests to be there, but can't mentally tolerate the idea of supporters thinking he's quitting or there against his will. W
by prawn 4y ago
He's realised it's not in his best interests to be there, but can't mentally tolerate the idea of supporters thinking he's quitting or there against his will. Which is why I think he frames these decisions as a vote. If the vote doesn't go the way he wants, he'll try it again later, come up with another reason or whatever. It's easier to ascribe blame for something that goes wrong if it was a popular vote rather than a personal decision.
I suspect his personality means that he gets a lot of satisfaction from fawning fans, but at some point the reality hits of the Twitter saga's impact on Tesla and more. Like he's trying to kick some sort of addiction.
- victor9000 4y agoOh obsoletely, he's begging for a way out and is just looking to save face somehow.
- halfjoking 4y agoThe extremely unpopular link-banning policy makes sense in this context. He wanted something to anger people right before the poll so it’s guaranteed he gets voted out.
- prawn 4y agoI don't think he's trying to anger people. He just can't help himself making impulsive executive decisions, and there'd be minimal pushback internally. This stuff is coming out hour by hour.
- jacquesm 4y agoWhat's with the second guessing of Elon's motivations as some kind of clever ploy? Let's consider the possibility that this just isn't his cup of tea and he's acting stupid beyond reason. If you asked me to perform brain surgery on someone I'd first refuse, then if you pointed a gun at me I hope I would probably still refuse but on the off chance that I did not I think I would have more success than Elon has at formulating a social media policy that has a fighting chance of working. This just isn't an engineering problem and bringing an engineering mindset to it ("let's fix the bugs and plug the holes") is going to make things much worse even than doing nothing. For this to work you need to have a fairly broad understanding of social affairs, a high degree of empathy and an ability to work with a team of people who may disagree with you on key points. Musk does not seem to have any of these to a sufficient degree (to be polite) to make this happen.
- 28304283409234 4y agoI agree and would go one step further: every company is a social endeavor. There is no such thing as "an engineering company". The likes of Musk are wholy incapable of successfully running such endeavors when "success" is broadened to include more factors other than money and technical engineering feats.
- theGnuMe 4y agoAnother outcome is to install a puppet and blame them a la Bob Iger.
- prawn 4y agoVery expensive way to save face! And a puppet would struggle to do worse, right? I think he's too opinionated to salvage this, even as a puppetmaster. He would need an exceptionally strong appointee and an ability to keep his hands off and mouth controlled - I don't think he can do that.
- theGnuMe 4y agoTrue he’s more of a “I am the news” guy.
- prawn 4y agoAnd he could still be that person. Using votes and drama to attract clicks is completely viable, but doing it in a polarising way doesn't seem shrewd to me unless you want to instantly turn the so-called public square into another Fox News type social network when they tend to already exist. If he wanted to make money, this was a weird way to go about it. If he wanted to improve debate in the public square, this was a weird way to go about it. And if he wanted instant political influence, this is an expensive way to do it and I'm not sure these recent moves support that this tack in any way.