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December 19, 2022

How seriously should we take Elon Musk’s promise to leave Twitter?

By Andrea Widburg

The big news today is that Elon Musk has agreed to step down from running Twitter because 57% of over 17 million poll respondents said he should go. There’s no doubt that Musk will keep his promise, but you can be sure he’ll do it in his own time and his own way. After all, he’s already shown that he has a puckish sense of humor and a chaotic but highly effective management style.

The moment Musk took over Twitter, he had the place in an uproar. He instantly fired many people and then fired people he’d initially said he wouldn’t fire. He restored Twitter accounts and banned people only to reinstate them (often in response to a poll). He also cheerfully insulted those leftists whining that it was a “danger to democracy” to allow people other than themselves to have access to Twitter.

And of course, Musk has been releasing to independent journalists tranche after tranche of internal Twitter records showing that, under the old management, political censorship was the name of the game, with Twitter often allowing the FBI to call the shots. Indeed, that got so bad that rabidly anti-Trump, flamingly gay, hysterically leftist Yoel Roth, the head of Twitter’s politicized “safety” division, got worried that the FBI’s demands were too much even for Twitter.

Many people (usually leftists) have accused Musk of destroying Twitter with his quixotic style. They don’t seem to realize that (a) he’s keeping Twitter constantly in the headlines, driving traffic to the site, and (b) he’s a “chaos manager” who thrives in that environment and has had great results to date.

Image: Elon Musk. YouTube screen grab.

It seems a lifetime away, but there was a time when Musk was running Tesla in the same way. When Tesla was so behind on orders for its cars that it looked as if the company would go down in flames (despite a huge reliance on all the climate change giveaways available), Musk seemingly went crazy, sleeping at the factory and bashing his way through “production hell.” If you go back to 2017, you’ll find all sorts of stories about his chaos and cruelty. Except it all worked and, so far as I know, there’ve been no successful lawsuits against him because of that management push. And of course, Tesla, like it or not, is a hugely successful car.

Musk knows that chaos keeps people on their toes. Whenever Musk does something seemingly outrageous at Twitter (firing, banning, unbanning, whatever), it’s covered in both the leftist and conservative media. And every time, it drives traffic to Twitter.

It helps that Musk has a brilliant sense of humor and is very quick-witted. Just yesterday, in a brief exchange with Larry Elder, he showed that he fully understands who his enemies are.

Musk also has no political fear. When Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Crazifornia) tried to attack Musk by claiming that the site is becoming eeevil under Musk’s stewardship, Musk had the rebuttal data at his fingertips:

Musk is principled, too, in one of the ways that really matters. While “safety” officer Yoel Roth was chasing down conservative thought crime, he let pedophilia thrive on the site. Musk shut pedophilia down instantly.

Ultimately, like Trump, Musk is a showman who combines business with pleasure—and makes pleasure (chaos, jokes, stunts) enhance his business. No wonder, then, that he put his status in the company up to a vote:

It’s true that promised to abide by the poll’s results, but do note that he didn’t give himself a timeline. Additionally, he issued a warning, something that suggests he already has someone in mind who may be a hardline version of himself, albeit with more discipline:

 

 

I know he's tweeted that there is no successor, but I don't believe he'll just throw away billions of dollars. He's eccentric, not crazy.

 

 

Not long after, Musk also gave himself a backhanded compliment for being willing to walk away (rather as George Washington once did):

Because Elon Musk is a committed climate changista who’s working hard on neural implants, I don’t trust him. That being said, I like and admire him. He’s a creative genius who has broken up a dangerous anti-First Amendment cartel, exposed the cartel for what it was, and is bringing a lot of fun to daily life.

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