Elon Musk mocks and blocks his own supporters amid block feature battle
An increasingly impulsive Elon Musk decides to end X's block feature on one of his many whims
Aux News Elon Musk
Does Elon Musk have a strategy for X (née Twitter) beyond simply having piss-poor impulse control? That’s the question we’ve all been asking ourselves for almost a year now, and the best answer still seems to be “no.” Here’s the billionaire’s latest innovation for the platform: “Block is going to be deleted as a ‘feature’, except for DMs,” he announced in the replies of a post from user “Tesla Owners Silicon Valley.”
Never mind that, as a community note on Musk’s post points out, getting rid of the block feature would put X in violation of Apple’s App Store and the Google Play Store’s policies. Never mind, even, that some of Musk’s biggest supporters are against the move. When conservative commentator Matt Walsh posted that it was “not a good idea,” Musk insisted that the new version of the feature “will be better. Watch.” Actor James Woods, who “once championed” Musk (in his own words), also posted supporting the block feature, writing, “The man I thought was a defender of free speech is just another greedy capitalist. Disappointing, but not surprising.” Musk responded to Woods’ opinion with a snarky “Then delete your account.” And conservative poster “Catturd,” with whom Musk used to be friendly online, was simply blocked after voicing their dissent over getting rid of blocking.
“Pretty fun blocking people who complain that blocking is going away,” Musk posted on Sunday. “How does the medicine taste?”
It never ceases to thrill that one of the world’s largest social media platforms responds to critics like a middle schooler on the playground. Meanwhile, Linda Yaccarino, the adult in the room/adult to throw under the bus/X CEO, responded to similar concerns from anti-bullying activist Monica Lewinsky by writing, “Our users’ safety on X is our number one priority. And we’re building something better than the current state of block and mute. Please keep the feedback coming.” (Rest assured, poor Catturd decried the difference between “The response you get from X if you’re a liberal and want to keep the block feature … vs … the response you get from X if you’re a conservative and say the exact same thing.”)
Yaccarino is probably getting used to following Musk around, putting out his fires, and the trend certainly doesn’t appear to be declining any time soon. In fact, according to a New Yorker profile of the mogul from Ronan Farrow, Musk’s increased use of ketamine, “alongside his isolation and his increasingly embattled relationship with the press, might contribute to his tendency to make chaotic and impulsive statements and decisions.” One can only imagine what this special brand of leadership might lead to in the future.
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That guy sure is a blockhead.
Great Devo song
It never ceases to thrill that one of the world’s largest social media platforms responds to critics like a middle schooler on the playground. There really is a strong “why are you hitting yourself” energy to his response, especially notable since Elon probably would have been bully in grade school if he wasn’t such weak and awkward knob. Instead, this is the closest he can come to overpowering someone, even as an adult, especially considering his public display of cowardice in challenging Zuck and then slinking away when it escalated.
Wasn’t there the case of Elon’s dad publicly siding with someone who once threw Elon down some stairs at school? Though apparently Elon had made fun of them for their mother dying or something heinous like that first.
So there’s precedent for Elon’s narcissistic belief that he should be allowed to say whatever the hell he wants without consequence.
Yeah, it was the kid’s father who died from suicide.When he heard what had happened, Errol wanted to defend his son.“But I realised Elon overstepped the mark with this little boy. I had to drop it,” he said.https://www.news24.com/fin24/economy/elon-musk-made-hurtful-comment-to-fellow-pupil-who-left-him-hospitalised-father-says-20220602#:~:text=Elon%20responded%2C%20%22'Well%2C,he%20had%20to%20be%20hospitalised.
Absolute monarch of assholes.
Yeah, the victim’s dad had committed suicide, and Elon was teasing him about it. So the kid threw Elon down the stairs.
I am starting to think Elon Musk just says things to get attention. I’ll need copious and breathless updates until I’m really sure.
Just thinking? He’s always been like this. Remember when he called a man a pedo back when that soccer team got trapped in a cave in Thailand?
Like I said, I’m drawing closer and closer to this conclusion. Just need some more evidence, relentlessly and inescapably.
Don’t worry, some of us got it.
I distinctly remember that as the moment I went from, “My feelings about this famous human being are completely neutral” to “Christ, what an asshole.”
Same. Exact same.
Surely it was immediately before that when he managed to drum up an awful lot of self-serving media coverage for building an unwanted and really fucking stupid airtight metal coffin that was very, very obviously unsuitable for the problem at hand. The expert cave diver pointing out exactly how moronic it was and being called a paedo in response was just the icing on the cake.
Not really. I think the first time I heard he was drumming up attention by offering to build that sub was an article giving context for why he called a cave diver a paedo, but it did fuel my conclusion that he was quite an asshole.Surely I would have forgotten about it by now, but he decided to just plunge headfirst into becoming a full-time media-hungry asshole.
Still truly outrageous to me that the guy he said that to wasn’t able to successfully sue Musk for defamation. It was overtly, obviously defamation. Musk called a guy a pedophile as a complete non-sequitur insult for disagreeing with him about a submarine, then when the guy tried to let it slide as juvenile bullshit, Musk doubled-down with “wow he must really be a pedo if he isn’t suing me!”ABAB. All Billionaires Are Bastards.
That was exactly the ruling (“ ‘Pedophile’ is SO outrageous a slur that it won’t be taken literally or seriously”) that made it safe and cool for MAGA and Q-Anon types to begin tossing around pedophile accusations with abandon, but indeed asking their followers to take it literally and seriously.
Yeah, Musk said it because it’s a shocking way to insult someone. Now, it’s a “plausible” accusation to throw at anybody queer or even pro-queer by rightwing extremists.I genuinely want Dylan Mulvaney to sue Marjorie Taylor Greene for defamation. MTG saying “trans people are groomers” is hideous but nonspecific and thus probably protected speech. But MTG saying “Dylan Mulvaney is a pedophile groomer” is a specific accusation, made maliciously and without merit, targeting an individual. And she (Dylan) has endured constant harassment ever since.If I widely and publicly accused a random neighbor of, like, being a rapist – like, posted flyers around town with his photo and the text “Guy Neighborman is a violent rapist!” – he’d be very justified to sue me for defamation. Imagine if I was a sitting congressperson with 800k+ followers.
“It was overtly, obviously defamation.”It’s not defamation if all reasonable people know he’s full of shit.
I unironically agree. The saga of this guy shooting himself in the feet over and over and continuing to reload the gun is entertaining. And after all, I have to keep up with it somewhere. I’m not on Twitter X. *ba dum tsssh*
Advertisers don’t want users blocking their companies.
Lol advertisers. That ship sailed months ago, one-joke.
Yep. Turns out that advertisers want a leader/owner who is stable, and who won’t render an entire platform nigh unusable in a fit of pique. Like, multiple times a week.
Actually the Nazi is right. But that is because the only advertisers left on Twitter are penis enlargement treatments and shady Chinese sale sites even more grifty then Temu
But advertisers ALSO don’t want the vast majority of the userbase being cutoff from the platform when Apple & Android automatically delist the app for violating their ToS.
The only “advertisers” left are all shit spam.
That Catturd regards himself as “a conservative” — and the media supports it — goes a long way to explaining how political discourse in our country has gotten so fucked.
‘Both sides’ is bad enough but the media’s ‘any crazy asshole who says they’re political should be treated equally’ is really just dumb as hell. That’s what happens when huge corporations run the vast majority of media outlets.
60 Minutes aired a segment last night about a January 6th rioter who, for a lot of different reasons, has become the scapegoat for a lot of conservative conspiracy nuts who are still convinced the whole thing was orchestrated by the deep state. The entire time I was like why am I supposed to feel sorry for a proud member of the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party after the leopards ate his face? They also failed to ask the guy who won the 2020 election. It was just pathetic.
Yep, when the main objective is to get eyeballs on the screen because of ad bucks, the journalism becomes pathetic.
Catturd also can’t seem to understand that one person— the, as the article says “CEO / adult in the room”— replied to the ‘liberal’ (Lewinsky), and a different person— the stunted man-child who doesn’t think about a decision beyond smirking about it— responded to them, and that therefore the responses may be different in scale and type. Catturd doesn’t seem too bright.
“Catturd doesn’t seem too bright.”I think that’s an advantage when it comes to being a famous right-winger on Twitter. The most shocking thing when the world met the person behind Libs of TikTok is just how dull she is.
Also…. that they go by “Catturd” on Xwitter is another clue.
He is though. The median “conservative” these days is a piece of shit.
He’s just so petty & stupid.
Musk responded to Woods’ opinion with a snarky “Then delete your account.”Huh. Musk and I finally agree on something.
Weird that a guy doing Ketamine would be getting into a fight with cat feces.
I’m sitting here trying to reconcile Elon saying that the block feature isn’t useful and is being deleted with him then blocking anyone who says he shouldn’t do that. I think I just had a stroke.
Conservative> Insane hypocrite> Allowed to be so by society at large.I think I solved it for you.
At least with catturd, he’s using it as a “Gotcha!” moment. Like you must feel so bad to be blocked that now you’re going to want them to do away with the feature.
The really odd thing is that he considers this “medicine” for the people being blocked? Like…he thinks it’s hypocritical for them to *be* blocked? I don’t even get his train of thought there. The train is going the exact opposite of the way it should be going.
Also, once he removes the block feature, those people will be UNblocked (unless he’s going to go galaxy level hypocrite and preserve it just for his account, which I wouldn’t put past him, assuming they can figure that out). So it’ll be open season on him by all the people he hasn’t been wanting to hear from. He’s not going to enjoy that.
What’ll happen is he’ll take away blocking, then bring it back for Blue users.
“Also, once he removes the block feature, those people will be UNblocked”
He only blocked them to annoy them.
How is it possible that you don’t get this?
He’s basically trying to go “SEE?! How do YOU like it?” except when you’re blocked by Musk, it’s not as if you lose anything. In fact, your life improves.
I imagine Elon Musk would also ‘delete block as a feature’ if he ever bought the LEGO corporation.(Which, by the way, heaven forfend…)
The best part about this whole thing is that even as Musk mocks his most loyal sycophants they’ll still continue to lick his boots.Much like Trump and his cult. He hates every last one of them, they know it, and they don’t care.
Y’know who really had it figured out? Tom Anderson, of MySpace. He popularized something, cashed out, fucked off, and is enjoying a life of photography and living off of an enormous sum of money.What’s ol’ Tom *not* doing? Running around being a fucking try hard, mugging for attention like a particularly rich toddler.Dude is not well.
I was myspace friends with that guy!
Tom was really ahead of the curve with that “parasocial relationship” thing!
I’m still friends with Tom. He just doesn’t know it!
Tom was in my Top 8.
Prove you’re a twit, continue using Twitter. You’ve got no one to blame but yourself.
Such a child.
“The man I thought was a defender of free speech is just another greedy capitalist.” LOL
Surprising that there isn’t more chatter around the fact that a prominent reporter thinks Musk is in a huge k-hole, and that’s why he’s acting so nuts.
A k-hole only lasts for 20-40 minutes, is intensely enjoyable, and can open up previously calcified neural pathways. If anything Muskrat should do more of it
Sometimes I like to pretend that this is some Banksy-level shit musk is pulling, showing how fucking pointless CEOs are and how we should really be working to eliminate people like him from society. But a second later I snap back to reality and remember that, no, elon is just a loser who would be considered dangerous if he wasn’t so incompetent.Also, I feel compelled to state that Yaccarino is not the adult in the room. She is the ivanka to musk’s donald, in that she goes around saying what people kind of want to hear to soften musks edges, even though everyone knows that musk is gonna do whatever he wants. She is an enabler getting rich off musk and the salary is well worth having to force a smile and sell musk’s pile of bullshit as a hill of gold. And given musk’s breeding fetish, there’s a good chance he wants to fuck her too.
“the Ivana to Musk’s Donald”Shit is that right on the money. Musk just threw Yaccarino a mountain of money to be his public doormat.
Fascists, always so obsessed with breeding.
“getting rich off musk”There’s a non-zero chance she’ll be suing for back wages before the year is out.
Weirdo cult leader acting like a bully, while doing everything he can to ruin a business. What is Trump doing now? Wait, it’s Musk? I didn’t think we needed more than one of this kind of idiot.
“The response you get from X if you’re a liberal and want to keep the
block feature … vs … the response you get from X if you’re a
conservative and say the exact same thing.”Is Catturd trying to claim that Muskrat is biased against conservatives? Because that’s just hilariously, stupidly wrong.P.S. A glitch (supposedly) deleted every picture uploaded to Twitter prior to 2014. Elon might not even need to remove the block feature, it might just break down on its own.
There’s this weird belief that if you’re in Silicon Valley somehow you’re always ultra-mega-super-left.Peter Thiel alone disproves that theory, but here we are.
Ro Khanna is the best evidence of it. Dude is nominally a Democrat but unseated an actual Dem when all of the Peter Thiel types funded his primary campaign.
In my experience they’re primarily Libertarian. The most hilarious political party.
Ah, Libertarianism: the political stance of the (wo)manchild. For those who are still angry that Daddy didn’t let you go to Gathering Of The Juggaloes when you were 14. Which for some reason is considered leftist (by idiots), because some of the dudes fuck other dudes and smoke weed – but hey, just ignore the shit about them declaring taxes immoral or donating to right-wing thunk tanks and PACs, or weirdly racist statements, or endorsing serfdom…
I like Elon Musk. Everyone needs to get along and come together. We are wasting a lot of time bickering and trying to paint people in a bad light. We are all imperfect people who just want to love and be loved. We should unite and focus on that and really getting out in the world together to fix things and create a better future for the generations to come. We certainly need to come together more in person as a community, and share with each other instead of being online trying to do this. This is fading away, sharing in-person, and we need to breathe new life into it to restore our community. We need each other, not our phones. We need to see each other smile, instead of online text.
Wait, since when was James Woods been concerned about “greedy capitalists”? Only thing more likely to lure that pos into a cardboard box than M&Ms is the invisible hand of the market doing some ‘come hither’ shit
Well, since it mildly inconvenienced him.
Came here to say this. Since when do right-wingers complain about capitalist greed? Seriously, what the heck is going on?
When capitalist greed negatively affects them, duh.
The true mark is the one that thinks they are in on the con.
This guy is the richest person on the planet. The longer I think about that, the more I start to think “Fuck it, we had a good run… just have Skynet eat us all ready and get it over with.”
The Ronan Farrow article (passingly referenced in this avclub digest) is really harrowing. The Pentagon is paying Musk undisclosed amounts to supply Ukraine with internet, even though he has a direct line to Putin. NASA is contracting all of their space flights to Space-X. He has so much control over e-car charging stations that the Biden administration had to negotiate terms of infrastructure development with him. I can laugh at his Twitter shit, but the war profiteering is a different thing.
Great. Now I’m depressed and terrified.
Homo sapiens was a mistake. We should have never come down from the trees.
Fairly certain Musk’s increased use of ketamine is literally just to keep his mouth loose.
Folks – just leave Twitter, I mean X. I did the moment Elon took over, and it was such a wonderful decision.Advertisers have been fleeing the platformContinually declining user baseCrazy f*cking owner.Just leave. End the addicition.
This is the way.
“Yaccarino is probably getting used to following Musk around, putting out his fires, and the trend certainly doesn’t appear to be declining any time soon.”I know her compensation is probably astronomical, and she likely just made double my year’s salary in the time it took to finish typing this, but she still deserves a raise.
I hope she demanded her pay up front.