Elon Musk’s Twitter Takeover, Explained in 19 Elon Musk Tweets
Though it feels reductionist to compare Elon Musk and Donald Trump, the Musk era at Twitter has some eerie parallels to the Trump White House. There’s a ton of confusion; lots of firings; people shredding documents; outlandish, impossible-to-execute ideas being floated; sycophantic advisers; nervous employees trying to appease a mercurial man; and tweets—so many tweets. It is an exhausting, enraging, and sometimes grimly hilarious spectacle that changes by the hour. Once you’ve familiarized yourself with the extended universe, tearing your attention away can be hard.
Over the past few weeks, tech observers and Twitter obsessives like myself have been following every twist and turn that will ultimately decide the fate of the platform. Musk’s Twitter takeover is like so many things in American life in 2022: It is both dumb and consequential. Twitter, despite its relatively small size, has disproportionate importance in our politics and culture. It’s used by activists and dissidents, on how social platforms work could collapse the whole enterprise.
