(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Elon Musk could have been somebody - before he channeled his inner Howard Hughes [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-04-20 When Elon Musk’s Space X rocket blew up minutes after launch today, many luxuriated in schadenfreude. How did we get here? Elon Musk is one of the most accomplished people on the planet. At 28, in 1999, he netted $22 million from his stake in Zip2. In 2002, he received $175.8 million from the sale of Paypal to eBay. Since then, he has founded Space X, Earthlink, Solar City, Neuralink, the Boring Company, and Tesla. Musk and his pet porcelain He was on top of his game, the world’s richest man. And the business cognoscenti hailed him as an entrepreneur nonpareil. Then he bought Twitter. He wildly overpaid after trying to back out of the deal. And when forced to complete the purchase, he swanned into Twitter headquarters with a sink. It was not a surprise. He had already shown symptoms of his mental fragility with off-the-wall tweets. For instance, on Aug. 7, 2018, he tweeted , "Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured." He had not secured funding. The FEC sued him. In settling , Musk stepped down as Chairman of Tesla, agreed to more corporate oversight, and paid a $40 million fine. To understand current events, it is often instructive to look at the past. In 1948, industrialist Howard Hughes bought RKO Studios. He fired 700 employees. And during his first year of ownership, production declined to nine movies from a pre-Hughes annual average of 30 — mainly because he shut the studio down for six months to investigate the political leanings of every employee. Considering the red-scare political climate of post-WWII America, it probably seemed reasonable at the time. But in hindsight, knowing the future arc of Hughes´ life, it is fair to think that his later full-blown OCD paranoia was incipient. Famously Hughes went from being one of the world's most visible men to living a life as its most notorious hermit. He had made a fortune in tech companies — most notably transportation (aircraft) But his lasting impression is that of a fruitcake. In 1958, at 53, Hughes holed up in a screening room and never left for four months. He ate only chocolate bars and chicken and drank only milk — surrounded by dozens of boxes of Kleenex, he constantly rearranged. He spent his last 10 years in seclusion at the Desert Inn, Las Vegas, surrounded by bottles of his urine, protected by his Mormon Mafia until he died in 1976 at 71. Is Musk treading the same path? Who knows? Perhaps Musk has a plan for Twitter. He talks of a so-called ‘super app’ — a tool that allows users to combine social media with payments and gaming while layering in mini-programs, essentially apps within apps. The concept is prevalent in China ( WeChat ); Southeast Asia ( Grab ), which started as a ride-hailing app, and Gojek, which began as a delivery service; Africa’s super apps ( M-Pesa and temtem ), which have similar origin stories as does Latin America’s Rappi . Had it been the pre-2018 Musk who bought Twitter, especially for a reasonable price, most people would have thought it was a good move to add a prominent brand to his portfolio. However, that calculus ignores one difference between Twitter and Musk’s other businesses. The social media site was an established platform. In his other endeavors, Elon built companies from the ground up. He understood the nuances of the business. He knew their corporate architecture intimately. And he could shed what was not working before it became costly to do so. With Twitter, he carpet-bombed the joint with no plan. He fired people, shut down departments, and jettisoned protocols with no cohesive strategy. The result was a series of technical failures leaving users in limbo, unsure if they were screwing up or if the site was glitching. There is nothing wrong with buying a business, stripping it back, and rebuilding it to perform better. But no one knew what was going on. And to save the ship he had blown a hole in, Musk had to bring in top talent from his other businesses just as he faced stiff competition. Adding to the insanity, he embraced MAGA and promoted conspiracies . It was a strange choice as electric car customers tend to be more liberal than the typical car buyer. The effect on his auto business is bubbling up. Today Tesla, which had already slashed prices to generate sales, announced more cuts that will diminish already shrinking margins. At Twitter, his erratic behavior has spooked advertisers. And in his desperation to generate cash flow, Musk sold Twitter’s sought-after blue checks to anyone shelling out $8 a month, with no validation — while at the same time stripping prominent users of their legacy designations. Today Twitter pulled Beyoncé, Pope Francis, Oprah Winfrey, and even Trump’s blue checks. And other celebrities have told Elon to stuff it.* If there is one event that encapsulates Musk’s madness, it was his reaction to a pair of Super Bowl tweets. One by President Biden, in which he said he would be supporting his wife in rooting for the Philadelphia Eagles, generated nearly 30 million impressions . The other by Musk, who also tweeted his support for the Eagles, generated little more than 9.1 million impressions before he deleted it in frustration. An unhinged Musk demanded that this loss to Biden, or anyone else, never happen again. Top management pulled in 80 people to fix the problem, which quickly become the only priority at Twitter. Employees worked through the night trying to design a solution. Soon every Twitter user had Musk at the top of their “for you feed.” The Emperor raged. His factotums enabled him. And he pissed off yet more Twitter users by taking the best seat in their digital living rooms and yelling at them while they were trying to chat with friends. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/4/20/2164950/-Elon-Musk-could-have-been-somebody-before-he-channeled-his-inner-Howard-Hughes Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/