Why Elon Musk’s Twitter Raid Should Concern Us All

In 1999, Elon Musk, newly flush after selling his startup Zip2 to computer giant Compaq, appeared in a CNN segment on emerging tech millionaires to show off his latest acquisition, a rare McLaren F1 worth $1 million.

The nervy dweeb in an ill-fitting jacket unveiling his new car like a kid in an unpacking video is not the carb-faced Musk we know today, a sensuous-lipped, wannabe rogue with a cult leader’s hold over his followers.

The young Musk, sporting his former teeth and hairline, recalls his miserly days and is more than a little smug about his recent foray into the world of “creature comforts.” His then fiancée, Justice Wilson, later the author of the fantasy novel BloodAngel, appears apprehensive.

“It’s decadent,” she says of his newfound profligacy. “I just worry that we will become spoiled brats and lose a sense of appreciation and perspective.”

If only Musk had paid attention to his ex or at least stuck to buying supercars. Three wives, eight children, several companies and $288 billion later, the 50-year-old Tesla Inc. chief executive has us all worried with his big-ticket spending. In the wake of his break-ups with Amber Heard, who claimed to be “filling time” with him after Johnny Depp, and Grimes, who moved onto Chelsea Manning, Musk entered a wasteful space-race with fellow billionaire divorcee Jeff Bezos.

Elon Musk in 2004.

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Their mission is not exactly clear. But it hardly takes a rocket science, or Freud, to figure out why these famously competitive reformed nerds might take their sword fight to space. After all every Tom, Dick and Ari has a fleet of Ferraris these days and superyachts aren’t exactly safe harbors for oligarchs. And it doesn’t seem like Musk or Bezos have any interest in the arts (beyond proximity to celebrity) or putting their vast fortune in the service of public causes and philanthropy; it wasn’t until recently that Bezos began to give away his millions and while Musk claimed he earmarked $5.7 billion of Tesla shares to charity no non-profits have yet to be announced as recipients.

But his decision to buy Twitter this week for $44 billion, one of the largest ever leveraged buyouts of a listed company, defies even billionaire logic. Just like Rupert Murdoch before him who, desperately seeking relevance, bought MySpace on a whim in 2003, and quickly proceeded to ruin the once thriving online community, Musk is already seeing hundreds of thousands of Twitter users, especially on the left, quit the social media platform. (Conservative users, however, seem to be coming on aboard.)

Musk is hardly the only member of the three-comma club to make a splashy acquisition in the media space in search of influence and clout. Before him, the real estate mogul Mort Zuckerman tried his hand at being a news sugar daddy with a portfolio that at one point included the New York Daily News, The Atlantic, and Fast Company; today, he only owns the digest US News and World Report. A financial journalist, BC Forbes founded the eponymous business magazine in 1917, and it continues to be under the family’s stewardship. His son Malcolm Forbes became synonymous with Nouvelle Society extravagance in the 1980s, a period whose apex was his 70th birthday party in Morocco. As decorator Carolyne Roehm recalled in T&C, “I could tell this was going to be one of the best parties of my life, but, oh, the assortment of people you saw stripped almost down to their knickers because they were so hot!”

Malcolm Forbes’ infamous 70th birthday party in Morocco.

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But unlike the efforts of his billionaire predecessors to monetize the town square (not to mention those of his contemporaries such as Marc Benioff of SalesForce buying Time, uber-trader John Henry buying the Boston Globe and, of course, Bezos buying the Washington Post) , Musk’s impulse buy makes less financial sense.

So exorbitant in fact that his offer of $54.20 per share was considered by many to be an inside-weed joke. Musk wants to buy the platform simply because he can and his ability to stir the pot on the most influential website on the planet, already a flashpoint in the debate over free speech online, should concern us all more than if he’d actually made an offer to buy Mars.

Certainly, his own cavalier posting on the platform, either in the name of his putative love of First Amendment rights or in more sinister attempts to game the market, suggest that he is not too concerned with righting the SS Tinderbox that he has put up his hand to steer. Only a week ago Musk was posting about Bill Gates being a “boner killer” and disparaging Twitter management despite being prohibited from doing so per the terms of the proposed deal. Does anyone outside his idolatrous circle really think that this raid is anything but the actions of a billionaire trying to shape the dialogue in his favor and control the tools used by regular Joes to fight back?

It remains to be seen if the Twitter deal even goes through, let alone if Musk can make a go of it despite himself. Nothing in his past would suggest that he the chops or self-control to pull it off. Even his die-hard supporters are getting antsy. His likely rolling back of moderation policies might please the free-speech maximalists for now but doesn’t augur well for the rest of us. Nor does the old McLaren.

Encouraged to do something reckless by his billionaire pal Peter Thiel not long after the CNN interview, Musk totaled the car in an accident.

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