I really think it’s kind of unimportant. Elon is the richest man in the world. There is quite literally no way for him to ever not be rich. He decided to target what turns out to be over half the country to use his social media platform, and it will now, even more than before, become a central communications tool for the hard right and incredibly politically important. That’s valuable and, in this case, dangerous. You know how people use to talk about how important Twitter was for organizing and political dissent? The Arab Spring? Occupy? Well, it works both ways.
Swifties leaving X is the most unimportant thing I’ve read in a while, and I’m on Lemmy. SpaceX is still the most important space program in the world and NASA is now utterly reliant on them. Tesla, even after the mass exodus of liberal consumers, is still one of the top 5 auto companies in net profit. Elon is still the richest man on the planet and is about to get a high-powered position in the federal government.
But the swifties left, so. You know. Great.
Network effects matter a lot for social media. You need people on a platform for people to use it
Every erosion of a platform’s users will matter. Platforms often die by a thoudand cuts. It doesn’t have to be a single death blow
Musk cares what people say and think about him. And he cares if you use his products.
So that’s where you hit him.
No he doesn’t. At least not the way you think he does. He gets enormous amounts of money from the government. Our tax dollars. He doesn’t need you to buy his products or like him. Also, he could lose 99% of his money and still be a multi-billionaire. He’d still be one of the richest men in the world. OP is right, it’s literally impossible for him to go broke.
There is quite literally no way for him to ever not be rich.
He could be dead.
Taylor Swift Mockingjay arc?
Swifties leaving X is the most unimportant thing I’ve read in a while, and I’m on Lemmy.
You underestimate the amount of Swifties.
Here’s an indication: https://metro.co.uk/2024/06/06/many-fans-taylor-swift-20986907/
Numbers from the article if you don’t want to wade through everything:
- 105m monthly Spotify listeners
- 283m Instagram followers
- 32.8m TikTok followers
- 95.2m Xitter followers
- 58.2m adult (18+) swifties in the US
- Napkin math estimate of a billion-ish worldwide fans
Tesla, even after the mass exodus of liberal consumers
This is mostly just online bullshit. It’s a fairy tale that people believe because they want to believe Musk can fail. Go drive around West Hollywood, which is one of the most liberal cities in the USA, and count the Cybertrucks. You wouldn’t be able to count to 20 before you got 2 blocks if there was a mass boycott of Tesla by liberals.
Tesla sales dropped in the first two quarters of this year for the first time in the company’s history, by ~10% and another 5% respectively. And this doesn’t specifically breakout the new red-hat purchasers for whom Elon is the new god-king that replaced some of those liberal consumers.
Every cybertruck owner I’ve talked with and/or seen was clearly a Trumpet. Two of the ones I’ve seen even had Trump stickers and one had one of those American flags on a pole on it. Admittedly (and thankfully) I do not live in California. Nevertheless, the net effect of Elon’s mask-removal has negatively affected sales, specifically because the almost exclusively liberal, college-educated, upper-middle-class purchaser that was the company’s main consumer is declining.
Nevertheless, my point wasn’t that it is somehow going to bankrupt Tesla. My point was the exact opposite: all this stupid shit – “liberals are boycotting tesla!” “Swifties are boycotting X!” “Engineers are boycotting SpaceX!” – does not actually affect anything enough to be worthy of celebration.
