blast-o-rama. • issue 072 • 2023-01-22
blast-o-rama.
issue 072 • 2023-01-22
i feel a darkness in the force
Sort of as a follow-up to last week’s Seasonal Affective Disorder talk, while on the whole, I’m personally doing really well (spoiler alert: turns out that eating healthier, taking care of yourself physically, and getting a good night’s sleep…pays off?), I’m feeling some dread about this year as a whole. Why exactly? I think it’s best summed up in one word: layoffs.
This week, Amazon, Microsoft and Google joined the legion of massive companies laying off literal thousands despite crazy profits, and while I am not exactly keen to go all bleeding heart liberal on you — which, hey, I might as well admit I am — I have to admit, it’s a disturbing trend. Especially as someone who works in tech, and those are companies which all others tend to follow the lead of.
It’s enough to just instill a looming sense of dread, even if you keep on keeping on.
what happens when a billionaire decides to buy the public square
I’ve long said that, even with its reputation as a hell site, Twitter was my favorite of the social media services. I met my wife on there, I made friendships on there, I processed many events of life of the past (oh god) 16 years through it. It was a great leveling, where a major celebrity could be met directly by a fan, and a fan could become a celebrity. Both for good and for ill. And then, this Fall, Elon Musk bought it.
I’d gone on record in past editions about my feelings about Musk’s purchase of the bird site, but this week, the team from Platformer (Casey Newton and Zoe Schaffer), The Verge and New York Magazine joined forces to put together the definitive story (so far) on Twitter, where it’s gone, and where it’s going. Prepare to have your perceptions changed….or, sadly, confirmed.
This was the Twitter that irked Elon Musk so much that he became convinced he had to buy it. In his view, by 2022 the company had been corrupted — beholden to the whims of governments and the liberal media elite. It shadow-banned conservatives, suppressed legitimate discourse about covid, and selectively kicked elected officials off the platform. Who better to restore Twitter to its former glory than its wealthiest poster?
Like Trump, Musk knew how to use Twitter to make himself the center of the conversation. His incessant, irreverent tweeting violated every norm of corporate America, endearing his fans, pissing off his haters, and making him the second-most-followed active account on the site. “At least 50% of my tweets were made on a porcelain throne,” he tweeted one evening in late 2021. “It gives me solace.”
Musk offered to buy the company for the absurdly inflated price of $44 billion. The move thrilled employees like Simon who chafed at Twitter’s laid-back atmosphere and reputation for shipping new features at a glacial pace. Simon, who owned a portrait of himself dressed as a 19th-century French general, told his team, which managed advertising services, that he wanted to build an “impact-focused, egalitarian and empirical culture, where any team member, with a strong data-driven justification, gets the metaphorical center stage.”
Other employees noted the darker motifs of Musk’s career — the disregard he brought to labor relations, the many lawsuits alleging sexual harassment and racial discrimination at his companies — and found his interest in Twitter ominous. On Slack, a product manager responded to Simon’s enthusiasm for Musk with skepticism: “I take your point, but as a childhood Greek mythology nerd, I feel it is important to point out that story behind the idea of the Midas touch is not a positive one. It’s a cautionary tale about what is lost when you only focus on wealth.”
The comment would prove to be prophetic. According to more than two dozen current and former Twitter staffers, since buying the company in October 2022, Musk has shown a remarkable lack of interest in the people and processes that make his new toy tick. He has purged thousands of employees, implemented ill-advised policies, and angered even some of his most loyal supporters. Those who remain at the company mostly fall into two camps: people trapped by the need for health care and visas or cold-eyed mercenaries hoping to ascend through a power vacuum.
Today, Musk has become notorious for the speech he suppresses, rather than the speech he allows, from suspending journalists for tweeting links to his jet tracker to briefly restricting users from linking to their accounts on Instagram and Mastodon.
In three months, Musk has also largely destroyed the equity value of Twitter and much of his personal wealth. He has indicated that the company could declare bankruptcy, and the distraction of running it has caused Tesla stock to crater, costing him $200 billion.
If “free speech” was his mandate for Twitter the platform, it has been the opposite for Twitter the workplace. Dissenting opinion or criticism has led to swift dismissals. Musk replaced Twitter’s old culture with one of his own, but it’s unclear, with so few workers and plummeting revenues, if this new version will survive. As one employee said in December, “Place is done for.”
And THAT is just part of the opening!
also from across the web
Other reads I enjoyed this week:
- I disconnected from the electric grid for 8 months—in Manhattan - Ars Technica
- “Monorail!” How Conan O’Brien Came Up With an Iconic ‘Simpsons’ Episode - The Ringer
- Sarah Sherman on Comedy, SNL, and Her Love of the Grotesque - Vulture
- Channing Tatum Is Back for ‘Magic Mike’s Last Dance’ - Vanity Fair
- Julia Louis-Dreyfus: How Veep and Seinfeld Paved Way for Movie Career - Variety
- CNET’s Article-Writing AI Is Already Publishing Very Dumb Errors - Futurism
- How Much More Netflix Can the World Absorb? - The New Yorker
- Salary Transparency Is Coming — so I Decided to Tell Everyone What I Make - Insider
- Boygenius’ Phoebe Bridgers, Julien Baker & Lucy Dacus on ‘The Record’ – Rolling Stone
- Hollywood Cannot Survive Without Movie Theaters - The Atlantic
thanks for reading.
Go have an awesome Sunday. And then CONQUER THE WEEK. LEAVE YOUR ENEMIES IN YOUR WAKE. AND HAVE AN ICE CREAM.
See you in 7.
-Marty