Note: My Taki post is on different topic from today’s post. Sunday Thoughts is up behind the green door. It is also on Substack for paying members there. Going forward, I will post the pay-per-view material on both sites. Some people prefer Substack and other people prefer Subscribestar. There was also a rare Saturday post, which was going to be a Taki post but I changed my mind.
The Elon Musk versus Twitter drama is now heading to the litigation phase, as Musk has decided to pull out of the purchase agreement. The usual idiots have taken to social media to offer their hot takes on the issue. Critics of Musk think he made the great blunder they have been predicting. The far-left thinks this is a victory, when in fact it is the death knell for the platform. It is this fact that led Musk to pull out of the deal and take the issue into the litigation phase.
The basics of the dispute are simple. Twitter claims Musk is the breaching party and they intend to force him to abide by the agreement. They argue that they have given him everything he has asked. That means they will go into a Delaware court and ask a judge to compel compliance. Musk will tell the same court that Twitter is in breach of contract for falling to disclose information about their user base, which they are required to do as part of the sale.
No one really knows if the court can actually force Musk to go through with the purchase agreement and buy Twitter. In contract disputes, courts rarely compel one party to perform against their will. Instead, a monetary judgment is levied against the breaching party. In most cases, a settlement is reached before the court has a chance to decide the issue. In contract cases, litigation is a part of the process of negotiating the final settlement of the dispute.
In most contracts, especially complex ones like this, there is a liquidating damages clause that spells out the cost of breaking the agreement. In this particular case, we know there is a liquidating damages clause. Both parties agreed to a billion dollar fee if they break the agreement. There are conditions and the interpretation of those conditions will be part of the litigation. Musk has not offered to pay the billion and Twitter is not asking to be paid the billion so far.
All of this will make for good drama, but it obscures the fact that Twitter is a dead man walking, regardless of the outcome. That reality was made clear when Twitter agreed to the Musk offer. They were under no obligation to accept his offer. The board could have refused the deal. Management initially tried to add a poison pill in order to make it difficult for Musk to buy shares but relented after consulting with the board and the largest shareholders. They wanted this deal.
Musk said he made his best and final offer. He was a large share holder and had access to their public filings but also access to their management. In other words, he knew the peak value of the company and made a premium offer. Twitter had been saying their target price was $70 per share, but they quickly accepted the offer from Musk at $54 per share. In other words, everyone concerned knew that the $54 price was the best Twitter would ever get from anyone.
For its part, the market never bought the $70 claim or the $54 offer. The stock ticked up on news of the offer, but then traded down to below its prior level as news of the agreement got into the public domain. The day before Musk cancelled the deal, you could buy shared of Twitter at 60% of what Musk agreed to pay. The fact that no one was doing this says that insiders smelled problems. They knew Musk would never follow through on the $54 offer.
One reason for the skepticism is that Twitter does not make money and is unlikely to ever make money. The platform is useless for advertising so its only source of income is selling user data. There are plenty of players in that market. The big fish are Google and Apple, who control the mobile market. Since most Twitter users operate on their mobile device, Twitter data is mostly phone data. In reality, Twitter is just a derivative data stream that is rooted in the mobile data streams.
The bigger issue for Twitter and all social media is the barrier to entry has collapsed and disaggregation is upon us. Gab has proven this. They not only have a stable platform that is better than Twitter, but it was done on a shoestring by one committed guy, in the face of massive resistance by the usual suspects. The future is bespoke platforms of like-minded users. People are looking to be free from the blue-check harpies who have ruined the large social media platforms.
Those who have been on-line since the early days saw this coming. It is part of a natural cycle on-line. The first bulletin boards were big central places. They gave way to small places of like-minded people. Usenet splintered into a million sub-channels once it was possible to do so. The first message board communities were much like the big social media sites, but then over-zealous mods ruined them and the sites splintered into a million small communities.
This is why Twitter remains eager to sell to Musk. They have an inside view of what is happening and they know his offer is the best offer. In fact, they know half his offer is the best offer, which is why they will seek to cut a deal. Twitter is basically worthless as they own little in the way of unique infrastructure and their core product is now a commodity anyone can create. Their main offer is access to emotionally unstable people who want to lecture the rest of us.
Elon Musk may be a monorail salesman, but he is an extremely talented one who has worked the most sophisticated marks in the world. He is also the richest man on earth which means he owns the best legal talent on earth. He did not choose to enter the litigation phase because it is a sure loser. He understands that Twitter will have to disclose things in court that they would prefer to keep private. The fact that he is boasting about this on Twitter is a clue to his thinking.
Many assume this is just a way for Musk to lower the price, but he may be using this phase to bleed the company into bankruptcy. His people looked at the user data and probably saw that Twitter is past its peak. Like centralized internet platforms before it, Twitter is about to die from a thousand cuts. If anyone can put up a similar site for people of the same mind, then what is the point of Twitter? Musk can wait out the answer to that question in a Delaware court.
The fact is, Twitter should never have existed in the first place. It was just a novel implementation of the same old idea that has been with us since the dawn of the internet age. The dream of the virtual agora where the demos can debate the issues of the day and find a consensus has been tried many times. In every case, the demos discovered they did not like it and moved back into their own private warrens and subcultures to be free of the masses.
Familiarity breeds contempt and what the big socials have done is make everyone familiar with everyone else. The solution is what was there all along. The various communities build fences between themselves and the others. That way they do not have to be reminded of their unpleasantness. They can also pretend that those people on the other side are good people who mean well. Good fences not only make good neighbors they make human society possible.
This is why Twitter and the other big socials are doomed. Twitter is the most ridiculous and silly, so it will be the first to go. Facebook sees the writing on the wall, which is why they are betting on their virtual realty scheme. Sites like Instagram are just public bulletin boards that offer little interaction, so maybe they stagger on, but the days of big social media platforms are ending. The looming death of Twitter is just the first big step into the inevitable demise of the concept.
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Have a hard time seeing the DE court siding with Twitter on provision of DD data. I’ve been on both sides, and you get or produce what is asked for. Period. Recall one deal out of the UK where some of the gross numbers did not make sense, so we went over there and asked to see the actual case files. Wrangled for a couple of days, but finally got them. And guess what? Systemic underreserving. And we walked from the non-binding bid. Another less picky buyer took it, though below the bankers ask. Ended up costing that firm twice what was paid. Have to assume Musk has an endgame. Being of the VC world—most early round funders have IP and other rights written into their agreements, which subsequent round funders don’t get. VCs recover quite a bit from “failed” companies by grabbing technology and IP (often quite good) and utilizing it elsewhere. Now Twitter is public, but Musk’s strategy may be to drive the price down to the value of IP and user network then execute a “do over” in his own image. But first had to strip away the bullshit that Twitter, as constituted, was a viable business. He’s spergy, so calculating enough to do this without a second thought.
Gab is boring. There are a few people, most notably Z, who are worth following there. Unfortunately most have only 2 topics:
1. The tribe
2. Everyone else on the Right sucks.
Even with all the censorship there are a far wider range of topics covered on Twitter. I have started using Telegram, which I don’t really like, simply because that is where the independent journalists went to when banned on Twitter, YouTube and Facebook. If they want to Gab, all the comments would be about the tribe.
A good example of this is the blogger formerly known as Chateau Heartiste. On his blog he covered a wide range of topics. Now it is just humorless posts about the tribe or it was when I followed him on Gab
Excellent Taki post. Except for this contradiction: you agree that long-term thinking is essential, yet slag off environmentalism (as usual) which is the perfect example of short-term thinking. Anyone who has the ability to think long-term is necessarily an environmentalist. Those who disagree are either those who blithely believe there will always be birds and butterflies in their garden, or those who don’t care.
well, given that the environmental movement is a front for bad people…you are a chump.
I have never subscribed to the idea that Musk is ‘extremely talented’. Signing the Twitter contract without doing the due diligence is idiocy of the first water. He has somehow got extremely rich, but that’s a bubble, and it will burst spectacularly before long.
where did you get a copy of the contract to read? are you a contract lawyer?
Very late posting this question, but I’d like to sort of poll the readership here:
Do you guys get the impression that Antifa’s presence on Twitter, particularly the doxxing profiles, has waned to a large degree?
My anecdotal evidence is that many of the active profiles that I check now and then have significantly fewer retweets, comments, and likes than only a year or two ago. Some appear to have only a very small handful of active followers.
Granted, I don’t use Twitter and my observations are from a very narrow sliver of profiles that I check periodically. I’d definitely like to know what others have observed
I hope it does go away. I’ve never used it, I am tired of Joseph cotto saying to Paul gottfried, I wrote so and so on Twitter today and mr smith replied ( fill in the blank) . Paul do you have anything to say about that ? Not the best use of gottfried brain power if you ask me. When it gets to that point in the show, I turn it off and feel bad for Paul.
I stopped listening to them. I got tired of cotton acceptance of abortion and Godefried pushing of this weird narrative on Lincoln, that he was a nighteenth cent nationalist and that’s why civil war…
So I detect distinct signs of Branding at the Substack place.
I detect a plan that doesn’t involve the day job.
I believe the blind spot in Z’s conclusion is the power of the Federal Government to keep the centralized tech platforms front and center. I do not see these large tech platforms going away – I see them getting further subsidized and integrated into the gub. If you want to do any business with the gub, you will have to engage on these platforms. Those hybrid platforms like REALID and other crap come to mind. I had a problem with IRS a year ago, and just logging in required way too much for me to consent (e.g. facial scans). Insanity. Coming to the DMV via facebook or something similar nonsense. Just a thought – maybe will come to pass, maybe not.
Apologies – I meant the id.me platform with IRS.
i gave up on the irs site too, for the exact same reason. it’s all so glitchy, too; site is unusable. funny enough, you don’t need any of that stuff to actually pay your taxes 😛
I imagine a lot of people will just say “fuck it, you’ve already taken my money anyway” in the long run. It’s a completely unnecessary and arbitrary security system that doesn’t work well in the best of times. The people it ultimately screws over most are those who rely on tax refunds; which is perhaps the point
“The platform is useless for advertising so its only source of income is selling user data. There are plenty of players in that market. The big fish are Google and Apple, who control the mobile market.”
Would love to see some numbers on Apple’s sale of user data.
“Does Apple Sell Your Data?
Now that we’ve established that Apple collects and uses your data to serve ads, does it sell your data too? Turns out the answer is No, Apple doesn’t sell your data to third-party advertisers. The Cupertino giant possesses the exclusive rights of showing you ads on the App Store and other apps. This means your data is used by Apple to show ads, but not sold to any other advertisers.”https://tinyurl.com/DASUD711
“Apple doesnt sell your data,” “the check is in the mail,” “this wont hurt,” “my dog ate the homework,” and other laughably false common lies…
I gurantee that they make money utilizing your private information. Maybe they do not “sell” it, but lease access to their database of consumer data, or some such other typical “de jure” truthiness from the local Pharisees.
But if you honesty believe that, well, Tim Cook’s widow has some ocean-front property in South Dakota and shes looking for a development partner to invest a small sum…
You forgot:
“Of COURSE I love you baby 😘”
“It’s COMPLETELY safe”
And
“I’m from the government and we’re here to help.”
Don’t forget;
“I’ll just put the tip in”
And
“I won’t *** in your mouth”
OT (kind of), but this headline from Business Insider is a howler:
“Paul Ryan said he doesn’t normally cry, but ‘found himself sobbing’ while watching the Jan 6. insurrection, book says”
That’s nearly perfect.
Who is walking around thinking “that poor Paul Ryan”? The disconnect is jarring.
I cried when Biden slapped Ryan around during that disastrous debate, so are we even?
Pussy. That’s the best description of Paul Ryan.
Dysgenic. They nailed him in leftyville as Eddie Munster. One of their few funny memes. He still did their bidding.
Paul Ryan? That finking little yellowbellied globohomo crapweasel had better have his passport current and passage prepaid if Wall Street goes Shri Lanka.
Paul Ryan is the reason Roman consuls ended up being prosecuted after their terms were up; probably something we should bring back for the current crop.
Nehlen was pretty good with “soulless globalist.”
During the 2016 election and for a time after, the DR was able to land some solid body blows on. Lefty using humorous memes and YouTube videos. Realizing that the Left was vulnerable to this effective form of ridicule these companies choose to run off half of their customer base which will likely hasten their demise.
I think news of Twitter’s demise is premature. It is a relatively user friendly global megaphone and speaker a rainbow matrix of human temperament and activity data. True also a manipulated social credit tool. But it is almost AI ‘alive’ and too early adopter pervasive to yield its fate to more singular platforms, useful as they are. Eventually Twitter’s fair use value will maintain its popularity even if a small fee appertaining to membership (separate issue). Great thoughtful post by ZMan as are many others.
I believe Twitter does have value, just like Uber has value, but we won’t know what that value is until the tech recession washes everything out. It’s likely just going to be one small division of a larger company. Tesla, on the other hand, won’t make it at all. Its only value is its physical plant and office furniture. It has no technological or any other advantage and its first mover advantage is now meaningless. Musk is the larger fraud, he’s no good guy.
Musk is a good guy for his rocket and satellite technology, far surpassing NASA..But people buying Tesla don’t have my sympathy..they were warned.
Tesla is pure tax farming. Since Musk is a sophisticated guy, he may have plans already in place to move beyond the electic charade which he took advantage of.
After a few years in the road, Tesla cars are a bucket of bolts.
I’ve been taking them more and more through Uber, and sitting in the back, every time they go over a bump they bounce noisily and sound like they’re going to break. They don’t feel solid at all. I’ll admit the interiors are nice, but I’d never buy one after seeing how poorly they hold up after a few years of use.
I think Musk’s fate may not be so bright. Musk placed his bet and aligned all of his incentives with the climate catastrophe agenda. This Hydra of Progressive Bolshevism has many a dagger of disaster in its tentacles. Of all of them, the most disastrous and destructive will be the energy project – for it is a de-energizing of society project. We’ll survive the race war. We’ll survive the economic implosion. We’ll survive the indoctrination camps and the banishments. We won’t survive the energy transition – especially when all the others projects are on the menu at the progressive force feed yard.
Musk says things that disciplined, informed nine year olds will and probably do laugh at since they paid attention in 8th grade chemistry and freshman physics. Musk and Tesla is sitting on top of a valuation that in the end is going to make a lot of people poor. That is just the beginning. At what point do his competitors no longer have the ability to buy his “emissions credits”, that keep his company, “profitable?” The problem with socialism … …
I suspected that his Twitter play was really his usual trolling with a strategic objective to get the dimwit right (Shapiro; Rubin; Hannity; Williamson; Peterson … ), to give him his good press and shrink the pants of his halfwit fan boys across the spectrum. It allowed him to move away from the left that he knows will turn on him since his company requires digging holes and using material to build things – about 5xs as much per car as for ICE cars. (though they don’t know that). He can distance himself from those tards and ingratiate himself with the Contards and continue to get his subsidies and the regulatory regime that effectively outlaws his competitor’s product. In other words, I think he was creating a favor he could call in with the right-lite when it gets into Congress and the Presidency.
To support Musk is to support Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming. This is the most anti-human and destructive of all of the Left’s projects. To support Musk is to support the theft of profits from his auto manufacturers and purchasers of ICE vehicles and transfer of said money to him and his customers. To support Musk is to support the outright outlaw of the ICE vehicle by 2030-35 in California, New Jersey, Washington and the UK with more jurisdictions on the way. The ICE manufacturers couldn’t survive a fraction of that level of market destruction. The problem is, this great genius has a product with poor energy density and no viable path forward via current chemistry and physics to lower the costs of the batteries these amazing electric motors lug around.
This means the myth he perpetuates that Moore’s Law applies to electric cars is a lie. So most people won’t be able to afford those cars. At the same time, the materials and energy required to build them won’t scale and so it will impact the markets for all goods – meaning rising costs across the economy when this project is undertaken at global scale.
Wait until Boobus wakes up to these facts. Wait until his customers with devastated 401Ks have to replace the battery in their car in 8-12 years and find out his resale value story is every bit as fallacious as his robo-taxi story. Ditto for his solar roof and battery project. It is possible that the wheels will come off the wagon of the ponzi-conomy before the EEV transition hits full stride. Maybe that will save him.
I don’t know why I have such a special animus toward Elon Musk, but I do. I think it is because he is the ultimate symbol of our time. He is the ultimate easy money charlatan who has embraced, perpetuated and exploited all of the myths of the age. He is the simulacrum of a serious person. He is taking us to Space and he is saving the planet for us! He is doing things! Behind the space explorer cowboy, the mad genius whose contributions to Computer Science or Software Engineering I have never once seen cited in IEEE or ACM databases, the great energy and earth saver is a guy whose story doesn’t add up.
I can terraform Mars – a planet not habitable to our species, he claims. But first, I must save this planet from destruction from fossil fuels not by re-terraforming it like I can Mars, but by using more energy and natural resources and land to cover it in solar panels and battery farms and dead battery packs to prevent the use of fossil fuels that we will need to use way more of to make them all, and then make them over and over again as they die useless pieces of scrap.
That is his message. That is the most assinine, unserious line of BS I have ever heard. I can terraform Mars, but not the earth. Give me your money to save the earth. That is why I say he is not serious. That he is taken seriously is a sign. As I said, he is the ultimate symbol of our time – a time filled with people so desperate for something serious but so unserious about itself and so incapable of reasoning for itself, it can’t see the absurdity in the claims and ideas of St. Elon the Musk. St. George of the Holy Overdose and St. Elon the Carnival Barker. With Jack, 140 Characters Dorsey, and Mark come spend your life in the Metaverse Zuckerberg. Is this just a weird son of Fellini’s new circus movie we are living in?
Now, I’ll leave you with a serious person who, when we give him attention, we may well know that we have finally returned to being a serious people again – Kirk Sorensen. To the lampost with Musk and to center stage with real scientists and futurists who can push our people and our species forward – people like Kirk Sorensen.
As for Twitter, who gives a crap. The future belongs to those who are best at living in the realm of the real. I’ll be interested to see how well this post dates in ten years time.
downvoted for being obsessively long. musk is richest guy in the world; he must be doing something right.
On paper.
Take a Tesla stock certificate to a gas station and try to fill up.
try that with any stock certificate 😛
Point taken on the length of the comment.
Larry Fink controls more financial assets than any other man in the world – he must be doing something right. Doing something right to benefit oneself at the expense of others in a corrupt system is not a virtue. Doing something good is the issue.
Leaders have a duty. Perpetuating lies that are harmful to the civilization and then profiting from their spread is immoral. It is a forfeiture of leadership as it is a forfeiture of duty.
That is my point about Musk. I invite you to address it.
Hmmmmmmm….
Hmmmmppfpfpffff.
I dunno if I agree or not, Z. Even if Twatter is a shadow of its former self … there is still a pile of money to be made over there – even if all there is – is selling more crazy to the shitlibs. As for Elon… he is no mere charlatan. Most businessmen hit or miss changing their products and services to fit the market. Elon has changed the market to fit his products and services … and he doesn’t even have to do that here. All he has to do is rip off Blab – open it up to lawful free speech… and he will siphon off everything Blab has and probably the other platforms as well? Torba must be chitting bricks or at least be worried. A few of the crazies will rage-quit… but most will be back; without normies and regular folk to pick on.. Lefty gets sad and stale fast.
Hmmmm. Would you quit Blab and go back to Twatter if the crazies were run off, and you would garner more presence and a higher profile? Not to crap on Blab because I love it… but if dollars and cents were involved? Big dollars…? In exhange for muting a couple dozen crazies a month?
Glen: As someone who uses absolutely no social media, I can’t speak from experience but . . . the argument that Zman and others would prefer more social exposure (more money is something everyone could use, particularly now) presumes that such exposure would increase acceptance and/or implementation of his ideas. Whether muzzled by the subcon Twitter moderators or people like Adam Schiff, the rules are that positive White group identity is verboten, no matter the platform. The whole focus of much of the DR is to create parallel platforms and society, not rejoining Clownworld and somehow miraculously getting millions of generally comfortable and apathetic people to suddenly realize the importance of White identity and self rule.
Those millions of apathetic grillers and normies make the country run. They do the boring jobs, they pay the bills, and like the Dissidents – they want to keep the lights on, the kids fed, and be left alone on the couch after supper. Generally they are good people and the Dissidents do them an injustice by looking down their nose at them. Are you much different with your dreams of a parallel society?
But… they will follow those that will lead. Globohomo and Clownworld consistently step up to do that, whereas the dissidents typically do not. There will be no parallel society. The kind of gov’t ours is turning into will not permit it. They will stamp you out wherever they find you just as they did in Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia, etc etc. Parallel societies – especially successful ones – are a threat to the ruling elite. They are just using mean words right now, but as they slowly destroy the institutions they took over… they will become more desperate for scapegoats, and they will be ever more paranoid about eliminating their enemies. They will be coming after you and all of us with steel and shot at some point – unless something changes radically.
I think it is too late, we have passed the point of no return and only a war will sort out the grievances between us. But… if we have a chance at peacefully resolving anything, it will be on battle grounds like Twitter. Torba will be the canary in the coal mine. If he falls, our only option after that will be kinetic and ballistic in nature.
But… whadda I know?
i don’t think normies are doing the jobs you say, for the most part. i think most of them are office drones doing make work. maybe their superfiliciousness is why they act the way they do. they do follow…right up until the point where they are required to show a spine, then they turn tail.
Torba expressed a sigh of relief when the news hit. He wouldn’t describe it that way but I think he did.
Gab is nice to just vent, get some news or engage with likeminded people.
If you want to engage the enemy via social media you have to go to Twitter.
David Wright: But as Joey Junger says below, the best way to deal with the enemy is to decline to engage altogether. Deprive their fire of oxygen. Does anyone who is truly on our side think they are changing any minds via tweets? Mocking can be done in many ways and different fora. No need for glob-homo sanctioned social media to do that.
I agree. Those who pretend to believe otherwise have some other reason, which I’d probably rather not know.
The fence-mending nonsense is cope. I suspect most of those who espouse it realize there has been an irreparable break. It must be rough particularly on those with loved ones who would sell them out or cut their throats in a nanosecond.
This is an enemy will not engage. Does not engage. Cannot engage.
No..Twitter refused to disclose its revenue sources because that would reveal them to be the Deep State…That will come out in Court if they persist, which will wreck what little prospects they have…
I think this to be true. If the truth were to be known, probably their data needs have been run on government servers, perhaps even the NSA’s servers. That not only lowers their cost of doing business astronomically, but it also provides the government with direct access, at little cost to them, with the identities and posting history of all of Twitter’s users. Rapping into the internet infrastructure is fine, but such frictionless acxess to identities is very useful in various ways.
Tapping, not rapping is what was intended.
Totally right. Their backbone is government servers.
Sorry, but I don’t have link, detailing some of the technical details and “business” entities. Tis a public-private thing.
In other words, diversity, not only of people, but of ideologies, is terrible. People not only want to be with others who look like them, but who also think like them. Homogeneity is happiness; diversity is despair.
As Heartiste used to say “Diversity + Proximity = War.”
Because we didn’t listen to Wallace in 1963, “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”
So, we’re gonna get the “rivers of blood” Powell prophesied in 1968.
Twitter is just the place where the turbulent mob of fools will shriek “ree, ree, ree.”
Could they have made it work had they not decided to censor anyone they disagreed with? Or is that an option they simply are not capable of doing?
The answer to your last question is an unequivocal “no.” These folks are hyper-religious Secular Puritans. Even if they burn right along with her, the witch has to be torched. They are incapable of exercising restraint and allowing dissent. Impulsivity is their Achilles Heel.
I don’t think censorship or lack thereof makes any difference. The US tradition of free speech didn’t keep us from getting to where we are now. On the contrary, it gave cover for the enemies of civilization to propagate their ideas unmolested.
Vizzini: Precisely. There are always limits and controls on speech. The question, as always, comes down to who/whom. As long as a hostile group owns and funds the platforms, that same group will ultimately dictate who and what may not be criticized.
“hostile group … who/whom”
I had an ant farm when I was a small boy, with some variety of large black ants in it. I thoughtlessly put into it some red ants I found in our yard, to see what would happen. The red ants immediately started at the top and dug their way down, methodically hunting and butchering every black ant. I was horrified. There was no shortage of food. It seemed entirely killing for the sake of killing.
There is no sapience in ants. Their behavior is entirely genetically programmed: instinct. Our behavior is largely instinctual, too. Instinct is the default, but we have the capacity to unshackle the reasoning and moral mind and make choices.
The capability for sapient behavior (exercise of choice) is part of the neural architecture that evolved after that responsible for instinctual behaviors. Sapient behavior is an outgrowth or extension (in a genomic hardware sense) of instinctual behavior. The former cannot ‘replace’ the latter and will be with us always.
Instinctual behavior cannot be reprogrammed, but can be constrained or managed with taught sapient behaviors (culture). Every people has a distinct culture that coevolved with their genome, optimized to manage subsapient or instinctual behaviors detrimental to their perpetuation. (ex. sexual morality including marriage, property rights)
Different varieties of humans are no less different than different varieties of ants. The people tearing down the culture of Western Civilization are an alliance of hostile foreigners and our homegrown defectives resentful at traditional cultural means of preventing their deviant behaviors from inhibiting our civilizational perpetuation. They are attempting to erase the culture (set of sapient behaviors) necessary for OUR perpetuation. We are the black ants and they are the red ants we have so foolishly invited into our habitat.
Multiculturalism (small scale geographic mixing and sharing of space by different cultures) is utterly unnatural. Multiracialism and multiethnism can only be maintained with distributed local sovereignty in either imperial or federative political structures. Hostile groups who undermine distributed local sovereignty, federalism in an American context, have to be ruthlessly expelled.
I had to fix a stereo speaker for my elderly mother. “Mom, I ordered a replacement tweeter, no need to replace the whole thing.”
She asks, “What’s a tweedle, son?”
So there’s that for Twitter’s future.
One thing we are forgetting, though, is just how new cell phones and social media are. They are truly revolutionary, in the sense of global cultural impact.
Disregarding the fact that SM is largely a creation of the spy agencies, I can surely understand a bit of societal upset re a tech with this kind of lightning impact.
Something new in the world!
Exciting times indeed- and a sight better than hoeing turnips while fearfully watching for brigands.
The most revolutionary effect of the internet was that it was beginning to teach the average person that our ruling and professional classes are retarded and evil. “Brexit and Trump,” etc.
So the internet had to be destroyed, and it was.
But the lesson remains with us, so we have to be killed.
Elon’s offer has had an interesting effect on twitter.. I only started perusing it in the last year or so, but at first you could freely browse/search to your heart’s content without registering. In the last month or so, it started requiring registration after scanning about ten tweets or so. Guess they are trying to boost registered users.
FireFox and the Chrome based browsers like Brave have extensions you can download that bypass the Twitter login wall.
Yes, but that level of investment (installing an extension) exceeds my interest in stuff posted to twatter by an order of magnitude. In fact, typing this riposte took more interest than I have for anything on Twitter that cant be screengrabbed and posted as a jpg.
I’ve noticed the same. It’s become increasingly difficult to bypass the “must login” prompt.
Wonder if it’s a last ditch attempt by Twitter to lock out bots so they can go into court and “prove” that real users make up the majority, not bots?
Musk’s biggest problem is that the time for due diligence is BEFORE you sign the purchase agreement. If the company isn’t forthcoming with that data, you walk away until they are. If Twitter does settle with Musk it will show that their bot problem is far worse than they let on. Musk says 50% are bots, but if his lips are moving he’s lying. Twitter says 5% are bots, and that seems low. In any case Musk owes extensive damages to shareholders.
Some say he did this because long term share options in Tesla were expiring and he needed to get out of Tesla stock without causing alarm bells to ring. Twitter was cover for TSLA liquidation. I don’t think that’s the case. I think he did this because he loves the public spectacle. I don’t think he ever intended to purchase Twitter. His entire public life he’s skirted above the law. Regulators have been hands off. They created a monster through inaction, and by the time Tesla was worth a trillion, too many pensions were including the stock in their portfolios to drag him away in cuffs.
The big lesson to this is, both Tesla and Twitter have shady accounting, and both have been shielded from any regulation. How many other large companies, very large S&P 500 ones, are accounting time bombs after 20+ years of no big fish getting cuffed? PWC, Deloitte, EY, all those businesses are nothing more than the Harvey Keitel (the wolf) character in Pulp Fiction. The recent liquidity crisis in the markets will expose a lot of this towards the end of the year. Cash flow statements will vaporize and everyone will ask what happened.
” How many other large companies, very large S&P 500 ones, are accounting time bombs after 20+ years of no big fish getting cuffed? ”
Basically most of them. As you note, the end of the year will tell the tale, and the only odd revelation will be a few corporations here and there had accurate accountings. We will get a better feel for exactly why the Fed was so gung-ho about buying bonds. It was all about the Bemjamins and the resulting cash infusions. BlackRock is too big to fail, and Larry Fink is too big to prosecute, but it probably is a good time to ditch the designated bond buyer’s magic potions.
Why does illicit drug addiction persist in our modern society? Because it can. Our affluence and compassionate nature allow such deadweight to exist and even flourish. If the price of drug addiction was a quick & early death, it would soon cease to exist.
Ditto for social media. We have way too much leisure time, both in small fragments throughout the day and in large blocks at the end of the day. If people needed to work 3 jobs just to get by, and had bosses that enforced a no-cell phone policy at work, social media would evaporate quickly. But our current work environment includes lots of spare time for trivial communication, and that addiction still costs less than $100/month for most people.
At the root, social media is vector of control more so than a data harvesting tool. It’s value is to plant memes (subliminal mental proclivities) that serve an either overt or covert agenda. “Buy This” is the main use, which applies to elected officials as well as soap. And because we allow stupid mush-heads to vote, social media can move this herd toward any charlatan it chooses. Which is why we are led by corrupt idiots.
My dream is that the “smart phone” is a fad, at least in its current form.
I see the most ridiculous sail foam related stuff. App controlled light bulb is the latest sail foam abomination that has come to my attention. App controlled curtains, app controlled cups. Even app controlled Christmas trees. When will the madness end?
The smart phone is a fad.
The next iteration is cybernetic implants that produce images on the retina.
The iteration after that is direct implants into the brain bypassing the sensory system altogether
Who in the Western world is gonna be intelligent and organized enough to develop that technology and implemented on a mass scale?
You think those diversity hires are gonna be sitting there on a Saturday night at 11 PM running through their algorithms?
Tars: I find it darkly amusing to watch YT homesteading channels where the homeowners are pitching their off-grid solar power system where they can check their battery reserve on their phone, or get cellphone notification that someone has driven up their driveway. Or use an ‘app’ to control their lights or automatic chicken coop door.
Solar is awesome for certain and limited uses, but to trumpet being ‘off grid’ yet relying on one’s phone and apps for increasingly mundane things is, obviously, counter productive.
3g4me-
Today JHK posted an entire column about the expensive, non-functional mess his solar system has become:
https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/its-not-working/
Some of the preppers get it, or at least they are beginning to. The other day southernprepper1 pointed out that people need to be preparing for an 1865 lifestyle.
I think that’s still a few decades too recent, but his basic point is correct.
Wild Geese: I’m not a luddite and don’t particularly want to live an 1865 lifestyle. I like AC and hot showers. And ‘off grid’ can be defined many different ways – I’m not mocking anyone who chooses to utilize the grid right now or tries to manage without it.
It just seems counter productive to me to try to be more self reliant because one can’t really trust the ‘system’ not to fail, yet rely on that same system for communication. And to try to live independently yet simultaneously rely on one’s constantly/easily monitored or cut off cell phone service for even simple daily activities.
Thanks for the link- I’ll go check the post out.
I look at the Left, especially the aggressively online left, as like the Nothing in that movie “The Never Ending Story,” popular when I was a child. The Nothing was this rapacious monster that fed on all negative energy, from apathy to sadness to hatred. It’s their fusion fuel, and the high they get from interacting with the right and immiserating the right is as much a part of the rush as chanting the old familiar slogans with their friends. I think you’ve even mentioned this, how the dumb normiecons like Shapiro or Hannity will amplify whatever sordid crap the left is spouting. To even argue with them is to feed them. These days whenever a lefty I have to deal with starts up, especially with Trump, I just shake my head and say, “You need to get a life, or at least a hobby.” It shuts them right up, makes them look a little sheepish where they were expecting an invigorating fight.
Saying “I don’t care” to whatever they bring up also spoils the fun for them. I do, in fact, care about all kinds of things, but it’s none of their business, and they have no right to know what I care about, or why. They deserve only to be starved with silence.
Let me upvote this a million times. It’s the only tactic that works.
(I’ve stolen the phrase “Oh, is that what your tv told you?” from I wish I could remember who. It ruins their day like nothing else. Lefty comes rushing up to you, yelling something about “OMG Drumpf blah blah blah” and I calmly respond “Oh, is that what your tv told you?” Stops them dead in their tracks and ruins their entire day, which is a big bonus).
this used to happen when i was living in cali, and i would say “he’s not even in office” and then refuse to engage further. they would just stand there with their mouth open not knowing what to do once the conversation went off-script.
Digital Gulag Guard Withdrawal Syndrome is a thing.
+1 on everything here.
Don’t argue with them. Tell them to shut up and move on.
Also they don’t get access to normal white people on my watch.
Yes, but even telling them to shut up feeds them a little. Smirk, shake head, walk away.
I prefer, “Man, you sound just like the effin TV!”
The only thing to add to your tactic is perhaps to say, “Is that what your tv – or your smart phone – tells you?” As many of those who approach you with their line of outraged patter spend way more time getting mainstreamed from their smart phone than a tv – and don’t even notice the “meme injection” that they get 24/7/365 from their smart phone, and from the same actors, any longer because they are living their life being massively online – this smacks the younger set who live “life” vicariously through their smart phone with a metaphorical two by four. These fish don’t know they are in water (24/7/365 smart phone…), and this (but only potentially) acts as a wake up call.
I think I came up with that “Is that what your TV told you,” line. I also always make sure to say I don’t watch corporate media outlets like MSNBC and Fox News. It drives progressives nuts when you point out (even implicitly) that they’re conforming to the agenda of the richest, most powerful people on Earth, and that their cable saviors are just another flavor of the same crap sandwich. When Matt Taibbi released “Hate Inc.” with a picture of Sean Hannity and Rachel Maddow side by side on the cover of the book, a swarm of childless harpies flew down on leathery wings to shriek to the high heavens that you simply couldn’t do that to Rachel.
One of them came up to me the other day repeating the line about Trump grabbing the wheel to the limo and swerving, shouting “I am the president of the United States!” like some supervillain in the third act of a lame Clancy novel. “First it was BLM, then it was Covid, then it was Ukraine. When did they send you guys down to the shop to reprogram you for more Trump? I wish I could train my dog to sit the way they train you.”
Spoil their fun, not with arguments, but just by nipping it in the bud. As another eighties movie from my childhood, “Wargames” had it, “the only way to win is not to play.”
How meta — I stole it from you, then brought it up in a reply to you, forgetting you were the guy I stole it from in the first place.
Anyway, congrats– that phrase is brilliant. It causes them so much pain in their vaginas, which is awesome.
Jose Ortega y Gasset called the dawn of the mass entertainment/media age the “triumph of mediocrity”. Twitter’s rise and fall really confirms his 100 year-old prediction. The blue-checkmark crowd made yet another demonstration of the ancient maxim that “opinions are just like a**holes”…..
Of course, the unfortunate consequences will be that the robots will follow traffic to Gab and other successor platforms and that the thought police will ask for more resources to combat the dialogue diaspora .
“the thought police will ask for more resources to combat the dialogue diaspora.”
Not enough resources. As mediated as the internet is, it broke the mass media and The Narrative. Not unlike how the printing press broke the church. Funny how things come full circle.
I wonder if “the government” will decide that Twatter, Facebook, Google, etc., are too big to fail. Sure, they only have billions “on paper”. But, so did the banks that the taxpayer ended up subsidizing. Besides, you can buy a Biden or a Senator pretty cheap these days.
Not just too big to fail, but also free propaganda streams for the swamp and protection for rich liberals. For the big socials, just like for CNN/MSNBC/NYT/WashPost, etc., profit or solvency no longer matters. They will be propped up by the Feds or liberal billionaires, no matter what the cost.
PJ O’Rourke had a great line about this:
“Who thought it would be a good idea to have any idiot connect to any other idiot”
I miss P.J.
This, v dare, amren, American partizan and western rifle shooters are more than I can handle most days. I did faceberg for a couple months, looked at Twitter, gagged & closed it never to look again.
One of my daughterinlaws lives to be online, feel bad for my son & their kids..
“The first thing a man should do when entering a building is to remove his hat. Then keep it off for the rest of his life. Nothing looks more stupid than a man wearing a hat”
– P.J. O’Rourke.
I would like to have seen him tell Sinatra that.
Well, that pretty much dispenses with this O’Rourke character. He does, however look good in an asshat.
My big concern is this part: “[Twitter’s] main offer is access to emotionally unstable people who want to lecture the rest of us.” Since that’s also a perfect definition of “the United States government,” where are those folks going to go? Twitter returns to being a sort of open-access JournoList for Media people and their fart catchers. Ok, but what’s the fun in that? If they can’t get people censored and #canceled, what are they going to do with themselves?
In other words, when is the government going to start requiring people to have a social media account? You know, to “combat disinformation.” It’s a public health issue. Also, per John Roberts, it’s a tax. They could bundle it with your cable subscription like ESPN.
Universal ID online is already being mulled in the prison colony of Australia, to avoid cyber-bullying of course. Won’t someone think of the children?
Jeebus. Talk about thoughtcrime and self-incrimination.
So democracy now means shut your mouth or else, eh?
Criticizing the government anonymously has been a hallmark of the American Republic since the Federalist Papers. But there are plenty of reasonably free countries where you have to sign your name and ID # to your “letter to the editor” in the newspaper. 9 shysters in robes could decide anything…..
I wonder how much gas there is in the Fedi/Mastadon setup maybe. The advantage is the Journos could set up their own “cool kids instance” and preach to the masses that choose to federate with them while still blocking the hoi polloi. The downside is that a real instance is not cheap and is still technically intensive to run (although, a bunch of old, bitter ladies run that “Spinster” instance).
“If they can’t get people censored and #canceled, what are they going to do with themselves?”
They are going to turn on each other.
I am just chuckling about a new Hollywood trope that is emerging: all the bad guys in their morality plays are radicalized by 4 Chan and Blab. Your mere presence on those platforms can induce you to mass murder, demonology, and other Bad Things. They manufacture evil young white psychotics like sausages.
I suppose it lends credence to the idea that you always know what Lefty is up to by what he accuses others of doing.
Exactly, Glen. These people are unwell and need to have a constant enemy to fill the void in their lives.
No doubt Western governments have “experts” lined up to combat Digital Gulag Guard Withdrawal Syndrome, but it will not work.
Welp, the Zman did call this one early!
A tip o’ the hat, while your audience politely ignores that…certain look of satisfaction.
I feel like in the past, when America was mostly Christian, you would not be as disgusted by your neighbors ideas, were you capable of knowing them via some form of digital social media. Sure you might not like the Italians on that side of the tracks, or that gaggle of wasps in New England etc. But there was a baseline idea about things. Even blacks had bought into it to some degree.
I mean yes, social media makes everyone’s ideas kind of public, but surely it’s radically compounded by the fact that we have a huge (compared to the past) population of Godless people chasing their own vain imaginations, and they aren’t shy about telling you about it.
From you – “Familiarity breeds contempt and what the big socials have done is make everyone familiar with everyone else. The solution is what was there all along. The various communities build fences between themselves and the others. That way they do not have to be reminded of their unpleasantness. They can also pretend that those people on the other side are good people who mean well. Good fences not only make good neighbors they make human society possible.”
I don’t think fences can mend this wound, even if it is a sensible policy. The genie is out of the bottle.
That is a good point, especially on Facebook you see all kinds of comments, relationship problems, political, etc., you would never see from extended family members . The other thing it does is create a customer service pressure point for businesses. You see this regularly, some has a problem with large company and they send a message to its Twitter account in hopes they will move heaven and earth to fix it immediately and avoid the negative attention. It is simply assumed the person complaining is telling the whole truth.
That genie is a djinn.
The good news is, we know what they’re thinking; the bad news is, we know what they’re thinking.
The thing I have a hard time comprehending is that there’s the democratic impulse to incorporate, and it seems to have this tendency not to individualize everyone, but to infantilize them.
Part of me wants to think it’s a kind of coming apart, a race to the extremes, contradiction. But it could be as simple as hive behavior, or something like that. You have a bleating herd that needs tending, and a rotating cast of queens running the show.
Corps and bureaucracy wiping asses and changing diapers, nurturing, culling. The deep state, the managerial state— Democracy! in action.
Eventually some figure out minding your own business is better for the common good and start building those good fences. At least for a certain people. Let’s call them Americans.
(Apologies, bursting with ideas lately. Hopefully good ones)
Stupid thing is, that libertarian streak made it possible for different cultures and religions to coexist more or less peacefully for a while.
If I’m thinking straight, we ended up with liberal democracy because the liberal part had an appeal and made it seem workable. But if democracy is totalitarian (everything becomes politicized), then democracy is illiberal, or at least not American-libertarian.
Seems like the liberal democratic hive is trying to purge itself in pursuit of consensus. Who knows, the unintended consequence might end up being something favorable to Z blog readers lol.
DavidTheGnome: Some are in a great hurry to mend fences. You know – let’s just forget that we called for you to be put in a camp because you questioned The Science – that’s all in the past and we’ll be besties again Or let’s forget that everything I mocked you for as a conspiracy theorist has been proven true – let me tell you about my latest cruise.
Even here, people often mention their liberal ‘friends.’ People appear exceedingly anxious to bury the proverbial hatchet without ever addressing the underlying issues. Which is why they’re always shocked when the hatchet is again pulled out and used on them – they can honestly say they never saw it coming.
I stopped talking to liberals years ago. There’s no point to it.
Fences are racist.
In the traditional publishing industry, the certain sign a periodical like a magazine or newspaper was about to fold was when the publisher would announce “it matters more who reads us rather than how many people read us.” In sum, that was to say diminished circulation was offset by the quality of the dead Who Reads Us was pronounced.
In recent years much the same has been said about Twitter. Due to the presence of the Blue Checks, Twitter was touted as A Very Important Thing because of their influence on society. It turns out that not only were they the primary users, people have tuned these sorts out right along with the government and its other propaganda organs.
The initially dismissed claims, now somewhat conceded because it supposedly bolsters the Who Reads Us argument, that the federal intelligence and law enforcement agencies used Twitter for propaganda purposes also matter little. If no one really cares about the propagandists all that much, that doesn’t matter, either. The high water mark for this use of Twitter was when Trump was banned, which also struck somewhat of a near-death blow because he did draw eyeballs. I have no doubt the feds exert enormous pressure on Twitter, largely to block another WikiLeaks, and again loss of that gossip resulted is loss of interest in the platform.
Finally, the data mining became less valuable as other sources such as computer-dependent automobiles easily supply the same personal information in more detailed ways. Yes, they are spying on you, but it turns out home appliances are a far better source of information than social media.
MyPage still exists. AOL still exists. Even to this day some people use CB radio. Twitter and Facebook and the rest soon will sit at the kids’ table with those pygmies. All of them had a good run back in the day, and all of them came to depend on Who Reads Us as their star power diminished.
Dissidents often bemoan atomization, but there are some upsides. Difficulty with propaganda having a broad reach certainly is one. The Regime depended on a monopoly on propaganda, and that is going fast.
Like Spinal Tap, their appeal is becoming…more selctive.
Where’s a cricket bat when you need one?
In a way, nothing else drew attention to what they really think than the wholesale banning of Badthought. Real dissidence became cool!
Also, I think a great deal of credit should go to our host, who kept the tiny, flickering candle of Paleocon thought alive.
And moreso, for his exposure of Con Inc. grift. I’d never heard of most of the people, publications, or ideas portrayed here, so pervasive was the Conservative state church and their memory holing.
Conservatism always seemed a bit off- often completely off- but there was nowhere else to turn.
There is certainly a parallel between Con, Inc., and social media. Both were designed to corral people and keep out Bad Thought.
Once these Social Media giants decline, it will be interesting to see if the sharding of these services leads to more, less, or the same wokeness among your average Joe. Facebook in its heyday was relentless in its social engineering, and a lot of people got sucked into it by perceived consensus manufacturing.
It will also be interesting if the new gen social media outlets like TikTok, which is probably responsible for at least half the young people who identify as gay or trans, will fare any better in a few years.
There’s also a wild card that governments have an interest in keeping these platforms dominant, since it’s much harder to keep the same message among a dozen platforms. There might be a time when there is only one state sanctioned social media type that is allowed simply by relentless regulation and litigation of competitors. Look how Gab was almost destroyed just through monolithic services pulling out, and the feds haven’t even gotten out their big guns of civil litigation when some crazed MKUltra graduate with an account there shoots people up.
That already happened. The Pittsburgh synagogue shooter posted a message on Gab that he was tired of talking and “going in” right before he went there. They tried to hang responsibility for that on Gab and Torba, but it didn’t work. I assume the other social media companies weren’t excited about that precedent being set.
That’s true, once that precedent is set, the only option is some sort of ownerless blockchain implementation or a federated system of small nodes that are moderated by some average Joes that are part of a larger system (think Fediverse)..
Then you run into cases where someone was “inspired” through an article, and the feds can go after that publication with the precedent set, which will turn into anarcho-tyranny with regards to any speech rights online.
why not something like Bitmail???
“I assume the other social media companies weren’t excited about that precedent being set.” I don’t think they are too worried. You can buy a lot of protection for $400 million zuckerbucks and allowing the feds to moderate your sites.
i joined gab recently (mostly to read zman’s feed) and it really is a hoot :). people seem less uptight there because you can say pretty much what you want, and not get nagged at too much.
zman, i genuinely can’t tell if you are going after cornelius or just sparring a little?
i never post anything though…
Depending on where you’re at that’s probably advisable unless you’re sitting behind some VPNs. Aussie TheFinn panic-deleted his account when it became clear that his tyrannically government would no doubt kick his door down for some of the stuff he had posted there. (In Australia it’s illegal to have a door that the authorities cannot kick in, of course).
Gab is definitely the best option for news & hot takes, even if it’s 85% Covid abortions and pedos in high places. I thought the lack of libtards would make it a dull echo chamber, but there’s enough right-wing diversity to keep it interesting. It does need more funny accounts though. The best thing about Twitter was the “Weird Twitter” phenomenon which peaked around 2015. Then Trump won and all the weirdos showed their true colors and became run-of-the-mill virtue signallers.
I thought when he made his offer that the plan was to bail, I maybe mentioned it on some guy called Zee’s site. He raised issues and forced disclosures that demonstrated its true worth of 5/8 of fuck all. I think he did it to fill in all the spare time between Boring and Spacex and Tesla.
A man needs a hobby.
Right now he’s spending 99% of his time in Texas building largest/most powerful, and therefore best rocket in the World. What a time to be alive
He seems to spend the other 1% adding to his growing family
I’ve been there, I’ve seen it, and it’s incredible.
I was a Musk hater like many here before I saw Starbase with my own eyes.
It may all end in tears, but he’s more Steve Jobs or Thomas Edison than anyone in the US alive today. A big thinker, and a doer.
Yeah I thought at the time buying twitter was an excuse to cash out some Tesla shares without crashing his remaining stake, I think he sold $8billion worth, Most other Tesla share holders think buying Twitter is great move, so they would never suspect another angle
If he also ends up killing Twitter thats a nice bonus
“ Familiarity breeds contempt and what the big socials have done is make everyone familiar with everyone else.”
You’ve perfectly distilled a sentiment I’ve had for a very long time but couldn’t articulate well. Thanks.
Facebook does it more so. My wife’s account has to hide all from family members because knowing more about them just ruins any decent feelings we might have of them.
The wokeness is possibly the worst part.
I ended my Facebook account in 2018 when I couldn’t stand knowing about the caved-in-head political opinions of my friends, family, and associates. I could have lived my life and continued associating with them without hesitation. But now I know stuff about them that, in past times, I would’ve only known by f***ing them.