The “they” who forced him to buy Twitter was the previous management of Twitter, when he attempted to back out of a legally binding agreement to buy Twitter that he had signed.
The “they” who are now criticising him for the way he’s running Twitter, are different people.
Specifically he gave into the inevitable only when he was about to be forced into the discovery phase of a legal action. It's a matter of speculation as to WHY he preferred to pay $44 billion rather than have to truthfully produce documents and depositions under oath, but...
The only thing that forced Musk to buy Twitter was his own bloody-mindedness. The agreement he signed was to protect the value of Twitter as negotiations for its sale proceeded. Musk could have paid a $1B penalty and backed out, but he treated the agreement as a joke and got nailed. Musk is not the victim here.
He bought it in order to rage quit the litigation to enforce his previous contractual commitment to buy Twitter. Nobody forced Elon to do anything. It was an incredibly unwise and impulsive move.
nobody forced him to submit a real, ridiculous offer for twitter when he was clearly not serious
nobody forced him to take direct control of it and proceed to run it into the ground
nobody forced him to do a costly rebrand that added no value and made it look like a porn site
nobody forced him to besmirch his reputation by conducting a scorched earth cull of twitter staff, having numerous public brawls and spats, making him look like a bad leader
nobody forced him to pick a fight with city councils and the owners of buildings he was renting over nonsense, cementing his reputation as erratic, untrustworthy and belligerent
nobody forced him to be repeatedly, vociferously transphobic, to complain bitterly about leftism, or to talk about how pizzagate was real and scare away all the wealthy twitter sponsors
nobody forced him to promote conspiracy theories
nobody forced him to openly court the alt-right
nobody forced him to do anything. He has been messing around and finding out for a while now, and now that he bought his own kool-aid and the stakes are so high that even a skilled team of people managing his numerous, constant screw-ups are not able to help save his image. This man went from seemingly a beloved Tony Stark like figure to a ranting lunatic all of his own accord.
I agree with your conclusion, but it's a natural question. Twitter management and users were not in favor of him owning the place, so why not let him back out? I think the driving answer was money. He paid way more than the company was worth, and there's no way the investors would accept the board turning down the offer.
dave4420|2 years ago
The “they” who are now criticising him for the way he’s running Twitter, are different people.
minimaxir|2 years ago
EA-3167|2 years ago
Finnucane|2 years ago
weare138|2 years ago
3cats-in-a-coat|2 years ago
We gon' nail this son of a gun.
belter|2 years ago
MrGuts|2 years ago
minimaxir|2 years ago
That's not correct: the penalty was only for failure to complete the transaction, Elon still had to go through with it.
Elon tried to create cause to stop the transaction (the weird bot fixation) and eat the penalty but that didn't get to discovery.
Zigurd|2 years ago
3cats-in-a-coat|2 years ago
Alas.
rsynnott|2 years ago
I mean, you’re starting from a false premise; Naughty Old Mr Car was not forced to buy Twitter.
Who is ‘they’ supposed to be here?
superchroma|2 years ago
nobody forced him to take direct control of it and proceed to run it into the ground
nobody forced him to do a costly rebrand that added no value and made it look like a porn site
nobody forced him to besmirch his reputation by conducting a scorched earth cull of twitter staff, having numerous public brawls and spats, making him look like a bad leader
nobody forced him to pick a fight with city councils and the owners of buildings he was renting over nonsense, cementing his reputation as erratic, untrustworthy and belligerent
nobody forced him to be repeatedly, vociferously transphobic, to complain bitterly about leftism, or to talk about how pizzagate was real and scare away all the wealthy twitter sponsors
nobody forced him to promote conspiracy theories
nobody forced him to openly court the alt-right
nobody forced him to do anything. He has been messing around and finding out for a while now, and now that he bought his own kool-aid and the stakes are so high that even a skilled team of people managing his numerous, constant screw-ups are not able to help save his image. This man went from seemingly a beloved Tony Stark like figure to a ranting lunatic all of his own accord.
clouddrover|2 years ago
Musk is an attention seeking narcissist. He is absolutely determined to turn himself into a clown show. He is succeeding.
No one has done this to him. He did it to himself.
weare138|2 years ago
I hate it when that happens. That's how I got stuck owning MySpace.
sp332|2 years ago