531 points
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“If someone is going to try and blackmail me with advertising? Blackmail me with money? Go fuck yourself. Go fuck yourself. Is that clear? Hey Bob, if you’re in the audience. That’s how I feel, don’t advertise.

  • Elon, 2023
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229 points

Careful, you might convince Tesla shareholders to fork over a few more billion to keep the big brained genius motivated.

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88 points

“Give me 60 billions this year, or the Tesla stock will lose even of more of its price next year!” – Elon, probably.

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26 points

That’s pretty much exactly what he claimed.

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51 points

If the market were rational that would have been the end of Tesla. It takes some extreme brainletry to turn a huge market advantage into actively losing ground to new entrants. And he is still at it. Being a dimwitted Nazi on Twitter is his top priority. Tesla sales will continue to spiral down the drain.

(Yes, if the market were rational the end might have come sooner, but certainly giving billions to a brainlet actively sabotaging the company should end it.)

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8 points

Remember he is exceedingly wealthy, so he can buy Tesla stock through third parties to prop the price up without alarming investors. No, it’s not legal, but we all know the man doesn’t give a shit about the law.

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25 points

Go fuck yourself! Is that clear?

Can I have a few billion now too?

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147 points

I think this should be posted as a comment to every article about this.

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18 points

Someone needs to make a drawing of it because when he originally said it he opened his mouth wide and through his head back like was a literal puppet

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2 points

I’m surprised nobody saw his forked lizard tongue when that happened!

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13 points

It’s right there in the 4th paragraph of the article itself.

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9 points

You mean you actually read the article? Blasphemy!

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-42 points
*

What’s it say? Go find yourself? Go Fill yourself? IDK is this some game you Americans have where you have to guess the word, because the amount of pearl clutching is just too insane in America?

Ah yes that’s the amazing freedom of speech Americans are so proud of, except they don’t actually have it, they are just indoctrinated to think so.

My god American regulation is so idiotic sometimes!!!

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51 points

There’s no regulation, we can and do say fuck without any problem. Some people prefer not to swear either for personal, social, or religious reasons. They chose to self censor not because they had to but because they wanted to. You’re reading an awful fucking lot into a random ass image some anonymous user posted in a comment.

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32 points
*

My god American regulation is so idiotic sometimes!!!

Dude, some person made that meme, and that person chose to use asterisks. It’s no more complicated than that.

What’s it say? Go find yourself? Go Fill yourself? IDK is this some game you Americans have where you have to guess the word

Apparently our ability to figure out a word from context is pretty much higher than yours though.

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27 points

What the f*** dude calm down.

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17 points

Welcome to the hypocritical world of Puritan culture.

Some of the earliest British settlers in the US were so extremist that the Church of England kicked them out after they tried to assassinate the king and replace him with a puppet of their own to force their beliefs on the rest of the country.

It was partly these crazies that started the whole sex and bodies=bad and shameful thing in the US that advertisers still believe in today. And swearing is yet another of those weird things. But sex sells, so it’s okay to imply it as long as it’s selling a product and no other time.

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17 points
*

You think that’s bad, get this. In most US states (47), public school students are required by law to recite the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States once per school day, though…for most of those states…students may opt themselves out.

However, in four states (Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania, and Utah), students may not opt themselves out. The school must receive a written statement from a parent or guardian in order to be exempt.

I have taught in Texas public schools since 2005, and I brought this up with an attorney for the teacher organization I joined (not a union as Texas bans collective bargaining for state employees, so our dues are really not much more than lawsuit insurance). He told me that, in the eyes of the state courts, children under the age of eighteen not being yet adults do not enjoy the same right to freedom of speech that adults do. Hence, in the eyes of the courts, a school district would be within their rights to fire a teacher who does not do their part to ensure all students under their purview recite the Pledge during the time it is spoken over the school’s PA system (and the Pledge to the Texas state flag, also mandatory), 1st Amendment be damned.

Thankfully, I got a gig teaching in Oregon next year, so I am heading northwest (through the also miserable states of Utah and Idaho unfortunately) and never looking back.

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16 points

What are you talking about? There is no law or regulation requiring that text to be censored. They did it because they wanted to.

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12 points

You’re reading into things way too much here, man.

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11 points

“For the children “ …. Like none of them have ever heard bad words…. They must be protected at all cost.

Like a person who likes to grab them by the pussy…

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10 points

Swear words? Boobs? Hell nah

Someone getting shot ten times? PG-13

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5 points
*
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1 point

Say stupid things, people treat you like you’re stupid, stupidly cry about how freedom of speech should prevent people from treating you like the idiot you are.

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0 points
Deleted by creator
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0 points

Fuck you, Jack.

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23 points

Musk sheepishly suggested that he didn’t mean “advertisers as a whole.”

“Advertisers have a right to appear next to content that they find compatible with their brands,” he told ad giant WPP CEO Mark Read during an interview on Wednesday. “What is not cool is insisting that there can be no content that they disagree with on the platform.”

How is that “not cool?” I don’t understand how he can possibly object to a company spending their advertising dollars wherever they damn well choose to. He repeatedly makes it clear that he feels entitled to their budgets. There is zero basis for that. I truly cannot fathom how he can be so dense about this.

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7 points

He can object because he’s decided that’s what is right. Literally nothing else matters.

The piece of shit that used to own my company is like this. His decision is correct and gospel, and if you don’t agree or if it’s provably false you are wrong. And it’s your fault you are wrong, because he has decided it to be correct.

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2 points

Right but the bubble of rightness you speak of is usually only assumed to include the company staff. Really powerful CEOs have their board inside the bubble too, or even public investors. But Elon thinks the customers work for him too. That’s really beyond the pale.

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13 points

Wowow! That was so long ago! Literally dozens of weeks ago! I’m sure this full-blown narcissist has seen the error of his ways and changed his mind. Surely.

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8 points

Calling out Bob Iger in particular was the cherry on top.

Massive hubris.

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Yes. Elon should approach his advertisers on bended knee – after changing Twitter back to Twitter, and creating a proper moderation system that filters out neonazis and Russian AI Trump-bots.

Oh, George Washington rode the waves
Abe Lincoln wore his hat with praise
Thomas Jefferson, the sandy king, and
Teddy Roosevelt, the beach-hiking thing
Barrack Obama, surfing gracefully
Historical presidents at the sea!
– @hisvault.eth

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4 points
  • Elon with TSLA stock at 2023 levels, lol
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1 point

This is the most upvotes I’ve seen on a Lemmy post so far… Granted, I’ve only been here a couple days, but still!

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194 points

“I do shoot myself in the foot from time to time, but at least you know it is genuine, not from the PR department,” he admitted.

He’s been brainwashed by his fans if he thinks that somehow makes it better.

Like, authenticy is good for good things, but it makes shitty things even shittier. It’s not a value that’s always good in every context. And the worst thing he could be doing is doubling down on his opinions and policy.

If he left the company is the only way this would help, he wouldn’t even be a fall guy because most of this is entirely his fault

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64 points

Like, authenticy is good for good things, but it makes shitty things even shittier.

sounds like he needs that PR department

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26 points

That’s pretty much how he kept the public image of “eccentric genius” for so many years. I once read an article (can’t remember where, don’t care enough to search) that said that SpaceX had/has a team whose entire purpose was to babysit Musk when he had a temper tantrum. The team formed organically, like a cyst around a foreign object, and minimized damage to PR.

When Twitter was infested, it didn’t have this immunity and now the world (or those of us who care) knows how much of a shithead he is.

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13 points

I’m still trying to figure how anyone (including Musk) ever thought he was a genius? Like ok so he has a lot of money that he throws at interesting problems, and those problems attract actual geniuses to solve, but what has Musk himself ever done except be an employer? It reminds me of all the talk about how Edison was supposed to be a genius, when the reality was that he ran a sweatshop to steal other people’s hard work.

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14 points

That and a set of kneepads.

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4 points

💩

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41 points

Reminds me of the people who say things like “I say it like it is, and most people don’t like it”…not knowing that the reason they don’t have many friends is because they don’t have a filter and don’t think they need one, lol

But this looks like Elon Musk admitting that he’s genuinely an idiot, lol

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30 points

Yeah I robbed that gas station but at least some crime boss didn’t make me do it. It was genuine so you should forgive me

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15 points

Idk, I’d prefer if CEOs were more transparent and why mistakes happened instead of the generic PR nonsense of: “We messed up, and we’re sorry. We’re taking time to review what happened to make sure it never happens again.” That kind of statement only matters if there’s some way for the public to know what happened and verify that it actually won’t happen again.

That’s not what we’re getting from Elon, so screw him, but I just figured I’d point out that this particular broken clock could say something close to what we probably all want.

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3 points

Trouble is, their main job is to game public perception

A transparent, honest CEO would win a lot of people over (although they’d also probably be less likely to ignore the horrible decisions that require apologies)

Just remember - generic PR apologies are an attempt at mimickingv leaders actually taking responsibility for a mistake. The transparency will just become as soulless and corporate as the apologies are now

We need to fix the system to remove the incentive to put heartless demons in positions of power

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8 points

“Shoot oneself in the foot” is a really charitable description of “inviting all the worst Nazis back on to social media and removing fact checking.”

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2 points

Authenticity only works when you don’t jump ships and stay on point. Not for billionaires, tho.

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165 points

I hope they stop. Don’t advertise, If somebody is going to try to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money, go fuck yourself. Go fuck yourself. Is that clear? I hope it is." - Elon Musk, November 27th 2023

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62 points

Advertisers:

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21 points

Advertisers: OK. Call.

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155 points

Literally all he needs to do is shut the fuck up and collect money, and he can’t even manage that.

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58 points
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27 points

Nope, he can’t manage that. Because he’s an attention-whoring malignant narcissist.

I can’t wait for the bubble of mystique to pop on this arsehole, if only so we don’t have to ever hear from or about him again. Sadly, there are still plenty of rubes in his cult of personality and greedy investors willing to ride his coattails. So I’m not holding my breath.

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10 points

Don’t do kids, drugs

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5 points

Doesn’t even have to collect money, he could just sell everything except SpaceX and still live a happy life and fly to Mars one day.

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2 points

If only… That’s the universe I want to live in.

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142 points
  • Tells customers to go fuck themselves
  • They leave
  • They stop paying for advertisement
  • Twitter/X makes no money from advertisement

Elon:

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67 points

That is the clearest I’ve ever seen the surprised Pikachu image.

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29 points

Hey! I wanted to comment that! Seems like it got vectorized 🙊

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9 points

Someone drew it. It’s not a screen cap of digital media.

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13 points

I think someone drew a new one.

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1 point

Someone needs to deep fry it.

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61 points

Don’t forget his total lack of actual ‘prowess’ in running Twitter.

  • changing the name to X
  • Firing employees
  • employees severance issues
  • Reneging on free speech promises
  • Using hidden accounts
  • Unbanning of people who should be banned
  • Killing API access
  • Forcing login to view tweets
  • add your fave Twitter dumpster fire item here
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23 points

You forgot “Tells advertisers to go fuck themselves”

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17 points

Them’s the customers.

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5 points

Well… Fair enough. Ain’t no arguing with that.

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