This is the Future Elon Wants
A new book about Twitter's downfall is a cautionary tale for all of us
Elon Musk is all over the news right now, thirsty to be this election cycle's main character. Speaking at Trump’s rally, referencing 2022’s dankest meme: Dark MAGA. (For someone so very online, Musk’s references are often painfully out-of-date.) Putting millions of dollars into his pro-Trump Super PAC and paying supporters $47 a piece for email sign-ups in swing states. And, of course, he’s using his personal social media platform, the one he paid $44 billion for, to spread false conspiracy theories, rumors, and pro-Trump memes.
As it happens, I’ve just finished reading Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter. Written by Ryan Mac and Kate Conger, veteran tech reporters who cover the platforms with a critical eye. I started the book thinking that I knew the story already, but it would be full of gossip about Musk’s antics and would be a fun read. But Character Limit is haunting. It’s so many things rolled into one: a morality play, a case study for unionization, a tragic tale of hubris, and an argument that the wealthiest among us ruin everything they touch.
Elon Musk is, of course, the main character and villain. But none of the book’s characters with power are heroes or even neutral actors. Twitter’s C-suite leadership and board sold the company to Musk, knowing full well that he’d start off in a dire cash crunch of his own making, and likely run it into the ground. Not only do they fail to protect Twitter’s workforce (or make any attempt to) they also can’t be bothered to communicate much with employees about what’s happening or how it will impact them over the course of events.
Twitter’s CEO and most of the leadership know that Musk will fire them as soon as he owns the company. On the last day before the sale goes through, they either work from home or leave the building early. After gaslighting their employees for months about the sale and Musk, they abandon ship without even bothering to tell workers that the deal had closed. These folks each walked away with millions of dollars. One of the last invoices they paid was a 90 million dollar win bonus to the law firm that helped them force Elon to go through with the sale. Workers were left in the dark, and because Musk also didn’t communicate with them, they learned that their employer had changed ownership on Twitter with the rest of the public.
Things obviously get far worse once Musk and his “goons” (how employees refer to the people he brings with him) take over. Because of Musk’s own stupidity, Twitter’s financial straits are immediately dire. I was familiar with most of the stories of layoffs and firings but reading the narrative timeline is absolutely brutal. To Elon and the people who sold their workplace to Musk in the first place, Twitter’s employees are cannon fodder. Musk is disdainful of their work and value to the company while also constantly paranoid that Twitter workers are out to get him. Elon Musk redefines the phrase “boss from hell.” Much of his behavior wouldn’t sound believable if you read it in a movie script. Conger and Mac do a terrific job of always bringing the reader back to what Twitter’s employees are experiencing and how Musk wreaks havoc on their careers and lives.
The portrayal of Musk is equally brutal. Being one of the world’s wealthiest men and incredibly popular online is not enough. Musk needed to control Twitter and morph the platform from an imperfect but valuable public square to a platform that revolved around his popularity and whims. Where Elon was the sole decision maker on what voices were heard and amplified. Musk is clearly addicted to Twitter and likely struggling with other addictions as well. But paying $44 billion to buy your favorite social media platform and forcing workers to ensure you are its most amplified user, with no concern for what the platform’s users and advertisers might want, is a whole other level of addiction.
It’s nuts that one person could purchase a publicly traded company, but as wealth gets more and more concentrated around the world, Elon Musk should serve as a cautionary tale. If there was any doubt that Elon Musk shouldn’t have the amount of power (or government contracts!) that he does, this book is proof. I won’t even get into all of the bizarre personal details from Musk’s life that are unsettling. It’s tempting to view Elon as an anomaly, but he’s far from the only billionaire with a God complex out there. And there’s an entire political philosophy, neoreactionism, built around the idea that billionaires like Musk should actually be running nations rather than democracies.
Character Limit isn’t a political book per se, but if I had a magic wand, I’d mail every American voter a copy to read before next month’s election. Because the hell that Musk created at Twitter mirrors the hellscape both Donald Trump and Elon Musk want America to become. One where white male billionaires hold all the power, and the rest of us exist solely to amuse and appease them.