Bye-Bye Little Birdie

Posted on by under Global Issues, Personal, Political commentary, Social commentary

He paid $44 billion to buy a toy that he didn’t know how to play with.  Last night I closed my Twitter account, so I have one less ‘pinned tab’ taking up space at the top of my browser screens!  I’ve been considering such a move ever since Elon Musk started threatening to buy Twitter, almost did it when he officially took ownership and fired half the people working there.  But for me, the final straw came yesterday evening when Musk announced that the former guy’s access to Twitter has been restored.

On Friday evening, Musk put out a “poll” asking if people wanted Trump to return to Twitter or not.  I immediately voted with a resounding “No!!!”, but at the end of the 24-hour polling period, those voting to let Trump back on outnumbered those of us who voted against.  And so, I’m finished.  That, for me, proved that since Musk’s takeover, Twitter has turned into a veritable garbage dump, and I refuse to share space with the likes of Donald Trump.  Ah well … one less thing to stir my angst!

But what a waste of $44 billion!  I did a bit of research and calculating, and even with today’s food prices, that $44 billion could have fed nearly 16 million people for a year!  SIXTEEN MILLION!!!  And I can only imagine how many homes for the homeless, how many pair of glasses for children whose parents cannot afford them, how many months’ supply of insulin for diabetics who cannot afford it.  The list is endless … and yet Elon bought himself this social media network and begin breaking it the very first day!

There is a direct inverse correlation between the amount of money a person has and the size of his conscience.  Oh sure, I know there are exceptions like Bill & Melinda Gates, Warren Buffett, and others, but … even they are left with billions more than they could use in a lifetime.  Take Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, who has given away $2.1 billion to causes such as the environment, education, and homelessness.  $2.1 billion is a lot of money worthy of kudos, until you consider that he is left with $184.8 billion in his own coffers.  The amount he gave away comes to just over 1% of his net worth … most people of average/moderate incomes typically give a higher percentage of their income than that to worthy causes.  And … Bezos spent more than twice the amount of his ‘philanthropy’, some $5.5 billion, for a ridiculous and pointless trip to space last year.

In short, Elon Musk wasted an obscene amount of money that could have helped millions of people in one way or another, then turned his purchase into a trash heap.  If he completes the destruction of Twitter before the end of the year, he’ll have one heck of a tax write-off next year!

61 thoughts on “Bye-Bye Little Birdie”

  1. Hi Jill. I know many writers who’ve closed their account. Me. I don’t really bother with Twitter, I just send posts there and use it to lurk around politics, but don’t get involved there like I do on Fakebook, hence, I’ve just been placed in Fakebook jail for the fifth time this year for having an opinion on posts. Imagine someone posted a meme of Twitter and Musk, and flames all around them. I commented, ‘Musk will burn it right to the ground’, and right away a big popup box came telling me my comment was potentially harmful to people. So someone can post a meme with no consequences, yet my comment got me banned.LOLOLOL. Ya, last time, there was a picture of tRump in a nazi uniform, I kid you not (also I don’t capitalize tRump or nazi), I had commented his cult was full of nazis, and boom, one month in jail. Who cares. But I just saw tonight on MSNBC where Marjorie Terror Green posted on FB last year that Nancy Pelosi needs a bullet in her head. AND THAT’S ALLOWED! But I digress, back to Musk. Bear in mind this guy isn’t stupid. I’ve watched a few docs and videos from economists who think he bought Twitter with no regard for what it is, that his eventual plan for it is to turn into a digital banking system, bypassing the government so the banks can’t get involved. Makes sense to me. Remember, he started Paypal in the 90s. Food for thought. ❤

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    • I can certainly understand that. For me, though, it’s a matter of … Trump was initially banned for his role in the attempted coup, his role in actually attempting to overthrow the government, undermine our democracy. To reinstate him now translates to me as “well, what he did was okay after all.” And I just can’t turn a blind eye to that.

      Ahhhh … so you’ve been to Twitter jail, too! I’ve been banned three times, but never for more than one week! And that because you said his cult was full of nazis, which is a true statement! Yeah, I’m better off without Twitter. I sort of wanted to go out with a bang, see if I could say something so obnoxious that I’d get a lifetime ban, but at the end of the day, I just wanted to take my belongings and go home. I wasn’t aware that Musk was a founder in PayPal … so I looked it up, and you’re right … he was a co-founder of PayPal! UGH. I’ll never us PayPal again!!! ❤

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  4. I’m not getting rid of my Twitter account. I don’t post political stuff on Facebook; most of my family is on Facebook, so I keep everything light & easy there. I post politics on Twitter. I also post stuff from WordPress that for some reason I can’t reblog. (you all know how frustrating Wordpess can be). I post lots of poetry & links to artwork.

    There’s other ways to fight this. You can say … oh, there’s racist & homophobic & fascist & generally MEAN people posting on Twitter & leave the tweet party, which of course is your prerogative. Or … you can fill up your Twitter feed with stuff that isn’t racist & homophobic & fascist & generally mean. You’ll get a lot of followers that way. There’s a bunch of people out there who don’t want to see racist & homophobic & fascist stuff. Of course, if you all leave Twitter, then I guess there’ll just be a small number of us fighting the good fight but that’s the way it goes.

    Trump’s an idiot. I don’t follow him on Twitter; I don’t follow Elon Musk for that matter; I never saw that stupid poll, so I couldn’t say YES or NO; but there’s plenty of other fascist idiots on Twitter promoting Trump’s ideas, even if he never came back. I honestly don’t see the big deal. I don’t follow any of those people, either. I don’t upset myself by following idiots & assholes.

    Twitter is a virtual place. It’s not like Trump’s in your living room. He’s not even on your TV, which is far more invasive. If his image pops up on your Twitter feed, you can scroll right past it. You don’t have to get upset, you don’t have to comment, you don’t have to engage at all. Just ignore the idiot. I ignore lots of idiots every day. Some of them I block … when I have to … but most of them I simply ignore.

    Twitter will likely implode on its own. Social media websites have come & they have gone. I have been interacting on the internet since the early 90s. I can tell you that most of the chat rooms, message boards, blogs, instant messaging platforms that were around back then have all vanished. But until that happens, I don’t see the reason to leave Twitter or any other social media platform with which I am associated.

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  5. I haven’t been on twitter for a long time but even if I were, I wouldn’t deactivate my account, there’s such a thing as a block button. i don’t understand why so many people are so upset over this honestly. If you don’t like what someone says, simply don’t read it and if you find out halfway through the content that it wasn’t what you thought it was, there’s still the option to bow out of the experience. someone, please make this make sense to me, I don’t get it.

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    • I can only speak for myself, Scott, but for me it’s a matter of principle. Sure, there are many others on Twitter with whom I strongly disagree about various issues, but that’s not what I have against sharing the platform with Trump. He nearly destroyed this nation by attempting to incite an insurrection, trying to circumvent the laws of the land, trying to take a hammer & chisel to the foundation of our democracy. For this, he was banned from Twitter and Facebook. To let him back on now … basically says that the rules only apply to us peons, not to the rich and powerful … that the rich and powerful are, truly, above the law. I don’t wish to participate in a platform that turns a blind eye to something so very important. Sure, I could block Trump, but I just don’t wish to occupy the same venue he does. Does that help make sense of it? As I said, I speak only for myself and others may have different reasons for leaving, or for staying.

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  6. Coincidentally, I also deactivated my Twitter last night. It’s a platform I haven’t really enjoyed using for a long while now and yesterday’s reinstatement of the former guy cemented the decision for me. Yay for more free time! 🙂

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    • Good for you, Ab! Like you, I haven’t gotten much pleasure from it of late … it’s become just a venue for political argument. I can get enough of that from my email inbox! 🤣 I agree … more free time!!!

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          • it’s going good, I had a premiere with Nicole Anderson on her YouTube channel at the end of October.

            Here’s a link if you’d like to check it out. She’s playing harp and I’m doing all the other parts and she did some really cool visuals to go with the music.

            We’re working on another track for her Advent calendar project in December and I’m also doing more work with Kimberly Braun writing music to go with some of her poetry which will be published next year.

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  7. Jill, it is an all too common tale. Someone buys an entity that serves customers and then alters the model to destroy the capital value of the company. Musk is not the first to destroy value and he won’t be the last. When I was involved in M&A work as a consultant and client, a statistic stayed with me. Most mergers and acquisitions fail to deliver value add, they usually are a value detract. Keith

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    • That is an interesting statistic and while I never thought about it, thinking back to just the ones I’ve paid any attention to, you’re right … rarely is the sum of the parts as valuable as the individual parts were. And Musk claims to be such a smart man … I think he’s proven to the contrary here.

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      • Jill, the stat I recall is around only 40% having accretive value over the worth of the separate companies. That means 60% do not. The key reason is what CEOs disdainfully call the “soft issues.” These are the issues around getting people to work together and not tear things apart over tribalism. These soft issues routinely bite CEOs in the fanny as they spend more time on systems integration rather than people. Keith

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  8. Thank you for sharing!!.. Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump are birds of the same feather and I believe that Musk created the poll to justify what he had already planned to do, reinstate Trump and others… perhaps Musk is trying to create his own little world (like Trump did)… 🙂
    Twitter (and Facebook) and I parted ways a few years back and I have no regrets, there are many ways to communicate with folks in today’s world… 🙂

    Until we meet again..
    May your day be touched
    by a bit of Irish luck,
    Brightened by a song
    in your heart,
    And warmed by the smiles
    of people you love.
    (Irish Saying)

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    • Indeed they are birds of a feather, my friend. Both have super-sized egos and neither will ever admit to a mistake. I don’t think I’ll miss Twitter much at all. I am prepared, if Zuckerberg allows Trump back onto Facebook, to close my Facebook account as well, though that one would affect me more because its main value for me is being able to keep up with former co-workers and my 30 or so nieces and nephews. But, as you say, there are other ways to stay in touch. Many thanks, dear Dutch, for the Irish Saying! They always brighten my day!

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  9. I only use it for the blog, live tweets of my football teams, and for sharing my daily Wordle result. I think I can safely ignore Numpty Trumpty’s rantings, if and when he accepts Space Karen’s offer to return. He has actually said that he wouldn’t come back anyway, and as he is always so truthful maybe he will stick by that and stay with his own toy and the other fascists there.

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    • I’m sure I’ll lose some views on my blog, but in truth I didn’t get that many from Twitter anyway … a few per day was all. Oh, Trump is just itching to return to Twitter, if for no other reason than to whine and pout to a larger audience about how ‘awful’ he was treated! His ‘Truth Social’ is failing miserably from all I hear. I joined it for a week or so, found no value whatsoever in it, and found it to be the most boring social media site I’ve ever been on, so I closed my account and said ‘goodbye’.

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  10. Believe it or not, I had the exact thoughts over the past few days, and when I saw the news about Trump’s account being released again. My husband and I were discussing where Musk wants to go with Twitter. He spent so much money and all you find is pure chaos. I cannot figure out what he wants. However, I might close my account too but want to check out how this insanity develops.

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    • I suspect that Musk had very unrealistic expectations about what would happen when he bought Twitter. But, like Trump, he has a super-sized ego and is not about to admit that he didn’t think ahead, didn’t think at all, just wanted it for the sake of saying he owned it. I considered sticking around for just a while to see what transpired, but then decided it no longer has value for me, so why waste my time and energy? Keep me posted about how things are going, though! I’ll be curious.

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  11. Yes I agree with you, but I expect he will eventually gather enough staff to keep it going but he will cut wages and increase hours. He will then boast a record earnings after a year from the savings in wages and the stupid MAGA crowd jumping on board and spewing their hate. The trouble is he will have second rate work ethic from his employees and there would be nothing worse for them having the richest man in the world cutting your wages and increasing your hours to make himself richer.

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    • Maybe, but with unemployment at an all-time low, those people, especially the highly skilled ones like engineers, may well be able to find a better job elsewhere. I suspect the site will turn into something most people are not seeking and he’ll lose customers as well as advertisers. But, we shall see.

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  12. Sometimes, we find that the founders of a system we’re using, just, didn’t, fit our ideals of how these platforms operated, and, we feel it’s time, that we, sever ourselves from that particular, platform we’d been, using…

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  14. That is the consequence of the Capitalist System, I’m afraid. For uncountable numbers of people their life goal seems to be to accumulate as much money as possible. I’m not saying I know of a better system, but capitalism coupled with human nature leads inexorably to this.

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    • You’re right … we will never be rid of greed in the human being, and for some it becomes the overpowering factor in every aspect of their life. Capitalism plays right into their hands and the lust for great wealth dominates all else, shoving humanitarian concerns out the back door. Today’s rising prices are a perfect example, where certain corporations are making higher profits than ever before … obviously they didn’t need to raise prices as much, but saw an opportunity to enhance their wealth and the war in Ukraine, coupled with the pandemic, gave them the perfect excuse. I lean toward a democratic-socialism, but like every other system, while it looks good on paper, once you factor in human nature it likely falls apart.

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  15. “the former guy’s access to Twitter has been restored.”

    And former guy said “Phucque yuu, Elon, me not gonna come back, me maked me own anti-social netwerk!”

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    • Oh he’ll come back … he’s waiting for his ‘fans’ to ‘beg’ him, but my best bet is by the end of next week he’ll be deluging the site with his nonsense. His own site is a complete failure with a small percentage of the followers he thought he’d have. I signed on to it briefly just to check it out and there’s no cohesion, and I found it the most boring social media site I had ever been on, so after a week or so, I deleted my account.

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