BF2S Forums DAST Chat

uziq wrote:

yes but STEM megabrains tend to rally around/behind oligarchs.

convo yesterday:

them: "how IS twitter doing?"
me: "massive losses in value and ad revenue since musk took over"
them: "and yet he's winning."

why the hell even ask someone something like that if you've already decided he's won before the conversation even takes place? the fact that these (otherwise intelligent, even!) people keep looking for validation for trump, musk, etc. all selectively-credulous and doe-eyed is super freaky and deeply saddening to me. it's like they're trapped in a dreamlike state and there's nothing you can do to help.

hundreds of millions into trump, and given headship of a fake department as a reward. "masterful gambit, sir," as they say. people have bumper stickers for their teslas saying stuff like, "I bought mine before I knew he was an asshole." widely panned for stuff like nazi pandering, driving his kid away, sucking all the energy out of companies, faking everything from credentials, to video game profiles when he failed to stat pad his engineering. the only thing he's "won" is the generational wealth lottery.

tl;dr

i may have mentioned at one point that one guy was gushing like a fanboy over having gotten a private message from a "musk" account and all the possible money to be made. very dubious story there, and may have resulted in a trailer-bound, chronically ill, jarringly homophobic senior getting scammed.

people still have me (and others in my circles) pegged as conservative-sympathetic. they'll rattle off some horrible joke or hot take and then look at me (or others) as if fully expecting agreement, and then fumble for words when we react like they just suggested kicking puppies.

uziq wrote:

god bless government by scientists and engineers.

"we have no impact in this. the earth's environment has always changed."

musk is winning in the sense that he took a bunch of saudi investment fund money (and numerous others') and purchased himself a mouthpiece that arguably turned an election. it curried favour with trump so that he's (for now) part of the inner sanctum of the white house. that sort of influence and power is probably worth a couple dozen billion -- lord knows enough billionaires have been funding superpacs and lobby groups and whatever else to advertise for their own interests by spending similar sums of money. musk, in a very late-19 century press baron kind of way, identified the channels/networks of communications as the locus of real power. that's canny. i won't say smart, but he obviously recognised the power of apps like twitter in our new demagogic-populist present.

trump was banned from twitter before musk's takeover, sent off to his own reservation to talk to the MAGA echo chamber. musk has ruined twitter as a social network, but as a thinly veiled propaganda tool i guess he is 'winning'. he's in the white house. i doubt he actually cares as to whether twitter itself is a profitable business, or whether the numbers of bots is going up or genuine engagement going down. he couldn't give a shit. beyond the politics, it's an egoistic plush-toy for him with which to validate his own feelings and have all his jokes laughed at.

one thing i do find interesting to think about vis-a-vis the '21st century social media press baron' angle is whether or not musk is, in a way, getting high on his own supply. while there were some capital-grade motherfuckers in the history of press barons, right up to the contemporary examples like rupert murdoch and the barclay brothers, it's pretty clear they were always distanced from a lot of the rubbish distributed using their press organs while furthering other aims. musk seems to have in effect been groomed and become radicalised by his own algorithms. a very odd spectacle.

whether it will last or achieve any worthwhile aims of his, we shall have to wait and see. it's just as foreseeable that in the next 4 years his increasingly erratic behaviour will all blow up in his face, and he'll be left with nothing, a weirdo with fascist inclinations. well, maybe. perhaps we're in for another decade of the world being led to the precipice by maladjusted dweebs with pet theories about racial replacement. will this pivot to owning a social media network and bandying around with trump do lasting damage to his other business concerns? or will he succeed in using his close ties to the white house to send all of his stocks to mars?

Last edited by uziq (2025-01-30 09:49:57)