Adventures of the Longest Muskrat

[Friday]

I saw that meme earlier somewhere and laughed cause it's just like jesus christ

Like if I had his wealth and was somehow magically restrained from, you know, solving world hunger and ending homelessness and also fixing 90 other serious problems, like I can only use this money for selfish shit, you bet your ass I would be spending like all my time going to every cool beach and buying a house there. Which I would then let homeless people stay in goddamn it

[Niku]

no one can actually get to that level of wealth without being fundamentally broken as a human being

[Friday]

so you're saying I can get to that level of wealth

[Mongrel]

you bet your ass I would be spending like all my time going to every cool beach and buying a house there

See, that's what most of the 1% do, the Bezos' etc. - they just buy privacy; they're still fundamentally broken and similarly sociopathic people (hard agree with Niku) but they're functional enough to go years or months between bizarre self-inflicted crises.

As opposed to the Muskies of the world who are so intrinsically fucked up that their grifter brain will pretty much say or do whatever it they think will get them out of the current moment regardless of any non-immediate consequences because they're not wired to think that far ahead. We'll get to the next 20 seconds when we get to it, man! I'll think of something then!

Usually that sort of person ends in jail or some other sticky end because they can barely function in society at all (as we all know, the best solution to a problem is a molotov cocktail, Jason is a true font of Wisdom), but if you had a rich daddy (it's almost always a daddy) and a smattering of charisma or low cunning, there's seemingly no limits these days.

[sei]

you bet your ass I would be spending like all my time going to every cool beach and buying a house there

See, that's what most of the 1% do, the Bezos' etc. - they just buy privacy; they're still fundamentally broken and similarly sociopathic people (hard agree with Niku) but they're functional enough to go years or months between bizarre self-inflicted crises.

They do more than that. Someone once called and asked me if I could remove a video posted of someone in their extended wealthy pal circle and/or "hack them" in retaliation.

Rich folk who give a fuck about appearances invest in reputation management services to clean up after their messes.

SEO services to bury scandals, bullshit press releases, HARO outreach, etc.

Basically blackhat brand marketing, but for people.

[Mongrel]

you bet your ass I would be spending like all my time going to every cool beach and buying a house there

See, that's what most of the 1% do, the Bezos' etc. - they just buy privacy; they're still fundamentally broken and similarly sociopathic people (hard agree with Niku) but they're functional enough to go years or months between bizarre self-inflicted crises.

They do more than that. Someone once called and asked me if I could remove or retaliate against someone who leaked a lewd video of someone in their extended wealthy pal circle.

Rich folk who give a fuck about appearances invest in reputation management services to clean up after their messes.

SEO services to bury scandals, bullshit press releases, HARO outreach, etc.

Basically blackhat brand marketing, but for people.

Yep.

Private Islands, private yachts, private jets, gated estates far from cities, profile erasure and obfuscation. They buy politicians, they buy entire arms of government. They only appear in the news in situations such as the Clarence Thomas shitshow, where one of the their paid agents' blithering incompetence outs their master in a spectacular way.

Note the overlap with malignant creatures like Epstein.

[KingRoyal]

The Rot King

My prediction is that this rebrand is an attempt by Musk to convince investors to put more capital into a bleeding company, juicing the valuation with promises of “AI” and “connectivity.” I don’t believe for a second that this is part of a plan or a strategy. It’s just more rot economics from The Rot King, a man who has learned exactly what to say and do in order to exploit the markets and media for the minimal amount of effort. And many in the Valley love him because he symbolizes what some founders strive for — appreciation for his existence rather than any specific achievement or contribution to society.

Lot of great stuff in there, but was particularly amused by a link to a website that tracks Elon Musk's promises and how long they've gone without being fulfilled

[Thad]

Maybe, but he's been obsessed with this X/online banking thing for like 25 years.

I saw someone compare it to drunk-dialing your ex and telling her she's still hot, and I think that's a pretty apt simile.

[nosimpleway]

Drunk-dialing your X
I will never give up on this joke. Never!

[Mongrel]

do tell

[Crick]

That emoji at the end serves roughly the same purpose as "/s"

[Friday]

I have overcome the desire for brobdingnagian tiddy goth spidergirl gf

[Thad]

Musk stiffed Twitter vendors and dared them to sue—dozens did just that

[Grath]

Elon secretly ordered Starlink engineers to disrupt Ukraine's counter attack, so in other words the war might have ended already if he wasn't a fascist.

[Crick]

hmmm

[Thad]

Musk says some nazi shit too loudly for the press to ignore it, advertisers pull out, various individuals and organizations announce they're quitting Twitter.

Up to this point that pattern's been that eventually the news media quit acknowledging that he's a nazi and the advertisers slowly trickle back, but Twitter's diminished in some way every time, little by little, like the tide going out.

I wish it wasn't taking this long for people to leave the nazi bar. But little by little, bit by bit, they are.

[Mongrel]

(I'd post this to the twitter thread, but it directly follows from Thad's comment)



Also, Disney, Apple, Comcast, Lionsgate, and a few others finally pulled out entirely, though I'm not really sure how much that matters given a) they shoulda done that ages ago, and b) Beat's Comment in the Twitter thread where it was pointed out that many advertisers who were still in were only spending nickels and dimes.

[Friday]

really would like to see the average techbro "masterful gambit sir" musk enjoyer explain how musk being a racist shitbag is a 4d chess move to get us all to a utopian mars or whatever

[Friday]

"well it turns out jews and blacks and the disabled actually make the best rocket fuel"

"I'm not racist this is just a biological fact, you see, their bone density is higher as you can see in the skull here, and"

[Mazian]

Their current play seems to be "you can't bring Musk's behavior at Twitter into a SpaceX discussion, that's totally unrelated". The usual Silicon Valley techbro gambit of trying to claim you're a perfect rational being interested only in engineering, not your hu-man politics.