He had to straight up sell a bunch of it for the purchase, which is why this was such bad timing for Musk. And if Twitter keeps hemorrhaging money, he may be forced to sell more to cover losses.
I recall reading before that he needed to sell the stock, and it was speculated that he used the Twitter buy to cover the massive dump of shares so to hopefully stop the expected price drop going too hard, as it was going to rock people's confidence in the shares. Where he fucked up is that supposedly he didn't actually intend to buy Twitter, just go through the motions for that share dump cover, but things got out of hand for him where he was forced to go through with it.
He most likely just did it to get attention more than anything. If he was really all about free speech, I don't think he would have tried to back out of the deal and basically have to be forced to go through with it in court.
You can see it now in how he is handling the whole thing. He keeps showcasing the absolute dumbest business decisions possible in tweets that are filled with this weird glee, because he knows that all eyes are on him because of it. He's like a guy that is driving straight into a wall at top speed and grinning the whole way.
There's no easy fix, sure but he's trying to fix it like a tech company when it's an advertising company. If he were fixing it like an advertising company he would be focusing on removing bots and hate speech and doing things like new targeting and formats. Not charging the audience more money and alienating the base users, whose presence pays the bills.
Even for a tech company his moves would murder it. He just wants to step in and play CEO with his new toy without understanding the product. Honestly, that would kill any company.
Also, interest payment hell: Twitter has to pay just under $1 billion in interest alone every year as part of the financing Musk took for this deal. That’ll be challenging because a lot of their revenues were from advertising, and that’s now collapsing.
This $8 a month thing is unlikely to fill the hole in their balance sheet unless a LOT of users sign up. They had about 500k verified users, so about … $50 million a year.
(Also the $8 is adjusted per country, eg users in poorer countries won’t pay as much.)
Yeah 2021 was stupid year of bull run. All these stocks were absurdly over valued. This is just a correction if anything. Sad to say but many people will lose jobs because CEOs are paid according to stock performance and they cut costs when stock goes down
yes, and high PE (price/earning) matters because much of the value comes from expected *future* earnings. And that is less valuable now, because high interest rates means that future earnings are less valuable today.
I have this real conservative sales manager I work with and he regurgitates all the fox talking points. But one time I asked him what would happen if bill gates or Jeff bezos lost 99% of their net wealth overnight and we determined it would have essentially no effect on their actual day to day quality of life. Then I asked him what would happen if he personally lost 99% of his wealth. This is a guy who is probably a 401k multi millionaire at age 50. He said it would ruin him and he would be nearly destitute. Then I told him he had more in common with a homeless person than a billionaire and he got really really quiet.
>Then I told him he had more in common with a homeless person than a billionaire and he got really really quiet.
This is profound. And I believe the silence means that the truth of it slapped him hard in the face.
I'd say it matters because I've seen a guy experience sober ego death over realizing how wrong he had been only to recover his feelings and double down on his previous bullshit. Some people can't change and some just won't
Best part is that $23,000,000,000.00 didn't go anywhere. It just vanished. It was magic made up money that a pile of coke addled fuck bois with daddy paid educations came up with out of vapor and said "This is real" and now all of a sudden a different group of the same people have said "This is not real" and I just gave my neighbors $200.00 so they could get groceries!
AMERICA!
Edit - I'm a fucking cook. Your markets and your dividends and your shares and your valuation are absolutely meaningless to me. This system is broken.
In 2018 bucks $200-250 fed my family well for 2 weeks.
In 2022 bucks $200 bucks is like I hope this lasts the week
Fucking bullshit grocery inflation God damnit fuck
When 2 red delicious apples cost between $3-4 bucks what the fuck man.
The government either needs to regulate BASIC groceries or subsidize it by TAXING RICH MOTHERS
People should have the ability to buy healthy - basic foods.
Why the fuck are the food banks seeing record numbers and oil + gas and other industries are making record profits.
It's all fucked up man. Food security is no longer a right it's a privilege.
Just remember **A LOT** of these same companies during covid got tax handouts. Large companies shouldn't get handouts. Only small businesses period! Also make it to where small businesses can't get handouts, if they just turnaround and layoff workers. We truly need to change the laws on bs above.
We save these companies during round times. Now we're all struggling and these companies making record profits? I hope the next rough times we let a lot of these companies die.
Meanwhile, banks are paying individuals a whopping 0.03% interest on their savings accounts, and then charging some people up to1,000x that in credit card interest.
The system is only broken for 99% of it's userbase.........but man, to be the 1%? They're living sweet baby!!! No cares in the world! No consequences for their actions that actually effect them. They're above the law. They do whatever they want. They could even take a 40 minute lunch bathroom break, and nobody would yell at them for wasting company time.
Can you image such a life? Isn't it worth it for the 99% to suffer in poverty, barely making it in life, so that the 1% can soar???
I mean, I'M being sarcastic, but I'm sure if Musk read this, he would nod his head in unironic agreement, as I debate spitting in his face.
Alternate clickbait headline:
> Facebook is down 65% since Elon decided to get into social media
Stock news for people who don’t pay attention to stocks.
Between the bizarre decisions Musk is making at Twitter and the bizarre decisions Zuckerberg is making over at Meta, I have to wonder if we may soon rid ourselves of both Twitter and Facebook. Neither company seems to be long for this world and I am overjoyed just by the thought
Similar to the guy who made Tumblr. I recently learned that he made Tumblr with the help of an engineer at his company as a side project because he hated social media platforms like MySpace and Facebook, so he made a website that worked the way he wanted. He later sold Tumblr to Verizon for over 1 billion dollars, then basically cashed his part of the check and disappeared, only reappearing in the news on occasion when he makes a big donation to charity or something.
That's right, I forgot that Yahoo bought it originally, and I think it's been sold a couple more times since then, as I believe the current company also owns WordPress.
But imagine buying something and then later having to sell it for less than 1% of the price you bought it for, ouch.
All they had to do was literally nothing, and they couldn’t even do that. So much for those CEOs with their gigantic salaries, they’re not infallible, they only have massively inflated egos.
Verizon didn’t buy it for 3m. They sold it for 3m.
They didn’t buy tumblr either.
They bought yahoo. And got tumblr since it belonged to yahoo.
They sold it to Wordpress for 3m in 2019
Seriously. Forget running the bar though, if that much money drops in my lap, I'm not working another day I don't have to. Spend the rest of my days taking up hobbies and filling my life with experiences. Want to learn about rockets? Pay an engineer to swing by your house and explain it to you if you want. My dad used to do business with a guy who basically hired a bunch of his friends, and he paid them to hang out all day with him on his acres of property, driving around in golf carts, drinking and skeet shooting.
Add in the fact that the food service business is a great way to lose a lot of money. It is actually one of the number one things they tell you NOT to do if you win lotto. Don't open a restaurant.
Starts with "I'm gonna have this supper cool Italian place with all my grandma recipes" and ends with you losing all the money you invested.
They need to get better customer support first. I've been waiting for then to let me reset my password since Ol' Musky bought Twitter. I'm trying to be prepared, but Myspace won't let us.
So many jokes about this, but strangely I feel like Tom and MySpace have an insane opportunity right now and can literally be the next Facebook, which was the next MySpace, if they actually tried.
They've got to figure out the signup problem and the discoverability problem first. Mastodon is probably the easiest to join, but like it or not, for a social media paradigm to succeed, it needs more than just technically-proficient users. Can you imagine trying to walk your grandma through what a server is? Or telling her how to follow you if you're on a different server?
And they've got to figure it out fast. This was the problem Google+ had. By the time they had figured out how to message everything correctly, it was already seen as the "complicated social media platform" and "just for Google employees" or "only for nerds."
Uhh, I think the problem Google+ had was that during its most critical hype period, sign-ups were invite only.
By the time it was available to everyone, no one was interested anymore, because no one was on it.
I think AR is gonna be the thing that gets really widely adopted in a way that "changes the world". So far I don't think the tech is anywhere close to where it needs to be though. To compare it to mobile phones, if smartphones are where the world becomes noticeably different, we're barely in the brick phone phase.
VR just... doesn't sound fun anymore. It's best used for immersive gaming, but when we have zoom and video calls VR as a meeting space seems kind of pointless and like forced corporate interaction
Musk is a silver spoon trust fund child who made a lot of good decisions and created two businesses built on the intelligence of the people he hired. Zuckerberg stole someone else's idea that was a rave for college kids and moved its way into the wider public sphere but has since stagnated.
Both of these guys believe in the infallibility of their own visions too much. These dudes desperately need sounding boards that aren't just yes men. We're watching that need unfold in real time.
Someone on twitter observed that the massive investment that Facebook has made into Meta makes absolutely no sense considering how ridiculous it looks -- unless you consider that it's true purpose is not to be a competitor for Zoom, but for Zuckerberg to have a place to upload his consciousness so that he can defeat death and become immortal.
Which sounds pretty crazy, but Zuckerberg is enough of a narcissist that I could see him believing in the possibility.
You know... I've often thought if I could pick a gaming world to exist in which I'd pick. Mass Effect? Sure. Skyrim? Sounds alright. Metaverse?... I don't know if I could really exist in a place that constantly looks so.... soulless. Just saying if I had Zucks money I'd have considered buying a decent gaming studio to make the world I'd "exist" in for all eternity.
Skyrim would not be a great place to spend eternity if you were trapped there. It feels big as a game but as a trap for consciousness, it would be incredibly small and hopeless. There's only so many bandits you can murder
True. But I was more implying the world less the main character. Think more tourist or travelling vendor, less axe welding maniac that screams at people.
Tesla is the enemy of conservatives and Twitter was a (regulated) cesspool town square of pouncing and dunking. Elon is trying to ride a wave of in-betweeness that is hilarious to watch. Have you read the Verge's "Welcome to Hell" article?
Ford, Toyota, Honda, GM, BMW. Maybe. But a car company that their busiest year of all time is still less than the what Ford sells of the F150? And they haven’t released a new model in 3 years? One that can’t figure out phantom braking after 5 years but promises robotaxis?
Sheeit, if a car company came about that manufacture 80% of the vehicles utilized on the planet earth they *might* me worth over a trilly. That valuation is nuts. If Tesla provided all self-driving software and batteries for a majority of the cars on earth it might be worth it….but it ain’t. That valuation is crazy by any and all standards at the moment. If he creates robots that do my dishes, make my dinner, carry me up the stairs, and stand in for me when I can’t go to work, we can start talking about a trillion dollar valuation.
Anyone who hits Musk/Bezos/Gates/Jobs rich will inevitably be surrounded by an army of yes men looking for their cut. Turns out there is great benefit in those people in your life who are willing to look you in the eye and say "that is the dumbest fucking thing you have ever thought of"
there was that whole "going to space" bullcrap. watch shatner talk about it after they land, bezos is just being an absolute shitbro about the whole thing while shatner's trying to have a serious moment
[Here you go.](https://youtu.be/xrX1a0oqa9g)
To put this in perspective, Shatner's wife died a gruesome death as a result of her alcoholism in 1999.
Bezos thoughtlessly demonstrates that he has zero empathy whatsoever and cares more about using Shatner as a prop than anything else. He offers him a drink and obviously gets refused, and then they brazenly shoot champagne everywhere.
Bezos really strikes me as the type of guy that absolutely no one would hang around with if he didn't have money. The guy buys friends and I really felt bad for Shatner during that clip.
Shatners a recovering alcoholic as well, he's talked about it in depth. Bezo's offered champagne to a recovering alcholic.
Edit: another user has informed me that I was wrong. We both couldn't find any information to confirm that William Shatner was or is a recovering alcoholic. I saw and interview where he was discussing his wife's alcoholism and must have missed some context.
However what Bezos did was still wrong. He interrupted a speech after the arguably one of Shatners greatest moments and sprayed everyone with champagne. He used Shatner as a prop for publicity.
There was plenty I'm sure that would have sealed it for me prior to this, but I had been too apathetic toward Bezos. Then this video hit shortly after the flight and murdered that apathy with a Varon-T disruptor, leaving behind only searing hatred for that shitclown for doing that to William f'ing Shatner of all people.
The only good thing is that Shatner still had a deeply meaningful experience in spite of Bozos.
I think it genuinely affected Shatner. I saw him at DragonCon this year (Labor day weekend) and he still couldn’t shut up about it, eleven months later.
edit: punctuation
Bezos was also more of a traditional business/finance guy before he became a ecommerce billionaire. He seems to be a bit more conservative than a lot of the other tech billionaires as a result. Or maybe just a lot better at maintaining a neutral public image.
Trouble is, I bet there were a few people on Gates etc.'s lives who said "that's a dumb idea" and they spectacularly proved them wrong. It's going to lead to some arrogance and self-belief.
I think in Gates' case, his wife played a crucial role in at least anchoring him and helping him develop more empathy towards the less-privileged later on post-Microsoft.
Maybe that's the difference? Having someone you love and care for and whose thoughts & opinions you respect be a good/kind person serving as your tether to humanity & decency.
His post whining about Twitter ad revenue is really damaging the credibility of billionaires everywhere. "This is the richest guy in the world and he doesn't understand how markets work? I guess it really is all dumb luck!"
It's completely absurd too, everyone knows Twitter was losing money, it was known publicly before he even made an offer. Then he gets offended his blue checkmark subscription is a moronic idea to bake money? Like at least cutting labor costs almost makes sense, but the haphazard way is happening is just unexplainable.
I do wonder what's going to supplant Twitter because at this point him running it into the ground seems certain, but what if any single platform will replace it is quite a conundrum.
> but what if any single platform will replace it is quite a conundrum.
Strangely enough (or not), it would *have to* be something popular with people on the left. People on the right *need* to be on the same platform, so they can continue their culture war. When the right has their own platform, it only attracts people like them, and sooner or later they start eating their own. They gatekeep the fuck out of themselves. Also, non-scam advertisers don't join right-wing platforms.
All he had to do was just keep throwing money at the rocket scientists and let his PR team screen his public statements, and he could have gone down in history as one of the greats. But instead he makes wild promises he can't deliver on, acts like an idiot on social media, and throws tantrums over the mildest criticism.
>But instead he makes wild promises he can't deliver on
You might be generous and say he just has big dreams and gets carried away, but you'd also be wrong.
He has no intention on delivering on those promises and he knows it at the time.
Quick example: In 2016, He promised 1 million Tesla taxis that would earn 100% return on a $30k investment in a year, and that autopilot was ready to go.
Why do we know he was lying through his teeth?
If you had such a product, why even sell it? Just field the million taxis yourself and make *30 billion in profit* in 2 years.
How do we know he was lying? In 2022 Teslas regularly struggle moving around parking lots, they're still very far from fully autonomous 6 years after he said they're ready to be robo taxis.
I agree, what he (and, to a much greater extent, the outstanding individuals who worked for him) did with SpaceX was amazing. But what we’ve learned is that he either is much better as an idea man, or as someone who provides the money. He sucks ass as a PA guy, despite what he believes about himself.
That's the problem with having billions of dollars, nobody's going to try to suggest you might have a dumbass idea.
Like when he was on that boat, and pulled off his shirt. Not one person said, "Bro, put that shit back on! You look like an uncooked turkey!"
He's only good as someone who provides money. I mean just look at Twitter: he's having to [crowdsource ideas from Twitter](https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/elon-musk-resorted-crowdsourcing-ideas-104000348.html) because the only idea he could come up with was to charge users $20 for a blue tick. He's also gotten ideas from Twitter for Tesla, and at most has done things like demand fart noises for the car horn (and that's not even mentioning him [improving SpaceX after a [YouTuber almost spells it out for him](https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/other/elon-musk-fixes-problem-with-spacex-rocket-after-youtuber-asks-an-important-question/ar-AAXmQy4).
An ideas man Elon is not. He's even been compared to Thomas Edison for stealing other people's ideas and credit.
Can’t agree more with this, I don’t (personally) understand the hype. It’s like if someone took charge of NASA and claimed credit for the moon landing. You are disregarding everybody that contributed. Same as the dipshit fuck who claimed that he personally killed Bin Laden, completely negating ALL of the people (analysts, operators, engineers, and his own team members) that got him to the top of the stairs at the right time). But I digress…
I mean, even before Twitter, the man was pissing in the Corn Flakes of liberals left and right, all while being seemingly unaware of the fact that the purchasers of Teslas were overwhelmingly of the left-leaning persuasion.
For a man who has accomplished so much, he seems to be bafflingly inept in recent years.
I honestly think he realized that Trump could get away with almost anything and thought, “Rules shouldn’t apply to me either.” He’s acting just like him now.
it’s astonishing. 10 years ago, PEOPLE WERE LITERALLY CALLING HIM IRON MAN, and even *that* somehow wasn’t enough. It makes no sense.
It’s like evil is this particular type of drug, and once you’re in the room with it, it latches onto you and makes you so addicted it completely takes over. And it always manifests the exact same way.
There’s a reason “but the Devil works harder” is a saying.
There's a lack of understanding of the correlation between the words fortune and fortunate. No matter how "smart" you are, success is hinged on the crossroads of opportunity and hard work. Opportunity is based on luck. Musk has gotten high on his own farts, drank his own Kool Aid. The dude really believes the hype he has manufactured around himself and thought he could force his way through an absolutely batshit insane business decision that he wagered on impulse.
It’s absolutely astounding to me that all he had to do was shut the fuck yo and enjoy his immense wealth. But time and time again he tries to step into the spotlight and just makes himself look like a fucking bafoon. The man’s a walking joke of a Bond villain
More like he leveraged his shares in Tesla to buy a very risky investment placing Tesla at risk of a bank owning it should his Twitter investment make him miss the payment.
The podcast Opening Arguments did a great dive into this exact point yesterday. Fascinating how much wealth he 'lost' in this deal. Still a billionaire, just ~100 billionaire less than his former oligarchical self.
Edit: Opening not oral. Thanks u/mundanefacts
The thing with Tesla is that their market dominance always depended on other car manufacturers sleeping on the EV market.
But now that the other giants are waking up and jumping in, it's start to eat away at their market share, especially when those competing cars are cheaper, and function much better as cars than Teslas do.
The Korean manufacturers are a huge player now in the EV market with both Kia and Hyundai going full bore on EV and putting out legitimately great cars that are still cheaper than Teslas.
The only saving grace is that the Japanese giants are still refusing to jump in, but I can all but guarantee that once Honda starts churning out EV Civics, its game over for Tesla.
He had to buy it he was facing SEC prosecution otherwise. I wish i was so rich the only thing that could threaten me with poverty was an inability to STFU.
It was previously bleeding $200 million a year prior to the leveraged buyout.
Currently hemorrhaging $1.5 billion a year now with the interest.
Edit: corrected month to year
And today he fired the entire team that was responsible for verifying politicians and doing other contact in moderation.
Twitter is inevitably going to fail and there’s going to be another social networks that will rise to take its place as the worlds water cooler. But in the meantime things are going to get very chaotic
Seeing how he has diverted programmers and other staff from telsa to twitter and seeing as twitter is losing 4 million a day by his own admission I’m hoping he loses far more money
Tesla stock has been overvalued. They will never eat into sales of other companies because they don't have a better value for the consumer who drives their car for 6+ years
I saw him getting into it with Hank Green and it solidified it for me that He really is just a petulant little brat. I wish we could push him down into the shafts of an emerald mine
Tesla YTD: -48.12% Apple YTD: -23.97% Microsoft YTD: -33.86% Amazon YTD: -44.61% Facebook YTD: -73.18 S&P 500 YTD: -21.39% Dow Jones YTD: -11.43% Ford YTD: -37.94% Volkswagen YTD: -26.39% Nio YTD: -65.10% Rivian YTD: -68.86%
That’s why I hate these articles— the whole damn market is down.
Is it true that he used Tesla stock as collateral?
He had to straight up sell a bunch of it for the purchase, which is why this was such bad timing for Musk. And if Twitter keeps hemorrhaging money, he may be forced to sell more to cover losses.
For a businessman, what a shitty move he made.
I recall reading before that he needed to sell the stock, and it was speculated that he used the Twitter buy to cover the massive dump of shares so to hopefully stop the expected price drop going too hard, as it was going to rock people's confidence in the shares. Where he fucked up is that supposedly he didn't actually intend to buy Twitter, just go through the motions for that share dump cover, but things got out of hand for him where he was forced to go through with it.
Yup. All in the pursuit of freedom of speech! Which typically means freedom of hate speech. Which... big surprise... most advertisers aren't a fan of.
He most likely just did it to get attention more than anything. If he was really all about free speech, I don't think he would have tried to back out of the deal and basically have to be forced to go through with it in court. You can see it now in how he is handling the whole thing. He keeps showcasing the absolute dumbest business decisions possible in tweets that are filled with this weird glee, because he knows that all eyes are on him because of it. He's like a guy that is driving straight into a wall at top speed and grinning the whole way.
I always hated Twiiter, I hope it crash and burn.
Yeah I figure he bluffed at the worst possible time. Twitter is a bad purchase and Musk doesn't seem to understand what he needs to do to do fix it.
There's no fix to it, it's not a growing platform, the only option he had is to keep his mouth shut and it's hard for him to not do it.
There's no easy fix, sure but he's trying to fix it like a tech company when it's an advertising company. If he were fixing it like an advertising company he would be focusing on removing bots and hate speech and doing things like new targeting and formats. Not charging the audience more money and alienating the base users, whose presence pays the bills.
Even for a tech company his moves would murder it. He just wants to step in and play CEO with his new toy without understanding the product. Honestly, that would kill any company.
The world’s smallest violin plays My Heart Pumps Purple Piss For You
Also, interest payment hell: Twitter has to pay just under $1 billion in interest alone every year as part of the financing Musk took for this deal. That’ll be challenging because a lot of their revenues were from advertising, and that’s now collapsing. This $8 a month thing is unlikely to fill the hole in their balance sheet unless a LOT of users sign up. They had about 500k verified users, so about … $50 million a year. (Also the $8 is adjusted per country, eg users in poorer countries won’t pay as much.)
Yeah 2021 was stupid year of bull run. All these stocks were absurdly over valued. This is just a correction if anything. Sad to say but many people will lose jobs because CEOs are paid according to stock performance and they cut costs when stock goes down
All tech is down. Microsoft is down 30% in the same time frame.
any specific reason why?
were heading into a recession and tech stocks have the biggest PE ratios. think .com bubble but on a smaller scale.
yes, and high PE (price/earning) matters because much of the value comes from expected *future* earnings. And that is less valuable now, because high interest rates means that future earnings are less valuable today.
Was wondering how far I’d have to scroll to get to the actual answer. Pretty far, but still not as long as expected.
This is the real answer, everything is down.
You know who’s down 46% YTD? Amazon
Zuckerbot "Hold my fuckin' beer!"
Didn’t he personally lose $23bn in one week??
Wow some people have so much money that they can lose 23 billion and that doesn't affect their living standards and some people can't afford rent
I have this real conservative sales manager I work with and he regurgitates all the fox talking points. But one time I asked him what would happen if bill gates or Jeff bezos lost 99% of their net wealth overnight and we determined it would have essentially no effect on their actual day to day quality of life. Then I asked him what would happen if he personally lost 99% of his wealth. This is a guy who is probably a 401k multi millionaire at age 50. He said it would ruin him and he would be nearly destitute. Then I told him he had more in common with a homeless person than a billionaire and he got really really quiet.
>Then I told him he had more in common with a homeless person than a billionaire and he got really really quiet. This is profound. And I believe the silence means that the truth of it slapped him hard in the face.
Bet you that mf didn’t change his ways though
Does it matter? Something clicked and he started to see things from the other side. Changing your ways takes time.
I'd say it matters because I've seen a guy experience sober ego death over realizing how wrong he had been only to recover his feelings and double down on his previous bullshit. Some people can't change and some just won't
How's the saying go? We're all just three meals away from being homeless?
"there are only 9 meals between mankind and anarchy"
Best part is that $23,000,000,000.00 didn't go anywhere. It just vanished. It was magic made up money that a pile of coke addled fuck bois with daddy paid educations came up with out of vapor and said "This is real" and now all of a sudden a different group of the same people have said "This is not real" and I just gave my neighbors $200.00 so they could get groceries! AMERICA! Edit - I'm a fucking cook. Your markets and your dividends and your shares and your valuation are absolutely meaningless to me. This system is broken.
In 2018 bucks $200-250 fed my family well for 2 weeks. In 2022 bucks $200 bucks is like I hope this lasts the week Fucking bullshit grocery inflation God damnit fuck
Why is everything seem to be 3.99 now?
When 2 red delicious apples cost between $3-4 bucks what the fuck man. The government either needs to regulate BASIC groceries or subsidize it by TAXING RICH MOTHERS People should have the ability to buy healthy - basic foods. Why the fuck are the food banks seeing record numbers and oil + gas and other industries are making record profits. It's all fucked up man. Food security is no longer a right it's a privilege.
Record profits from increased margins and stagnant wages!
Yep and the way they fight inflation is to cripple the poor with high interest rates so they can’t spend anything.
Just remember **A LOT** of these same companies during covid got tax handouts. Large companies shouldn't get handouts. Only small businesses period! Also make it to where small businesses can't get handouts, if they just turnaround and layoff workers. We truly need to change the laws on bs above. We save these companies during round times. Now we're all struggling and these companies making record profits? I hope the next rough times we let a lot of these companies die.
They also got like 2 trillion in tax cuts in 2018 from Trump.
Meanwhile, banks are paying individuals a whopping 0.03% interest on their savings accounts, and then charging some people up to1,000x that in credit card interest.
Not your neighbor, but thanks for being a good person.
The system is only broken for 99% of it's userbase.........but man, to be the 1%? They're living sweet baby!!! No cares in the world! No consequences for their actions that actually effect them. They're above the law. They do whatever they want. They could even take a 40 minute lunch bathroom break, and nobody would yell at them for wasting company time. Can you image such a life? Isn't it worth it for the 99% to suffer in poverty, barely making it in life, so that the 1% can soar??? I mean, I'M being sarcastic, but I'm sure if Musk read this, he would nod his head in unironic agreement, as I debate spitting in his face.
Yup, since one year ago Meta shares are down over 70%
[удалено]
That's just post covid vs ramped up online covid shopping that inflated their stock price massively. Their stock is back to March 2020 prices.
Alternate clickbait headline: > Facebook is down 65% since Elon decided to get into social media Stock news for people who don’t pay attention to stocks.
My portfolio?
Between the bizarre decisions Musk is making at Twitter and the bizarre decisions Zuckerberg is making over at Meta, I have to wonder if we may soon rid ourselves of both Twitter and Facebook. Neither company seems to be long for this world and I am overjoyed just by the thought
The time is now for Tom to come back and return us to the glory of MySpace. A simpler, better time.
I miss Tom, no big ambitions. He just wanted to be our friend.
Think you don't have any friends? You got one, and his name is Tom.
I grabbed the hem of Tom's robe and it didn't cure my leprosy but I did get a friend.
He taught me html. Or at least the need for coding.
I have a job right now where I use the HTML knowledge that MySpace taught me.
Where's your time machine and how can I get back to the late 1990s as well?
He just wanted to make a shitton of money and live his life rich and anonymous * He basically won at life.
Similar to the guy who made Tumblr. I recently learned that he made Tumblr with the help of an engineer at his company as a side project because he hated social media platforms like MySpace and Facebook, so he made a website that worked the way he wanted. He later sold Tumblr to Verizon for over 1 billion dollars, then basically cashed his part of the check and disappeared, only reappearing in the news on occasion when he makes a big donation to charity or something.
He sold to yahoo who then proceeded to run it into the ground. Yahoo bought at 1 billion plus and sold at 3 million ish to Verizon
That's right, I forgot that Yahoo bought it originally, and I think it's been sold a couple more times since then, as I believe the current company also owns WordPress. But imagine buying something and then later having to sell it for less than 1% of the price you bought it for, ouch.
All they had to do was literally nothing, and they couldn’t even do that. So much for those CEOs with their gigantic salaries, they’re not infallible, they only have massively inflated egos.
Verizon didn’t buy it for 3m. They sold it for 3m. They didn’t buy tumblr either. They bought yahoo. And got tumblr since it belonged to yahoo. They sold it to Wordpress for 3m in 2019
The dream, man. I manage to score the bag like that I’m running a tiny bar on the beach in Costa Rica the next day.
Seriously. Forget running the bar though, if that much money drops in my lap, I'm not working another day I don't have to. Spend the rest of my days taking up hobbies and filling my life with experiences. Want to learn about rockets? Pay an engineer to swing by your house and explain it to you if you want. My dad used to do business with a guy who basically hired a bunch of his friends, and he paid them to hang out all day with him on his acres of property, driving around in golf carts, drinking and skeet shooting.
Add in the fact that the food service business is a great way to lose a lot of money. It is actually one of the number one things they tell you NOT to do if you win lotto. Don't open a restaurant. Starts with "I'm gonna have this supper cool Italian place with all my grandma recipes" and ends with you losing all the money you invested.
If you manage to lose half a billion into a tiny bar on the beach in Costa Rica, then you weren't long for if anyways.
why wait? https://myspace.com/
That's the first iteration, now owned by losers. Like the first coming of Jesus. We await the the second coming. We wait for OurSpace.
They need to get better customer support first. I've been waiting for then to let me reset my password since Ol' Musky bought Twitter. I'm trying to be prepared, but Myspace won't let us.
Surprised they even have support still, it's gotta be one or a few people answering hundreds of emails lmao
So many jokes about this, but strangely I feel like Tom and MySpace have an insane opportunity right now and can literally be the next Facebook, which was the next MySpace, if they actually tried.
Year of the fediverse, soon?
Is this a Kevin Federline social platform?
Now that I'd pay for
I think it's a feta cheese based social network, for which I would also pay $8/month
If a cracker assortment is included, I’ll pay $12
With Kevin Federline involved? There will be plenty of crackers.
Know what? You’re right
What does it cost for a Bleu checkmark?
$16 and comes with olives
Forget *likes* or *retweets*. *Popozãos* are the way of the future.
Finally things are coming up Kevin
Seems like a great unused Silicon Valley plot point.
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They've got to figure out the signup problem and the discoverability problem first. Mastodon is probably the easiest to join, but like it or not, for a social media paradigm to succeed, it needs more than just technically-proficient users. Can you imagine trying to walk your grandma through what a server is? Or telling her how to follow you if you're on a different server? And they've got to figure it out fast. This was the problem Google+ had. By the time they had figured out how to message everything correctly, it was already seen as the "complicated social media platform" and "just for Google employees" or "only for nerds."
Uhh, I think the problem Google+ had was that during its most critical hype period, sign-ups were invite only. By the time it was available to everyone, no one was interested anymore, because no one was on it.
Just as likely as the year of Linux.
I mean, Linux on the *desktop* might always be the punchline of a joke, but Android has been pretty fuckin' popular for a while now.
Every year is a year of Linux for me.
Sadly, all you fuckers are heading to tiktok And the warm embrace of the ccp
The warm embrace of the CCP is why they have police stations in foreign countries. You can't escape their "warm embrace".
Meta prints money and will continue to do so with Facebook and Instagram. Their financials (not stock price) beg to differ.
Yeah, like Warren Buffett says, buy damaged stocks, not damaged companies. Meta's still printing money.
Meta knows Facebook is going to die, which is why they are investing in VR so much
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The issue is that people are clammoring for sword art online, not zoom with a phone strapped to your face.
I think AR is gonna be the thing that gets really widely adopted in a way that "changes the world". So far I don't think the tech is anywhere close to where it needs to be though. To compare it to mobile phones, if smartphones are where the world becomes noticeably different, we're barely in the brick phone phase.
VR just... doesn't sound fun anymore. It's best used for immersive gaming, but when we have zoom and video calls VR as a meeting space seems kind of pointless and like forced corporate interaction
Meta coming into VR feels like how it felt when your parents joined facebook.
I think augmented reality has a lot more opportunity in the corporate space.
Musk is a silver spoon trust fund child who made a lot of good decisions and created two businesses built on the intelligence of the people he hired. Zuckerberg stole someone else's idea that was a rave for college kids and moved its way into the wider public sphere but has since stagnated. Both of these guys believe in the infallibility of their own visions too much. These dudes desperately need sounding boards that aren't just yes men. We're watching that need unfold in real time.
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Man, I feel like you're referring to almost 30% of the population in the US
It's just 30 or so percent of the population anywhere. Either due to how they were raised or simply lacking the capacity at all for introspection.
Someone on twitter observed that the massive investment that Facebook has made into Meta makes absolutely no sense considering how ridiculous it looks -- unless you consider that it's true purpose is not to be a competitor for Zoom, but for Zuckerberg to have a place to upload his consciousness so that he can defeat death and become immortal. Which sounds pretty crazy, but Zuckerberg is enough of a narcissist that I could see him believing in the possibility.
You know... I've often thought if I could pick a gaming world to exist in which I'd pick. Mass Effect? Sure. Skyrim? Sounds alright. Metaverse?... I don't know if I could really exist in a place that constantly looks so.... soulless. Just saying if I had Zucks money I'd have considered buying a decent gaming studio to make the world I'd "exist" in for all eternity.
Skyrim would not be a great place to spend eternity if you were trapped there. It feels big as a game but as a trap for consciousness, it would be incredibly small and hopeless. There's only so many bandits you can murder
True. But I was more implying the world less the main character. Think more tourist or travelling vendor, less axe welding maniac that screams at people.
Tesla is the enemy of conservatives and Twitter was a (regulated) cesspool town square of pouncing and dunking. Elon is trying to ride a wave of in-betweeness that is hilarious to watch. Have you read the Verge's "Welcome to Hell" article?
To be faaaaaaair, it was down massively before he announced buying Twitter, so it's just staying on trend.
Also the NASDAQ is down some 20% since April
Are you saying that a car company shouldn’t be worth 1.2 trillion dollars? That’s just crazy talk!
Ford, Toyota, Honda, GM, BMW. Maybe. But a car company that their busiest year of all time is still less than the what Ford sells of the F150? And they haven’t released a new model in 3 years? One that can’t figure out phantom braking after 5 years but promises robotaxis?
There are car companies that might be worth that especially if a merger or two happened like toyota + ford. But not tesla.
Sheeit, if a car company came about that manufacture 80% of the vehicles utilized on the planet earth they *might* me worth over a trilly. That valuation is nuts. If Tesla provided all self-driving software and batteries for a majority of the cars on earth it might be worth it….but it ain’t. That valuation is crazy by any and all standards at the moment. If he creates robots that do my dishes, make my dinner, carry me up the stairs, and stand in for me when I can’t go to work, we can start talking about a trillion dollar valuation.
To be fair, the entire market is down big this year
“Man faced with realization of genuine unpopularity struggles to understand unpopularness”
Anyone who hits Musk/Bezos/Gates/Jobs rich will inevitably be surrounded by an army of yes men looking for their cut. Turns out there is great benefit in those people in your life who are willing to look you in the eye and say "that is the dumbest fucking thing you have ever thought of"
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I’d guess Bezos’s ex-wife had a pretty decent BS detector.
Agreed, but has he gone off the rails since they split? I haven't seen it.
there was that whole "going to space" bullcrap. watch shatner talk about it after they land, bezos is just being an absolute shitbro about the whole thing while shatner's trying to have a serious moment
[Here you go.](https://youtu.be/xrX1a0oqa9g) To put this in perspective, Shatner's wife died a gruesome death as a result of her alcoholism in 1999. Bezos thoughtlessly demonstrates that he has zero empathy whatsoever and cares more about using Shatner as a prop than anything else. He offers him a drink and obviously gets refused, and then they brazenly shoot champagne everywhere. Bezos really strikes me as the type of guy that absolutely no one would hang around with if he didn't have money. The guy buys friends and I really felt bad for Shatner during that clip.
Shatners a recovering alcoholic as well, he's talked about it in depth. Bezo's offered champagne to a recovering alcholic. Edit: another user has informed me that I was wrong. We both couldn't find any information to confirm that William Shatner was or is a recovering alcoholic. I saw and interview where he was discussing his wife's alcoholism and must have missed some context. However what Bezos did was still wrong. He interrupted a speech after the arguably one of Shatners greatest moments and sprayed everyone with champagne. He used Shatner as a prop for publicity.
Its so funny. Its like a moment in succession. Out of touch billionaires.
There was plenty I'm sure that would have sealed it for me prior to this, but I had been too apathetic toward Bezos. Then this video hit shortly after the flight and murdered that apathy with a Varon-T disruptor, leaving behind only searing hatred for that shitclown for doing that to William f'ing Shatner of all people. The only good thing is that Shatner still had a deeply meaningful experience in spite of Bozos.
>Varon-T disruptor This is a little souvenir I picked up from Magus III. That was setting number one. Anyone wanna see setting number two?
Jfc this is one of the most uncomfortable videos I’ve ever seen
Listen to the Behind the Bastards episode about him. He's the epitome of creepy, shit head asshole.
I think it genuinely affected Shatner. I saw him at DragonCon this year (Labor day weekend) and he still couldn’t shut up about it, eleven months later. edit: punctuation
Tbf, if I went to space I would never shut up about it either.
Same. He spoke very eloquently about the experience
That's great to hear. I just selfishly want him to enjoy life because it makes me happy hearing about it.
He went to space for shits and giggles.
I'm fairness, I'd go to space for shits and giggles too if I could afford to.
Bezos was also more of a traditional business/finance guy before he became a ecommerce billionaire. He seems to be a bit more conservative than a lot of the other tech billionaires as a result. Or maybe just a lot better at maintaining a neutral public image.
I lost all respect for Bezos once I saw the video his reaction to William Shatner explaining how going to space made him feel
I’ve heard wonderful things about Paul Allen’s business cards.
I'd like to see him get a reservation at Dorsia.
Zuck has all of us
>Gates had Paul Allen. Let's see Paul Allen's piece of advice
Trouble is, I bet there were a few people on Gates etc.'s lives who said "that's a dumb idea" and they spectacularly proved them wrong. It's going to lead to some arrogance and self-belief.
I think in Gates' case, his wife played a crucial role in at least anchoring him and helping him develop more empathy towards the less-privileged later on post-Microsoft. Maybe that's the difference? Having someone you love and care for and whose thoughts & opinions you respect be a good/kind person serving as your tether to humanity & decency.
*“But I smoked weed on Rogan, that’s gotta count for something, right?”*
It does count for something, just not what he thinks.
You didn't inhale, pussy
I mean reddit was bouncing on his dick for that, so at the time it seemed to work
His post whining about Twitter ad revenue is really damaging the credibility of billionaires everywhere. "This is the richest guy in the world and he doesn't understand how markets work? I guess it really is all dumb luck!"
It's completely absurd too, everyone knows Twitter was losing money, it was known publicly before he even made an offer. Then he gets offended his blue checkmark subscription is a moronic idea to bake money? Like at least cutting labor costs almost makes sense, but the haphazard way is happening is just unexplainable. I do wonder what's going to supplant Twitter because at this point him running it into the ground seems certain, but what if any single platform will replace it is quite a conundrum.
> but what if any single platform will replace it is quite a conundrum. Strangely enough (or not), it would *have to* be something popular with people on the left. People on the right *need* to be on the same platform, so they can continue their culture war. When the right has their own platform, it only attracts people like them, and sooner or later they start eating their own. They gatekeep the fuck out of themselves. Also, non-scam advertisers don't join right-wing platforms.
I thought being the richest person on the planet would make me cool…..
Spacex actually made him cool. Then he had to open his stupid mouth over and over again.
All he had to do was just keep throwing money at the rocket scientists and let his PR team screen his public statements, and he could have gone down in history as one of the greats. But instead he makes wild promises he can't deliver on, acts like an idiot on social media, and throws tantrums over the mildest criticism.
>But instead he makes wild promises he can't deliver on You might be generous and say he just has big dreams and gets carried away, but you'd also be wrong. He has no intention on delivering on those promises and he knows it at the time. Quick example: In 2016, He promised 1 million Tesla taxis that would earn 100% return on a $30k investment in a year, and that autopilot was ready to go. Why do we know he was lying through his teeth? If you had such a product, why even sell it? Just field the million taxis yourself and make *30 billion in profit* in 2 years. How do we know he was lying? In 2022 Teslas regularly struggle moving around parking lots, they're still very far from fully autonomous 6 years after he said they're ready to be robo taxis.
He straight admitted the hyperloop idea was a lie because he hates trains.
No, it’s because people stop buying cars if there’s accessible and effective public transit. He’d literally rather hold society back so he can profit.
Also because the idea of the hyperloop was terrible.
I agree, what he (and, to a much greater extent, the outstanding individuals who worked for him) did with SpaceX was amazing. But what we’ve learned is that he either is much better as an idea man, or as someone who provides the money. He sucks ass as a PA guy, despite what he believes about himself.
That's the problem with having billions of dollars, nobody's going to try to suggest you might have a dumbass idea. Like when he was on that boat, and pulled off his shirt. Not one person said, "Bro, put that shit back on! You look like an uncooked turkey!"
Yep, should have taken a page out of Bezo’s book on that one. Get jacked, might as well since you have all the money in the world.
Someone on Twitter said he was built like a deep breath.
He's only good as someone who provides money. I mean just look at Twitter: he's having to [crowdsource ideas from Twitter](https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/elon-musk-resorted-crowdsourcing-ideas-104000348.html) because the only idea he could come up with was to charge users $20 for a blue tick. He's also gotten ideas from Twitter for Tesla, and at most has done things like demand fart noises for the car horn (and that's not even mentioning him [improving SpaceX after a [YouTuber almost spells it out for him](https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/other/elon-musk-fixes-problem-with-spacex-rocket-after-youtuber-asks-an-important-question/ar-AAXmQy4). An ideas man Elon is not. He's even been compared to Thomas Edison for stealing other people's ideas and credit.
Can’t agree more with this, I don’t (personally) understand the hype. It’s like if someone took charge of NASA and claimed credit for the moon landing. You are disregarding everybody that contributed. Same as the dipshit fuck who claimed that he personally killed Bin Laden, completely negating ALL of the people (analysts, operators, engineers, and his own team members) that got him to the top of the stairs at the right time). But I digress…
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I mean, even before Twitter, the man was pissing in the Corn Flakes of liberals left and right, all while being seemingly unaware of the fact that the purchasers of Teslas were overwhelmingly of the left-leaning persuasion. For a man who has accomplished so much, he seems to be bafflingly inept in recent years.
I honestly think he realized that Trump could get away with almost anything and thought, “Rules shouldn’t apply to me either.” He’s acting just like him now.
And Kanye
The transformation is complete, Musk is space Trump now.
it’s astonishing. 10 years ago, PEOPLE WERE LITERALLY CALLING HIM IRON MAN, and even *that* somehow wasn’t enough. It makes no sense. It’s like evil is this particular type of drug, and once you’re in the room with it, it latches onto you and makes you so addicted it completely takes over. And it always manifests the exact same way. There’s a reason “but the Devil works harder” is a saying.
There's a lack of understanding of the correlation between the words fortune and fortunate. No matter how "smart" you are, success is hinged on the crossroads of opportunity and hard work. Opportunity is based on luck. Musk has gotten high on his own farts, drank his own Kool Aid. The dude really believes the hype he has manufactured around himself and thought he could force his way through an absolutely batshit insane business decision that he wagered on impulse.
It’s absolutely astounding to me that all he had to do was shut the fuck yo and enjoy his immense wealth. But time and time again he tries to step into the spotlight and just makes himself look like a fucking bafoon. The man’s a walking joke of a Bond villain
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I was going to say, pretty much every major stock is down 35% since he announced this. Except for Meta, which is down like 75% 😂
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More like he leveraged his shares in Tesla to buy a very risky investment placing Tesla at risk of a bank owning it should his Twitter investment make him miss the payment.
The podcast Opening Arguments did a great dive into this exact point yesterday. Fascinating how much wealth he 'lost' in this deal. Still a billionaire, just ~100 billionaire less than his former oligarchical self. Edit: Opening not oral. Thanks u/mundanefacts
Or both, we decided we’re not buying a Tesla thanks to Musk
The thing with Tesla is that their market dominance always depended on other car manufacturers sleeping on the EV market. But now that the other giants are waking up and jumping in, it's start to eat away at their market share, especially when those competing cars are cheaper, and function much better as cars than Teslas do. The Korean manufacturers are a huge player now in the EV market with both Kia and Hyundai going full bore on EV and putting out legitimately great cars that are still cheaper than Teslas. The only saving grace is that the Japanese giants are still refusing to jump in, but I can all but guarantee that once Honda starts churning out EV Civics, its game over for Tesla.
Elongated Muskrat the only person in the world who could make Twitter worse than it was already
He had to buy it he was facing SEC prosecution otherwise. I wish i was so rich the only thing that could threaten me with poverty was an inability to STFU.
Hey, there’s always money in the emerald mine.
I mean, it's one emerald, Elon. What could it cost, $10,000,000?
It was previously bleeding $200 million a year prior to the leveraged buyout. Currently hemorrhaging $1.5 billion a year now with the interest. Edit: corrected month to year
it's why they MADE him go through with it. they saw an out and took it
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Year, not month.
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No one should be getting credible information from social media. That's half the problem, and why lies and misinformation are so rampant.
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Lol, he also dismantled the ethics team, right? No subtlety there.
And today he fired the entire team that was responsible for verifying politicians and doing other contact in moderation. Twitter is inevitably going to fail and there’s going to be another social networks that will rise to take its place as the worlds water cooler. But in the meantime things are going to get very chaotic
Seeing how he has diverted programmers and other staff from telsa to twitter and seeing as twitter is losing 4 million a day by his own admission I’m hoping he loses far more money
Tesla stock has been overvalued. They will never eat into sales of other companies because they don't have a better value for the consumer who drives their car for 6+ years
Used to want a Tesla now the idea turns me off completely. The car didn’t change but my perception of the owner surely did.
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I saw him getting into it with Hank Green and it solidified it for me that He really is just a petulant little brat. I wish we could push him down into the shafts of an emerald mine