5045

How did Musk end up buying Twitter in your universe? In ours, he tried to ignore the contract he’d signed, was sued, and then eventually ended up following through on the deal as originally signed with no concessions. It turns out that choosing to not engage with the process didn’t actually work even for the (then) richest man here on Earth prime.

5046

  1. Be a dick about it, why don’t you?

  2. Yes, “he gets sued at each step” is certainly a possibility. Using the purchase lawsuit as a guide, how long do you think that takes to reach a conclusion?

The whole thing is kind of a fascinating (in an academic sense) but terrifying (from the standpoint of setting precedents) test case.

5047

It seems to me that he’s destroying it on purpose and having fun doing it.
Money means nothing to him, and he can still be quoted in the news after it becomes a right wing cesspool.

5048

Given his erratic behavior as he was forced into honoring the deal he signed and the decline of Tesla stock, I’m not sure I agree with this. I can’t read his mind of course, but the hit to his wealth seems to have troubled him. At least from my view up here in the cheap seats.

5049

Oh, please.

That was a very fast process overall, right? It’s impossible to say just how much delay the attempted shenanigans caused since other things were happening in parallel. But the deal closed in about six months from signing, which is not outlandish for a deal of that size.

But also, does it really matter whether it takes a month or a year to reach a conclusion? Your suggestion seemed to be that Musk could just choose to ignore the legal system. That’s just not how it works. He might have some leverage on the creditors since everyone would prefer to negotiate over going to court, but if he is sued he must engage in the process or lose automatically; and ignoring the court verdict is not an option. Mere inaction on Musk’s part will not mean that things don’t get carried out.

Like, let’s say that their landlord gets them evicted from the office. What would Musk’s option for not engaging with that look like? Just refusing to move out wouldn’t do it, his cooperation is ultimately not needed in that. It’d need to be something active. Hiring a paramilitary force to guard the building and prevent the eviction from proceeding?

5050

Money doesn’t mean anything until you run out of it.

Then it’s all “Do I have your attention now bitch?”

5051

Thinking the law didn’t apply to him and then finding out otherwise was how he got stuck with Twitter in the first place

5052

I mean, I have direct experience of working with vulture capitalists whose main strategy included simply refusing to pay any of the bills and daring people to sue them. Often they get away with it, and often they get away with a discount on the debts a long time after they were due. They find out pretty quickly who they can stiff without really immediately harming the operation. Trump has made a career out of it, so I don’t think it is unreasonable to think it’s something Musk will do.

If Twitter isn’t getting janitorial services anymore, it’s almost certainly because Twitter is refusing to pay the past due service fees and refusing to honor the agreement for ongoing service fees. It’s just one example of many possibilities.

5053

That works great for goods and services already procured that can’t be taken back. Try to repo
the cheese burger I ate yesterday, and try to un-do my taxes last year. Probably less effective for ongoing efforts - rent and ongoing services like taxes next year.

I imagine it would be harder to get major firms to provide services once you are in the headlines for not paying current providers.

5054

Yeah, absolutely. One of the things I found myself doing was telling these finance bro assholes “look, if you don’t pay this particular vendor, they cut off 40% of your revenue stream.”

5055

Step 1: Remove all remote work privileges.
Step 2: Demand that people spend a lot more time in the office in order ‘to hardcore’.
Step 3: Make the office experience worse through cost-cutting measures.

chefkiss

5056

Maybe Elmo is conducting experiments on humans, this one is to see how much shit they’ll put up with before quitting.

It’s being funded by fortune 500’s intently interested in the answer.

5057

I can’t tell if you’re joking, but Facebook used to do that shit constantly.

5058

Yeah, I mean I’m joking / not joking. I was just thinking out loud on how to fund actively causing a dumpster fire at your company you spent 44B on.

5059

I’m sure he doesn’t like the ego damage but at the end of the day he probably curls up in his twitter dungeon and remembers he still has a hundred billion funbucks.

5060

My usage had a spike there for a while but now it’s pretty much dropped to nothing or close to, as it’s clear it’s being taken over by right-wingers and I don’t think notifications are working right, at least not for me.

5061

Two days later, Twitter is sued. This seems very quick, I don’t think lawsuits usually get filed after one missed bill.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-31/twitter-sued-for-nonpayment-of-rent-on-san-francisco-office

But if a counterparty is as distressed as Twitter, and seemingly trying to stiff all of their suppliers, you probably don’t want to wait around too long. Musk really playing 5d chess here, by talking up Twitter’s business problems!

5062

He probably wants to move Twitter to Texas.

5063

Let’s get everyone on Twitter telling Elon he absolutely shouldn’t move it to the Principality of Sealand.

5064

I was thinking North Sentinel Island. No pesky regulations there. Like, none at all!