Praise Elon

I’ve written a bunch about Twitter over the years. Maybe because it’s where I met so many of you, maybe it’s because I’m too terminally online, or maybe it’s because I’m an addict. As much as I want to stop, Twitter keeps pulling me back in.

 
According to some smart people, Twitter is dying. The experience isn’t fun anymore. Zuck entered the ring. Elon is messing up. Whatever the explanation, it feels like things aren’t going as planned at Twitter HQ.

Or are they? Of all of the billions of takes I’ve seen on Twitter, there’s one case I haven’t seen made: that Elon, in his beneficence, is killing Twitter on purpose to free us from its shackles.

Is this what I really think is happening? No. I’m not even convinced Twitter is dead yet.

My personal view on Elon, not that it matters, is that he’s the best atoms entrepreneur of our generation, that Tesla and SpaceX are unequivocally good things for humanity, and that very few people besides Elon, if any, could have pulled off what he did. But running a social network is a very different beast – people don’t bend as predictably as metals. Someone can be world-class at some things and not as good at other things, particularly when they analogize from experiences that aren’t exactly analogous.

But that’s not fun. That’s not going to get the clicks. If I’ve learned anything on Twitter, it’s that you need to take a stand, and you need to defend it no matter the facts on the ground.

So for today, I’m going to LARP as one of those weird nerds who defends Elon’s every move.

Let’s get to it.

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