Elon Musk proves he’s the wrong man to save the world

The show is on. In order to kill his own acquisition, Musk has filed a petition with the government. Musk is going to be in court. Even though it is only going to get messier from here, one important verdict has already been rendered by Musk himself: he doesn't have what it takes to run a successful social network. That is a huge blow to his mythology.

It is important to remember what Musk has said about the deal and why he wanted to do it in the first place. The world did not force the acquisition of a small social network on the world's richest man. Musk has shown a lot of troll behavior around the deal. A reasonable person would conclude that Musk was never serious about it, which is leading to a lot of Musk stans and followers divining a 4D-chess narrative that makes his mistake seem intentional. It's possible.

There are some things Musk said that can't be overlooked. He was a visionary, a bold industrialist, a futurist, and possibly the guy who would solve climate change and multi-planetary civilization. He works so hard to get a huge base of social reactionaries and right-wingers who care more about his troll than he does about his work. If he ever had any credibility, Musk was the face of huge and ambitious efforts to change the world.

The same world-saving energy was brought to the deal by him.

• Musk said he was motivated by the fact that Twitter had become a “de facto town square” and that it’s “really important that people have both the reality and the perception that they’re able to speak freely.” (He talked about “free speech” a lot during this time.)
• Speaking at a TED conference, Musk said the deal is not a way to make money. Some of his exact words: “it’s about the future of civilization, but you don’t care about the economics at all.”
• Later, speaking internally to employees of Twitter, Musk said “I want Twitter to contribute to a better, long-lasting civilization where we better understand the nature of reality.”
• Musk: “Twitter has extraordinary potential. I will unlock it.”

Things that are important to the future of human life are not things you typically troll people about, and so these statements stand out above the rest. Is he a big fan of dumb meme? I agree. He might have sent a car into space as a joke. It's definitely true. His company's missions are serious. The world is transitioning to sustainable energy. Neuralink wants to help people with paralysis. Which one are you talking about? Enabling people to live on other planets is what it is.

Some of the world's most difficult-to-solve problems have been the focus of Musk's career. He makes a lot of promises and gives a lot of keynotes. The campaign to save the world earned him one of the biggest and most active fans on the social networking site. The man loves to follow people on social media. There is only one person in the world who would love to be on the platform and that is Musk.

Musk didn't say "I want to buy the company because I command an army of users here" The future of human civilization is important to him. The deal joined the ranks of some of the world's best known companies.

What are the problems that would prevent this man from becoming a real star? Is it possible to help steer it and his other companies in the future? In his SEC filing, he only makes two claims.

1. Twitter won’t give him data necessary for him to figure out how many spam bots are on the platform.
2. Twitter fired some people and lost some executives.

This is not good.

Musk has been going on about the alleged bot issue for a while, getting into public beefs with the CEO ofTwitter about it. The Delaware Court of Chancery is about to examine that in some detail, but the crux of the matter is that Musk wants to tank a huge deal over a problem that every social media company on the planet knows about. It's a fundamentally un serious position from a guy who is willing to solve world-shaking problems.

Let's assume that Musk is correct. He started the deal and looked under the hood to see what he had in store for the staff. What do you think? When TikTok and Facebook are ahead of you, what is the spread of users? If you think that Mark Zuckerberg is an unelected tyrant of speech, how will you take him on if you don't use social media? Why do you think revenue from active users is at stake? That doesn't seem like they care about economics at all. It seems like that is only interested in the economics.

There is no excuse for blowing the deal because a few executives fired staff while rolling out new features. You are buying a company for a lot of money. Now is the time for it to be yours. If you want to correct or reverse the decisions that brought the platform to your attention, you can do so. No one will stop you. The SEC couldn't stop you from using social media.

There are a lot of theories about why Musk did this. Musk wrote a check to cover the cost of his myth.

There are two possibilities. Musk isn't the world-changing force he was made out to be, either. He was lying when he said that his companies were built on lofty ideals.

The world is being trolled about a better future.