Billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk may be one of the richest people in the world, but it seems he's also one of the thinnest-skinned.
In a New York Times op-ed, writer Michelle Goldberg shared an anecdote from Kate Conger and Ryan Mac's new book Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter, which chronicles the unmitigated sh*tshow that has been Musk's takeover of what is now known as X.
The bit Goldberg shared gives a fairly stunning image of Musk that will surely be no surprise to his many detractors. It paints him, frankly, as a simpering crybaby who cannot handle even the slightest ding to his ego.
Case in point: one of President Biden's tweets getting more views than his, as detailed in the excerpt Goldberg wrote about.
Goldberg's article centers on the story of Musk and Biden's dueling tweets wishing the Philadelphia Eagles good luck in the 2023 Super Bowl.
Goldberg writes:
"Attending the Super Bowl as a guest of Rupert Murdoch, Musk had one of the most luxurious seats in the house, but rather than watching the game, he was glued to his phone in dismay."
"Both he and President Biden had sent tweets cheering on the Philadelphia Eagles, but even though Biden had far fewer followers than Musk on the platform, the president’s tweet garnered 29 million views to Musk’s 8.4 million."
This reportedly made Musk so "livid" he demanded senior engineers figure out why Biden was outperforming him. But he didn't stop there.
He immediately left the Super Bowl in Las Vegas to fly back to San Francisco, where an emergency meeting of sorts was called that Sunday night that resulted in engineers retooling Twitter's algorithms so that Musk's tweets would be pushed into people's feeds regardless of whether they followed him.
As Conger and Mac put it in their book:
"A man allergic to criticism had bought himself the largest audience in the world, and hoped for praise."
When he didn't get it, he went nuclear. And he has basically destroyed the platform in the process—unless you're a person on the far right, of course. X is now overrun with white nationalists spewing hate speech, conspiracy theorists touting disinformation campaigns, and bots amplifying such posts.
Goldberg compared what Musk has down to Twitter to what Trump has done to the GOP, writing:
"Musk has transformed Twitter into a dull, fetid cesspool of white nationalism and paranoid lies."
And it has resulted in a shocking decline in use and, most importantly, revenue for the platform as advertisers flee—resulting in several tantrums from Musk.
On the site itself, the few normal-brained X users left were shocked by the pathetic, childish Musk depicted in Goldberg's article and the book excerpt within it.
It's easy to mock Musk given this childishness, but the political power he has amassed since making a hard turn toward the far right is no laughing matter. Here's hoping his ego consumes him before he's able to wield that power in a devastating way.
@lpeterp/Bluesky
@FPWellman/X
@bobsbeatgmail.com5/Threads