Elon Musk announces he’s stepping down as Twitter CEO in June
Tesla's stock price rose after Musk announced that an unnamed female executive will take over CEO duties at Twitter
Aux News Elon Musk
A scant six months after agreeing to abide by a Twitter poll that told him that a majority of respondents would really like him to stop running the social media service (or, at least, stop running it straight into the ground), Elon Musk has finally gotten around to doing that. Well, sort of: Musk announced that he’s hired a new CEO for the company, who’ll be ready to take on the job in about six weeks. So, we’ve all got that to look forward to.
With characteristic game show host vibes, Musk refused to name his candidate, revealing only that the person in question is a woman. Musk, meanwhile, says he’ll move over to focusing solely on technical aspects at the company, rather than trying to set policy. (We will believe this when we see it, and probably not actually then, but it’s at least pleasantly on the public record now.) Meanwhile, Tesla investors appear to have breathed at least a small sigh of relief today, with the company’s stock price jumping up immediately on news that its CEO would no longer be spending quite so much of his day finding ways to troll extremely successful horror authors or whispering the phrase “woke mind virus” into the mirror.
Musk bought Twitter back in October of 2022, after several months of trying very hard not to buy it, at least at the price he’d originally agreed to pay for it. His tenure as the company’s owner and CEO has been, we write in our most neutral voice, eventful, with an enormous number of firings, and a months-long fight over the company’s identify verification system. And also that one poll, which saw 57 percent of respondents asking him to step down. Who says democracy doesn’t work (eventually)?
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The new CEO has gotta be Elizabeth “Call me Liz, now” Holmes. That way, if the justice system ever sees fit to actually make her serve her prison sentence, Musk will be “forced” to step back in to Twitter’s day-to-day operation, since the Woke Mind Virus will have sent his CEO to lockup.
I am genuinely surprised Amy Chozick was able to ask any questions in that NYT puff piece while she was voraciously easting Holmes’ pussy.
Yeah, I wanted to give Chozik the benefit of the doubt that all of her “I am being seduced by the allure of this couple” vacillation was put on to give a relatively lame profile some sort of narrative angle. I’m guessing the original angle was that the profile would end with Holmes reporting for prison, and then her lawyers found one more way to delay that happening. But it’s tremendously annoying to see her present all the defense arguments and family and friend testimonials and never really confront Holmes with the reason she got convicted, no matter how many fingers she pointed at her ex-boyfriend, at her youth, and in every other direction she could imagine: the invention she kept selling people never worked. It doesn’t seem to have ever gotten close to working.I’m sure Holmes will be pregnant again by her next report date, and I hope the system finally has the decency to let her join the thousands of women annually who have their babies behind bars.
It was a classic case of a member of the Media Classes desperately trying to suck up and curry favour with the Capitalist classes.That “seduced by the allure of this couple” would, of course, be incredibly flattering to Holmes. (Nah, they can fuck right off with this “Liz” shit.) Despite all the allegations, the convictions, the fraud, the probable deaths – she can still hold people in her thrall – and tacitly admit that – hahaha! – the whole Theranos thang was just some sort of performance, a part she was forced to play by someone else. I like how Amy noted that she didn’t use her “contralto” voice – no shit, Chozick, you incurious hack: because deliberately trying to play up the Malibu Stacy-esque “Teehee! I’m a just a girl! I like shopping and kittens and babies!” image. I loved the whole “I don’t know why they were so nice to me! I don’t why they asked me to join them for dinner again!” from Chozick?Yeah. If she can’t figure that out she’s too dumb to be a reporter.
I dunno, the way the end of the article is written, I think we’re definitely supposed to believe that Chozik does know why they keep inviting her over, which is why Chozik ultimately declines. But I think the whole deal is just that Chozik thought she’d be the journalist who’d get to be there when Holmes heads down to Texas to finally serve her sentence, which is kind of newsworthy in the sense that Holmes might express remorse or just have a big break in her facade when finally faced with the reality of having to go to prison. And instead, she got a story that didn’t really have an ending, and felt she had to make the story about herself, and Holmes’s attempts to win her over. The whole thing reeks of a journalist trying to create a narrative in order to have something to file, and I have to question if she ever was as close to being won over by Holmes as the story would have us believe.My favorite part of the whole article is the family photo that’s presented: Holmes and her hotel heir baby daddy want to use their kids as props to humanize Holmes, but don’t want their kids’ pictures in public, so you have this super-awkward photo where Holmes and her boyfriend are facing the camera, but their elder kid is facing in the opposite direction, as is the infant, who’s positioned as if she were breast feeding from Holmes, just she’s obviously not. How the hell this piece of crap passed editorial muster at the Times is a sad kind of mystery.
The whole thing reeks of a journalist trying to create a narrative in order to have something to file, and I have to question if she ever was as close to being won over by Holmes as the story would have us believe.Fair point, there is a lot of first draft-style questioning in there, where the writer isn’t sure of where they’re going. Lord knows I’ve been there. But I think we’re both right.
The Holmes exclusive was quite the get for the NYT – it was huge, and they couldn’t very well have published nothing (actually, they could’ve published a piece about how it was all pointless, Holmes was still a useless sphinx with nothing of import to report, which would’ve been better).Amy was gonna get whatever she tapped out published; the scoop of “Hey, we got Holmes before she goes to the chokey! And she’s being interviewed by Amy Chozick, author of Chasing Hilary and executive producer of the upcoming series The Girls On The Bus coming soon to The CW!” is just as big, if not bigger, than…whatever insights the actual article may or may not provide. In other words, it wasn’t so much about finding out about Holmes as the fact that Amy Chozick got to interview Holmes.It borders on autofiction: here is something worth reading because it happened to me. As a result, there’s no angle on the story, at least not a newsworthy one. Holmes is manipulative and this is all a lie! Except it’s not! No, wait, it is! Hang on, it’s not!I guess the narrative is…that there is no narrative? How the hell this piece of crap passed editorial muster at the Times is a sad kind of mystery.A good, straight just journo would never let this shit get into public sphere under their byline. What I think we’re seeing is Chozick continuing her evolution from a journalist reporting news to a public figure whose life is (supposedly) interesting enough for column inches in its own right , hence the self-insert. Would the story be as long? Probably not, but IIRC the piece is about 5500 words already, which is bordering on a novella.It’s a story just as much about how Amy Chozick gets to hang out with (in)famous people as it is about blonde-haired, blue-eyed psychopath exploiting her uterus for pity points.Her editor gently chiding her at the end sounded they were trying to tell Chozick the story was crap, but in a way that wouldn’t piss off their celebrity staffer, rather than putting their foot down and giving her the critique and feedback the piece needed. They needed to ask if Chozick’s personal perspective and experience was worthy enough carry half the piece. so you have this super-awkward photo where Holmes and her boyfriend are facing the camera, but their elder kid is facing in the opposite direction, as is the infant, who’s positioned as if she were breast feeding from Holmes, just she’s obviously not. Hooray for metaphors: the kids themselves are not important; what’s important is that Holmes – sorry, Liz, the mother! The Nurturer! – has kids. The implication that she breastfeeds, but isn’t actually breastfeeding, is perfect. It’s like when Zuck released that Smoking Of Meats video: “I AM GENERATING A PERCEPTION OF PERFORMING HUMAN FUNCTIONS WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF ACCEPTABLE NORMALITY.”The kids are tools. Tools don’t have faces.
My money is on her immediately ditching her kids and partner as soon as her sentence is over: they failed in their function, so no point keeping ‘em around, and I feel truly sorry for them.Also, jesus: imagine call a rape helpline and getting Elizabeth Holmes.
How is he going to musk this up?
Okay… so now, instead of all of the insanity coming straight from Elon, it’ll be done via a proxy. Seems like a win-win for the guy, as he’s now got a bit of a buffer: he can glom onto praise if things go right, and use her as a scapegoat if things go wrong.
I give them five minutes before whatever RWNJ he puts in charges gets sick of his shit.Musk is a notorious micromanager, so he’ll be over their shoulder all the time. And, secondly, right-wing nutjobs are indeed fucking nutjobs, but they do considered themselves adults and rational businesspeople – something Musk fails spectacularly at. So, yeah, I give them about five minutes of putting up with a Musky ordering them “LOL, MAKE IT SO THAT ALL TWEETS CAN ONLY HAVE 69 REPLIES MAX, LOL, BECAUSE 69 IS FUNNY LMAO” before bailing.
What’s the over/under on the new CEO lasting more than a year?
Elonne Musk looks pretty hot.
I….think it moved….
I assume he’s stepping down so he can spend more time tweeting: ‘Hmm,’ and ‘Interesting,’ and ‘🤔’ in response to conspiracy theories and right-wing disinformation.
If a new CEO gets appointed to something no one uses anymore, will it make a sound people still Tweet about it?
Bloggers still use it, so they’ll let everyone else know about it.
Pretty sure it was a blogger that told me no one uses Twitter anymore.
Might even have tweeted about it.
I hope all the former bloggers now on Twitter migrate back to WordPress (unfortunately Blogspot isn’t what it used to be, although admittedly WordPress’ block system is annoying). I’m glad Substack has led to a quasi revival of blogs, but while it’s better than Twitter (whose displacement of blogs is quite an example of Richard Gabriel’s worse-is-better), it’s strikingly inferior to the blogging platforms we already had.
He’s just bored with it and looking for something new to fuck up…er…”disrupt.”
Part of me wants him to become the GOP’s biggest donor, just to see how badly he could fuck it up.Most of me is aware of how insane that sounds.
I feel like it’s going to be Grimes. Or maybe just the AI voice of Grimes.
This is good news. It’s not a coincidence that Musk’s most well-run company (SpaceX) is the one where he put a really capable person (Gwynne Shotwell) in charge of operations and then stayed focused on promotion, production development, and “big picture” planning. IIRC he’s doing the same thing for Tesla (recruiting the guy who ran Tesla’s division in China), and it would be good for Twitter if he did likewise.
“I assume she has a name, but as she is a woman, I haven’t bothered to learn it.” – Elon Musk
“I am the alpha in this business relationship.”
Wait, so Tesla stock went UP when investors heard Musk potentially might be able to start playing a more direct role in the company again?
I think it was the mistaken impression that this will mean less of Musk showing his rightwing nutbag ass on Twitter, as if the reason he was doing that was because of his duties as Twitter CEO, rather than simply being a relentless attention whore. Hiring someone else to make it look like Twitter is a professional operation again will just give Musk more time to steal people’s memes and say “Interesting…” to antisemitic conspiracy theories.
Running into some legal trouble you no longer want to handle, eh Mr. Musk?
LOL total market manipulation.
He announced the new CEO is Linda Yaccarino:
hes a great guy, I want him to own as much as possible,