It's really striking to watch how fast you can hollow something out.
Look, I'm not going to defend Twitter -- the website, the corporation, the idea -- but you don't have to like something to recognise an act of vandalism against it.
I'm genuinely undecided just how much of this is calculated and how much guided by delusional beliefs. To be clear, when I say 'calculated', I don't mean 'thought through with regards to its intended effect', because I really don't think any of it has been. I mean 'done for something other than the stated reason'.
The ultimatum feels like it might fall into this category. For anyone reading this who somehow missed it: Musk sent an email to all staff remaining at Twitter, telling them they had to click a 'yes' button on a Google Form, committing to 'Twitter 2.0' and 'going hardcore mode'. If they didn't... they were out (with apparently three months of severance pay).
There's a lot going on in this. Not least the fact that he gave them less than two days and did this via a bloody Google Form.
It is not a smart or good move. It was on the BBC front page at about 3am that Twitter was closing its offices to all employees until Monday. The football World Cup, apparently a major infrastructure event for Twitter in years past requiring some serious effort to keep the site running, starts this weekend. It seems that the office locked is motivated by the fact that because they made this opt-in, they don't actually know for sure who they need to kick out and who was just on vacation, etc.
Early reports suggest that ~75% of post-layoff employees have chosen not to take that truly tempting offer.
Look, I don't think this is tactical genius or whatever. But I think there's a good chance this is about laundering responsibility. Badly, it must be said, but I still read it as a hedged attempt at that. A way for Musk to shift the blame onto those who just weren't willing to commit to the apparent capitalist good values of abusive overwork for nebulous and possible non-existent reward amid a background of threats and bullying. I think this about image management and saving face (with the certain kind of crowd who don't just laugh about how ludicrous that idea is).
This also tracks with some of his recent messages, for instance celebrating -- celebrating! -- that Twitter has hit another all-time high in terms of user activity.
Well, yeah. But if you think, against all logic, reason, and common sense, that that's being driven by some positive, repeatable force that you can leverage to your advantage...
Well, you might just be Elon Musk.