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Left discourse only seems ultrasensitive to offense because it actually accommodates serious real diversity in a way grifty corp DEI programs pretend to. Despite its limits, twitter is basically the only place where I’ve met people from far beyond my limited circle of homogeneity
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Left discourse norms (not far left, plain shallow mediocre virtue signaling leftism without particularly deep convictions or agendas) are the only ones that have been shown capable of scaling to date. That doesn’t mean other norms can’t scale. I just don’t think Musk-norms can.
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Musk’s proposal, besides being a Meme Stock Pseudoevent from Hell that has ruined poor ’s vacation, is also an actual idea for alt-norms whose outlines are clear from his public behaviors. To his credit it is not pure reactionary fetishization of 19th c European norms
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We have to be careful not to conflate what Musk clearly wants from what the Retvrn to Powdered Wigs and Statue Heads crowd wants. There’s elements of the reactionary to what he wants… but he likes jokes, memes, shitposting, and many other things that make modern twitter
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Ie there’s four norm sets competing for dominance here A: Shallow diverse-liberal (incumbent) B: Musk-weirdness C: Retvrn to Powdered Wigs D: Woke Thought Police Stalinists So basically Musk wants to replace A with B, riding the moral panic C feels over the threat of D
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There is a particular risk and a general risk here. The particular risk is that Elon is not a god. He has incredible strengths and average weaknesses. I hold TSLA and would buy SpaceX in a minute if it were traded. He’s incredibly strong on that sort of stuff. But on this…
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…all the evidence suggests he’s average-weak. He’s not particularly “good” at twitter even as a user, let alone as a social platform designer. He just has extraordinary leverage for ordinary levels of shitposting skill thanks to Other Factors™ that are NOT social.
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In fact, his following is built on the spectacle of *literal rocket launches* The fact that he memes is irrelevant to the point of being a rounding error. You and I meme to grow reach. Elon launches rockets.
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The general risk is of course that whatever his unique strengths/weaknesses, he’s also a super-billionaire If you think super-billionaires simply buying up large social phenomena to “solve” them because they don’t personally like the emergent behaviors, you’re a monarchist
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this seems ridiculous given that the current largest shareholder is the Saudi kingdom elon buying it would make it *less* monarchist
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you're completely ignoring the fiduciary obligations and regulations as a motivation for taking it private e.g. if the SEC didn't suck, maybe elon could buy enough of it while public to do what he wants
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