The IT Nerd

I had a reader ping me on, ironically Twitter to send me this. Advanced warning, this may not be suitable for work:

Elon Musk lashed out at advertisers who are pulling their ads on Twitter:

“Go fu*k yourself.” pic.twitter.com/pRPIGjgsyr

— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) November 29, 2023

After I picked my jaw off the ground, I dug around for some context to this rather bizarre moment and found it here:

Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and the owner of X (formerly Twitter), says that the current advertiser boycott could “kill the company.”

“What this advertising boycott is going to do is, it is going to kill the company,” Musk said Wednesday. “And the whole world will know that those advertisers killed the company.”

Musk was interviewed by Andrew Ross Sorkin Wednesday afternoon at The New York Times Dealbook Summit, capping off a day of speakers that included Vice President Kamala Harris, FTC chair Lina Khan, Disney CEO Bob Iger, and PGA commissioner Jay Monahan.

He also responded to Disney CEO Bob Iger, who explained his company’s decision to pull advertising from the platform earlier.

“Don’t advertise. If someone is going to try and blackmail me with advertising? Blackmail me with money? Go fuck yourself,” Musk said. “Go fuck yourself, is that clear? Hey Bob, if you’re in the audience. That’s how I feel, don’t advertise.”

Well, that’s really going to encourage advertisers to come back to Twitter. All this does is reinforce the fact that Elon Musk is not playing with a full deck. And after dropping the f-bomb a couple of times, he then apparently tried to walk back his Twitter response to a Antisemitic trope on Twitter. Judge for yourself:

Musk did say of the post that sparked the advertiser exodus that “I should, in retrospect, not have replied to that particular post, and should have expanded in greater length about what I meant.” 

“I handed a loaded gun to those who hate me,” he added, calling it “one of the most foolish” things he had said on the platform. Later, after calling Sorkin “Jonathan,” Musk quipped that “what I am trying to illustrate is that, sometimes I say the wrong thing.”

I’m personally not buying this. Are you? Leave a comment below and share your thoughts.

What’s even worse is that Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino was in the audience watching this debacle. And she Tweeted this:

Today @elonmusk gave a wide ranging and candid interview at @dealbook 2023. He also offered an apology, an explanation and an explicit point of view about our position. X is enabling an information independence that's uncomfortable for some people. We're a platform that allows… https://t.co/PSmSKRkJSq

— Linda Yaccarino (@lindayaX) November 30, 2023

That pretty much confirms that she’s part of the problem now and not someone who can guide Twitter to a better place. And she clearly not smart enough to listen to her friends who are telling her to get out before she destroys her reputation.

What’s clear from this debacle is that Elon completely off his rocker. And this will simply accelerate the departure of advertisers from Twitter. I wonder if Elon will start caring once Twitter is in critical condition with no hope of recovery? By the time he does, if he actually does care, it may be too late.

This entry was posted on November 30, 2023 at 8:24 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Twitter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.