10 ms·

I love that it looks identical to Twitter but is orange. I love that it's going to enrage Elon. He's going to realize that he paid 44 billion for something tha

by ctvo 4y ago

I love that it looks identical to Twitter but is orange. I love that it's going to enrage Elon. He's going to realize that he paid 44 billion for something that's going to lose users to Substack's side project.

leobg 4y ago
Even if that were true, what would you gain from that? If it makes you feel better that Elon Musk (or anyone else) failed at something, you may want to re-evaluate your life's loss function.
- timmytokyo 4y ago
  Or maybe people want him to fail for the same reason they want someone like Martin Shkreli or Kanye West to fail: because he's bad for society.
  - leobg 4y ago
    I think there are better ways to make the world a better place than wanting someone you don't like to fail. Besides, there's often an ulterior motive - not just for wanting that person to fail, but also for telling yourself that they are "bad for society". Where one cannot love, one should – pass by. - Nietzsche
  - mlindner 4y ago
    Really? It's hard to imagine him doing anything at this point that would offset the good he's done for society. He upset and tore down the military-industrial complex launch monopoly saving the collective US tax payers billions through starting SpaceX (and could soon revolutionize access to space for the average person within the next decade). (Also note that without SpaceX, we'd still be paying money to Russia to send US astronauts to space, which wouldn't be a good look during the Russian invasion of Ukraine.) He created an electrical vehicle revolution that's taking the world by storm, changing industries and pushing us much faster toward ending global warming than would have happened without. It's hard to imagine a few misguided political opinions could offset all of that. Let's be realistic here. (Yes you can't attribute all that to him solely, as Elon himself says commonly, the praise should be given to the workers at SpaceX and Tesla, not him. But at the same time, without him, they would have never happened.)
    - ncallaway 4y ago
      This feels like some kind of the opposite of the sunk costs fallacy. Like a “past gains” fallacy. None of those good things magically disappear if Elon fails in his Twitter purchase or changes. Those past gains have already happened. If your argument was forward looking it would make more sense to me (if he fails with this Twitter program, he won’t be able to deliver Starship which would be bad because XYZ; or it would impact his ability to continue Tesla forward because ABC). I don’t know that I agree with the forward looking argument, but it seems more sound to me than the backward looking argument.
    - leobg 4y ago
      You said it well. I actually suspect that many people hate him not in spite of what he has done, but because of it: They think if they acknowledge what people like Elon Musk have done in their lives, they'd have to loathe themselves, their own choices, values and weaknesses. Which is, of course, quite silly. Each human being has their own path in life. Comparing yourself to anyone, no matter who, is going to cause misery. But with people like Elon, the threat to the ego is particularly great. So, hate and schadenfreude are the easy way out. "He, too, makes mistakes. So I'm not that worthless after all". (The irony being that many of these people say that Elon Musk is self-centered. Though the question he is asking is "What do I believe is greatest good to humanity as a species", whereas they, by their very act of comparing themselves to him, are asking "How can I be greater than and more right than Elon Musk".)
      - timmytokyo 4y ago
        I actually suspect that people who idolize Elon Musk are subscribers to the Just World Fallacy, believing that he represents the kind of person that they -- though in a temporarily diminished and embarrassing state -- can become. They can't wait for the time when they too have the consequence-free power to sneer at disabled people, spread lies about victims of violent attacks, and call people who mildly disagree with them "pedo guy". (By the way, I don't actually agree with any of what I wrote above. It's just another example of a bad-faith argument like the one I'm responding to.)
- i_cannot_hack 4y ago
  A good reason to want self-absorbed bullies to publicly fail rather than publicly succeed is to discourage others from adopting similar attitude and methods.
  - leobg 4y ago
    Verily, I have beheld greater self-absorbed bullies than the man who speaketh thus. [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WX_mgnAFA0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WX_mgnAFA0
  - mlindner 4y ago
    If Elon was self-absorbed he'd be buying private yachts or private islands or massive mansions. He wouldn't be constantly talking about existential risks to humanity and trying to come up with ways of fixing them. Is Bill Gates self-absorbed? Much of what Elon Musk does is in a similar vein as the Gates Foundation, though often through for-profit companies.
    - leobg 4y ago
      And also wouldn't deny that he had a threesome Amber Heard and Cara Delevingne. [1] > I think people think these things are generally more salacious than they are. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/25/style/elon-musk-maureen-dowd.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/25/style/elon-musk-maureen-d...
      - mlindner 4y ago
        I'm not sure what you're saying, but the source is actually him denying it. > About the contention that he had a threesome with Ms. Heard and her friend Cara Delevingne, Mr. Musk said, laughing, “We did not have the threesome, you know. So I think people think these things are generally more salacious than they are.” He's laughing at the reporter for even proposing the idea, followed by downplaying it in a way that makes it clear that this was the media being sensationalist for clicks again.
    - dexterdog 4y ago
- ctvo 4y ago
  > If it makes you feel better that Elon Musk (or anyone else) failed at something, you may want to re-evaluate your life's loss function. Unfortunately I haven't reached that level of enlightenment yet. I root for Elon to fail in the same ways I root for Donald Trump to fail. He's destructive, self-serving, thinks he's above the law, and hasn't faced real consequences for his actions. I'm rooting for him to fail because he constantly lies, about big and small things. An example: He claimed Substack is downloading Twitter user data to power their competitor. There's no evidence of this. He said this before backtracking because he knew he was looking bad. I'm rooting for him to fail so folks, like the ones in this very comment chain, can come back to reality and see that he's a flawed human like the rest of us and stop the blind worship. In this specific case, I'm rooting for him to fail because he's proven over and over he's unfit to lead Twitter and make it a better product.
  - leobg 4y ago
    Sure. If I had never heard of Elon, and suddenly saw his name everywhere, and bros who cheer and justify him and feel like they’re the chosen people… and Tesla this and Twitter that... I'd be turned off as well, call him a nuisance, and steer clear of anything that has to do with him. And yeah, maybe I’d even try to level the scales, so to speak, by publicly speaking against him simply because I couldn’t bear the hype.
    - therouwboat 4y ago
      Its not that. I want elon to fail, because he tried to ruin that cave divers life by claiming that he had a childbride in thailand. I want elon to fail, because he gives voice to Russian war criminals, because he is a union buster, because he fired most of the twitter employees and made the rest work long days.
canadiantim 4y ago
Elon paid 44 billion for twitter's existing users and wanting to overthrow the censorship regime that was defacto the standard before Elon bought twitter. Thank god Elon bought twitter and made it possible for other social media sites to be more open to free-speech.
- dom96 4y ago
  From my perspective Twitter has become more censorship prone than ever before after Elon took it over.
  - rahmeero 4y ago
    Also, for whatever reason, the quality of conversation has declined on Twitter since Elon.
- Shekelphile 4y ago
  'Censorship regime'? In the time since Musk took over twitter I've gotten right-wing tweets forced into my feed despite not following a single right winger and a ton of high profile people have been banned for speaking out about him. Not to mention that old Twitter never hamfistedly censored people by straight up shadowbanning users for using the words 'mastodon' or 'substack' in their tweets.
  - nemo44x 4y ago
    You literally said Twitter is less of an echo chamber and that makes me upset. I enjoy seeing a wide spectrum of ideas.
    - Shekelphile 4y ago
      [flagged]
      - nemo44x 4y ago
        Your “Following” feed only contains who you are following so the smooth brained right wingers shouldn’t show up there. If you see a smooth brained right wing tweet in the “For You” feed you can mark it as “Not Interested” and the algo will stop suggesting smooth brained right wing tweets.

by ctvo 4y ago

leobg 4y ago

Even if that were true, what would you gain from that? If it makes you feel better that Elon Musk (or anyone else) failed at something, you may want to re-evaluate your life's loss function.

timmytokyo 4y ago
Or maybe people want him to fail for the same reason they want someone like Martin Shkreli or Kanye West to fail: because he's bad for society.
- leobg 4y ago
  I think there are better ways to make the world a better place than wanting someone you don't like to fail. Besides, there's often an ulterior motive - not just for wanting that person to fail, but also for telling yourself that they are "bad for society". Where one cannot love, one should – pass by. - Nietzsche
- mlindner 4y ago
  Really? It's hard to imagine him doing anything at this point that would offset the good he's done for society. He upset and tore down the military-industrial complex launch monopoly saving the collective US tax payers billions through starting SpaceX (and could soon revolutionize access to space for the average person within the next decade). (Also note that without SpaceX, we'd still be paying money to Russia to send US astronauts to space, which wouldn't be a good look during the Russian invasion of Ukraine.) He created an electrical vehicle revolution that's taking the world by storm, changing industries and pushing us much faster toward ending global warming than would have happened without. It's hard to imagine a few misguided political opinions could offset all of that. Let's be realistic here. (Yes you can't attribute all that to him solely, as Elon himself says commonly, the praise should be given to the workers at SpaceX and Tesla, not him. But at the same time, without him, they would have never happened.)
  - ncallaway 4y ago
    This feels like some kind of the opposite of the sunk costs fallacy. Like a “past gains” fallacy. None of those good things magically disappear if Elon fails in his Twitter purchase or changes. Those past gains have already happened. If your argument was forward looking it would make more sense to me (if he fails with this Twitter program, he won’t be able to deliver Starship which would be bad because XYZ; or it would impact his ability to continue Tesla forward because ABC). I don’t know that I agree with the forward looking argument, but it seems more sound to me than the backward looking argument.
  - leobg 4y ago
    You said it well. I actually suspect that many people hate him not in spite of what he has done, but because of it: They think if they acknowledge what people like Elon Musk have done in their lives, they'd have to loathe themselves, their own choices, values and weaknesses. Which is, of course, quite silly. Each human being has their own path in life. Comparing yourself to anyone, no matter who, is going to cause misery. But with people like Elon, the threat to the ego is particularly great. So, hate and schadenfreude are the easy way out. "He, too, makes mistakes. So I'm not that worthless after all". (The irony being that many of these people say that Elon Musk is self-centered. Though the question he is asking is "What do I believe is greatest good to humanity as a species", whereas they, by their very act of comparing themselves to him, are asking "How can I be greater than and more right than Elon Musk".)
    - timmytokyo 4y ago
      I actually suspect that people who idolize Elon Musk are subscribers to the Just World Fallacy, believing that he represents the kind of person that they -- though in a temporarily diminished and embarrassing state -- can become. They can't wait for the time when they too have the consequence-free power to sneer at disabled people, spread lies about victims of violent attacks, and call people who mildly disagree with them "pedo guy". (By the way, I don't actually agree with any of what I wrote above. It's just another example of a bad-faith argument like the one I'm responding to.)
i_cannot_hack 4y ago
A good reason to want self-absorbed bullies to publicly fail rather than publicly succeed is to discourage others from adopting similar attitude and methods.
- leobg 4y ago
  Verily, I have beheld greater self-absorbed bullies than the man who speaketh thus. [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WX_mgnAFA0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WX_mgnAFA0
- mlindner 4y ago
  If Elon was self-absorbed he'd be buying private yachts or private islands or massive mansions. He wouldn't be constantly talking about existential risks to humanity and trying to come up with ways of fixing them. Is Bill Gates self-absorbed? Much of what Elon Musk does is in a similar vein as the Gates Foundation, though often through for-profit companies.
  - leobg 4y ago
    And also wouldn't deny that he had a threesome Amber Heard and Cara Delevingne. [1] > I think people think these things are generally more salacious than they are. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/25/style/elon-musk-maureen-dowd.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/25/style/elon-musk-maureen-d...
    - mlindner 4y ago
      I'm not sure what you're saying, but the source is actually him denying it. > About the contention that he had a threesome with Ms. Heard and her friend Cara Delevingne, Mr. Musk said, laughing, “We did not have the threesome, you know. So I think people think these things are generally more salacious than they are.” He's laughing at the reporter for even proposing the idea, followed by downplaying it in a way that makes it clear that this was the media being sensationalist for clicks again.
  - dexterdog 4y ago
ctvo 4y ago
> If it makes you feel better that Elon Musk (or anyone else) failed at something, you may want to re-evaluate your life's loss function. Unfortunately I haven't reached that level of enlightenment yet. I root for Elon to fail in the same ways I root for Donald Trump to fail. He's destructive, self-serving, thinks he's above the law, and hasn't faced real consequences for his actions. I'm rooting for him to fail because he constantly lies, about big and small things. An example: He claimed Substack is downloading Twitter user data to power their competitor. There's no evidence of this. He said this before backtracking because he knew he was looking bad. I'm rooting for him to fail so folks, like the ones in this very comment chain, can come back to reality and see that he's a flawed human like the rest of us and stop the blind worship. In this specific case, I'm rooting for him to fail because he's proven over and over he's unfit to lead Twitter and make it a better product.
- leobg 4y ago
  Sure. If I had never heard of Elon, and suddenly saw his name everywhere, and bros who cheer and justify him and feel like they’re the chosen people… and Tesla this and Twitter that... I'd be turned off as well, call him a nuisance, and steer clear of anything that has to do with him. And yeah, maybe I’d even try to level the scales, so to speak, by publicly speaking against him simply because I couldn’t bear the hype.
  - therouwboat 4y ago
    Its not that. I want elon to fail, because he tried to ruin that cave divers life by claiming that he had a childbride in thailand. I want elon to fail, because he gives voice to Russian war criminals, because he is a union buster, because he fired most of the twitter employees and made the rest work long days.

canadiantim 4y ago

Elon paid 44 billion for twitter's existing users and wanting to overthrow the censorship regime that was defacto the standard before Elon bought twitter. Thank god Elon bought twitter and made it possible for other social media sites to be more open to free-speech.

dom96 4y ago
From my perspective Twitter has become more censorship prone than ever before after Elon took it over.
- rahmeero 4y ago
  Also, for whatever reason, the quality of conversation has declined on Twitter since Elon.
Shekelphile 4y ago
'Censorship regime'? In the time since Musk took over twitter I've gotten right-wing tweets forced into my feed despite not following a single right winger and a ton of high profile people have been banned for speaking out about him. Not to mention that old Twitter never hamfistedly censored people by straight up shadowbanning users for using the words 'mastodon' or 'substack' in their tweets.
- nemo44x 4y ago
  You literally said Twitter is less of an echo chamber and that makes me upset. I enjoy seeing a wide spectrum of ideas.
  - Shekelphile 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - nemo44x 4y ago
      Your “Following” feed only contains who you are following so the smooth brained right wingers shouldn’t show up there. If you see a smooth brained right wing tweet in the “For You” feed you can mark it as “Not Interested” and the algo will stop suggesting smooth brained right wing tweets.