Exploding Heads Up: If Musk’s melon blows, the Twitter goes!
Today Mr. Musk brays loudly and lame, rubber crutch tips on fire as he sweeps majestically across the night sky in a classic crash-and-burn configuration. I am told that most psychologists recommend setting the Ego Command and Control (EC&C) at an internal pressure of 32-34 pounds per square inch (psi); however, after being snubbed by Vladimir Putin in Ukraine and slammed by Donald Trump in the news media at large, Mr. Musk now finds himself being almost universally snubbed by thinking men and women everywhere. You can imagine that his giant noggin must be pressurized up into the EC&C red zone right about now at 85-90 psi …so why don’t the rocket scientists at Space-X tell him before his head explodes? Maybe they aren’t telling him as a mean-spirited joke, like watching in silence as an unsuspecting pedestrian slips on a banana peel. If they already know his head is going to blow but simply aren’t telling him …well, that’s a very dangerous game, my friends, and one that could get someone splattered with what passes for Mr. Musk’s brains.
Before Elon Musk, there was only a commandment: “Let there be Twitter.” Astonishingly, for what it is, Twitter became the de facto standard for disseminating misinformation, corporate viewpoints, and snarky opinions. I think Twitter’s success happened ptimarily because Twitter is free — and nothing is more profitable for business than “leveraging” something someone else is paying for. “Free” has always been a problematic business model for investors, but its been a corporate magnet for Twitter. Remember that Twitter is a thin-client web app, so there’s no user software to install or license to buy. There are no server farms or network infrastructures to lease or build. Also, Twitter is asynchronously accessible via the Internet by anyone on any computer or smartphone anywhere in the world, anytime. Operationally, Twitter is a “lights-out” environment, so the need for a maintenance workforce is minimal. Only a handful of interns and junior developers are needed to discourage users that make it past the perimeter defenses guarding their programmers from any customer satisfaction.
Sweet! Corporate news teams can manipulate news, proselytize ideologies, dazzle the bourgeois with their salaried political shills and professional pundits …and all without having to commit any of their own financial resources to a platform. I reiterate that the main attraction for corporations has always been and shall always be — and I can’t emphasize this enough — that Twitter is free to use (at least it was free as of this writing). That’s excellent news for corporate profits, but what happens to that incentive when Twitter isn’t free? I’ve always wondered why anyone would fork over hard-earned money to read the comments of self-aggrandizing pundits who are always wrong, political hacks, and sources of misinformation except to check out their competition, e.g., the other self-aggrandizing pundits, fellow political hacks, and equally manipulative opposition; however, at last glance, Twitter is still free, only now Mr. Musk wants users to pay a monthly fee for “user verification.” Verification features are a “Best Practices” coding standard, right? Well, probably not the way Mr. Musk does it. I’m going to suggest that Twitter’s “verification” will probably end up more of a bug than a feature, and it won’t even slow the Eastern Bloc nation-state hackers down by more than a fraction of a millisecond anyway.
Just Remember: If the melon blows, the Twitter goes!