The Worst-Case Scenario for Elon Musk's Twitter

Here at Galaxy Brain, we have our best people working around the clock to come up with mental models for the world. Most of them are harebrained or break down upon close inspection, but one endures. There is a single steadfast rule for being alive right now, and it is: Do not bet against the dumbest possible outcome.

Anyhow, it sounds like this guy is actually going to buy Twitter:

This is a reality that I thought I was mentally preparing for (see the “single steadfast rule” above). But the truth is that I wasn’t, because I’m not sure what Elon Musk buying Twitter really means. So let’s talk hypothetical outcomes (while keeping in mind that we refuse to bet against the dumbest ones).

The Dark Timeline

There is, I suppose, a world in which Musk goes wild and attempts to turn Twitter into a Truth Social/Gab/Parler free-for-all. This seems like it would have to start with a total gutting of senior leadership and the instatement of some kind of Musk loyalist regime. (I’m honestly not even sure who would qualify, though such people certainly exist!) It could involve reinstating banned accounts, particularly former president Donald Trump’s. There have been attempts to quantify exactly what Trump’s presence on a social network actually means, and what it boils down to is that his Twitter account was a megaphone for bullshit. Shortly after he was banned from Twitter last year, a social-media analysis from Zignal Labs “conversations about election fraud dropped from 2.5 million mentions to 688,000 mentions across