Elon Musk Just Made a Big Mistake
When the rebel hero becomes the evil establishment
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Yesterday, Elon Musk announced that he’d purchased a 9.2% stake in Twitter Inc. for nearly $3 billion. This makes him the largest shareholder, with four times more equity than former CEO Jack Dorsey.
Nobody knows why Musk did it. But he did drop hints.
Soon after Dorsey left the company last year, Musk compared their new CEO to Stalin:
Recently, he asked his 80 million Twitter followers whether they consider the platform a place that adheres to the free speech principle. Their answer was quite clear:
He added below:
The thing is, Twitter is undermining the principle of free speech. But Musk may have made a fatal mistake by trying to fix it. Here’s why.
The things we do out of boredom
Elon Musk has built his image around the idea of resisting big, established corporations.
His first big success, PayPal, successfully disrupted the financial industry. His other company, Tesla, put electric vehicles on the map. His latest venture, SpaceX, is successfully revolutionizing space travel.
Accordingly, Musk positioned himself as a rebel, too.
He speaks in memes, not corporate lingo. He shares opinions, not press releases. He makes mistakes and he laughs about them.
In interviews, Musk shines in his introverted awkwardness. He wears leather jackets and sweaty t-shirts. Sometimes, he forgets to shave.
Everything about him screams: he’s human. He’s one of us. (in this regard, Musk is the ultimate anti-Zuckerberg.)
