Elon Musk Is Trying To Buy Twitter Because He Sucks At It

In a twist that would more accurately be described as a clear and obvious straight line, Elon Musk has followed up his purchase of a large amount of Twitter stock with a bid to buy the company outright. To read the official reports, you’d think that this was a valiant warrior taking on financial risk in the name of preserving free speech, which apparently is under attack by Twitter. Every one of them sounds like Musk was imagining an American flag waving behind him and an eagle cawing as he described himself as a “free speech absolutist.” Which is a descriptor that I know makes linguistic sense, but something about the juxtaposition of “free speech” and the word “absolutist” just always smacks of friction.

I however, posit an alternative hypothesis to the motivation behind Musk’s attempted buyout. I think he knows he’s losing the Twitter game, trying to buy the very expensive ball and go home. To hear him tell it, sure, he’s absolutely killing it on twitter. After all, who doesn’t love an almost 50 year old man who is still making jokes about the number 69. Here’s a new rule: you’re not allowed to make 69 jokes once you’re older than half of the number 69. You’ve got until 35, and even then you’re deservedly going to get some eye-rolls.

Musk deeply wants to be a funny Twitter user. Outside of his sickening net worth, everything else about his feed reads like a guy who would send DMs asking for a “quick RT.” He may be one of the richest men on earth, but I still feel like getting invited into a cool twitter group DM would be the best moment of his past two years.

Does he get high engagement on Twitter? Of course he does, but it’s always from the same sycophantic choir of .eth usernames, lul’ing away at the idea of a Tesla costing $69,420 or whatever, immediately followed by a reply like “thoughts on KekCoin????” hoping he’ll reply and juice the value of whatever sketchy crypto altcoin they’re diamond-handing.

So he’s going full Seymour Skinner, deciding no, no, it’s the rest of Twitter that is wrong, and attempting to buy the site. Hope we all enjoy a character count of 420.

Top Image: Public Domain/Pixabay