Twitter Is Wrecking the Musk Aura That Fueled Tesla
The auto company’s value has plunged by $644 billion this year as its billionaire CEO tends to his newest distraction.
Musk’s missteps at Twitter are playing out in public view.
Photographer: OLIVIER DOULIERY/AFPElon Musk’s initial motivational address to the social experiment now referred to as “Twitter employees” didn’t bury the lead:
Bursts of hyperbole are, of course, Musk’s oeuvre — “funding unsecured,” as it were — which is why he took so effortlessly to Twitter in the first place. You could say that also makes him Twitter’s natural owner but (a) I mean, just look and (b) we’ve all been warned about the consequences of folks getting high on their own supply. There is an alternate reality in which, earlier this year, Musk did not decide, seemingly on a whim, to buy Twitter and instead just kept using it for free to a perhaps excessive but, by his own lights, successful degree. Somehow, our actual reality, featuring a live broadcast of corporate vandalism on a grand scale by the richest man on Earth, seems less plausible even though I can actually feel my fingertips hitting these keys.