Elon Musk wants to shoot down the gentle little bird.
The new owner of the thing formerly known as Twitter wants to remake it in his own image. He likes the letter X and so he wants to rebrand Twitter as that. Here’s a good question: why?
If you were Coke why would you want to call yourself something else? If you were the Green Bay Packers would you get up one day and decide, nah, I want to be the Green Bay Paper Mills? Toyota schoyota. Let’s go with Yo.
Why take a wildly successful brand that has quickly become an American (and world) standard and mess with it at all, much less turn it from something friendly into something kind of ugly and foreboding? Well, okay, maybe Donald Trump already did turn Twitter into something ugly and foreboding, but he was kicked off the platform until Musk invited him back in.
Musk, who is often heralded as a genius, seems to be doing everything he can to drive a successful company into the ground. He offered to buy it, backed out, and then was forced into making good on his offer. Maybe he’s just angry that he had to buy something he really didn’t want. He’ll show them. He’ll take his big investment and drive down its value. Nose. Face. Scalpel, please.
Maybe Musk is just too big to fail. When you’ve got uncounted billions maybe nothing much matters anymore. Shred billions on Twitter? Who cares? Let’s blow up another rocket! Makes for great footage. And that could just be the point. Maybe erratic behavior is its own reward. Trump has done alright with that approach, at least until the convictions start piling up.
On the other hand, building a successful company. Creating a healthy corporate culture. Finding a way to treat both your employees and your investors right. Providing a product that’s useful and popular and adapting it to changes in the tastes of your customers. That all takes hard work, diligence, time. Boring, boring stuff.
Musk in business and Trump in politics have been successful by blowing stuff up. They are, as the popular word goes, disruptors. They’ve just taken this fashionable concept and pushed it to the limit. Maybe these guys are just a cautionary tale about the concept of disruption itself. Maybe what we need more of right now is boring, nose-to-the-grindstone, simply competent and responsible managers. You’ve got something that works, that people like and use, like a social media platform or, oh I don’t know, say, American democracy? Just keep it tuned up and humming along.
Musk and Trump might drive the whole disruptor-hero thing out of fashion. And that would be a good thing.
Have a nice weekend.
Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos 
It seems that the marketplace has decided that the Tesla product is “useful and productive” to give the company a market value of 844 billion, maybe 16 times that of GM. And while you focus on explosions, SpaceX has had over 200 successful consecutive launches. And ask the Ukrainians if they appreciated the thousands of “disruptive” Starlink terminals SpaceX provided.
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Your comment is simply what-aboutism. None of those actions his self-destructive behavior on Twitter. Or the hypocrisy of Musk calling himself a “free speech absolutist” when providing the Starlink satellites to Ukraine, then censoring and deleting accounts critical of him on Twitter (I mean X).
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Folks, I haven’t been enforcing our rule that full names are required to make comments, but before someone calls me on it, I just want to restate it. Please use your real full name. The reason for it is that, as a rule, I just think folks should take responsibility for what they write. I do. Thanks much. Dave
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The Tesla and SpaceX “successes” are a result of no competition. Once he made that horrible , embarrassing deal at Twitter, he has done nothing but run it to the ground. It’s kind of the thing nobody wants to be associated with anymore. I think he’s a disaster. Dave nailed it.
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To be clear, Twitter is not a “successful” company. At least not by traditional capitalist metrics. It’s been unprofitable all but one year of its existence.
But it certainly has been hugely influential culturally and politically. It is at serious risk of losing that due to Musk’s antics.
Musk’s disastrous reign at Twitter is a good reminder that success in one vertical doesn’t translate to success in another. It’s something people should keep in mind when titans of business claim that the money they’ve made selling widgets qualifies them to run a government.
I assume that Musk really does have some serious intellectual gifts. But he also clearly has some serious intellectual and emotional shortcomings.
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