Twitter

The whole takeover of twitter by Elon "Muck." The blatant banning of those who might be seen as leftist. The banning of journos. A haven for the fash. It's not a sign of Musk's actual politics, although I wouldn't imagine him any kind of socialist, either. It's distraction. While something else goes on as we ignore it, completely distracted by the trashing of twitter.

It's been bugging me for weeks. Why would he have even made the offer for twitter in the first place? It's been in deep financial shit for a while. You know, 15 years is a good run for a website, but twitter has always been a bin fire of left v. right (I sit well left, BTW), the left wasting their emotional energy on "skoolboi fash" when the real fash are the techno-industrialists. The real "men", with more money than God, don't need brownshirts, they curry political favour with lickspittals in Parliaments and Congresses, bypassing the "Hitler Phase." Modern fascism is subtle, modern fascism has all the data of Facebook and twitter at its disposal. The real fash distract us with amusements, then pick our pockets.

So, Elon talking about buying twitter, then saying, "Nah," then being "forced to in the courts," before finally walking in and trashing the joint? "Distraction! Look over here, people," says Elon, before walking away with somebody's wallet. While we scream and rail against what musk is doing, it begins to make twitter's brand "smell" as far as advertiser's are concerned. So, while Musk deceives us with card tricks, whose pocket is being picked, unscrutinised?

Twitter.

Twitter is the pocket being picked. My guess the venture capitalists trying to set up a twitter clone have asked Musk to do a few rounds of his "stoner frat boi whose girl ditched him" act, while they short sell shares in twitter, then dump both twitter and the never to surface twitter clone into the bin fire of recent Wall Street history. I have no evidence, but it's the simplest, least conspiracy theoried idea of what's going on. Elon isn't aligning with the toy fash, he's helping his rich mates get richer, with the double dividend of getting a place of (sometimes too) free speech closed for the rich boys' political mates. Bye bye birdie.

Mastadon isn't the solution to corporate social media silos, it's just smaller, more diverse silos. It looks like it may be all we have for a while, though.