Elon Musk and Eyes on the Prize

Posted: November 19, 2022 by datechguy in internet/free speech
Tags: ,

Curley: [stops Moe and Larry] Hey! What’s this stuff [Brighto] for anyway?

Larry: Why, it’s a cleaner, ya chump!

Curley: I know, it’s auto polish.

Moe: You boys really wanna know what it’s for?

Larry & Curly [In unison] Yeah!

Moe: It’s for sale, now get busy selling it.

The Three Stooges, Dizzy Doctors 1937

Watching Elon Musk over the last few days reminds me of the early days of Donald Trump’s first run for president in the sense that both of them absolutely know the media left having functioned from inside it and know how to play them like a fiddle.

Twitter as a platform to generate profit has only one commodity, eyeballs and buzz. If you are an advertiser your goal is to get your product in front of as many eyeballs as possible, if you are a person trying to create “buzz” you need to be able to establish yourself as a “credible” source.

Every step Elon Musk has made in the last month is designed to bring one or the other forward.

The pushing of the $8 blue checkmark got everyone talking about blue checkmarks and baited people, particularly people who hate him, to talk and tweet about them.

The ultimatum to the workers, in addition to the weeding out of the useless percentage of his workforce (his own “Golgafrinchan B ark“) not only got a bunch of people on Twitter talking about Twitter to wit:

But got people outside of Twitter, on TV and Radio talking about…Twitter.

And then yesterday came the restoration of three large accounts, the above quoted Babylon Bee (without deleting their Rachel Devine tweet) Gordon Peterson a terror to leftist thought and of course “D” list comedian Kathy Griffin and even while doing so he baited people again and many, including myself took the bait

But while restoring Trump is a no brainer, just doing so doesn’t create the required buzz, the conversation, the tweets and the eyeballs that he is selling so he follows this up with his Pièce de résistance the Trump Poll!

As of this writing (4:14 AM EST Saturday, yeah I woke up coughing again) Seven point nine MILLION people responded to this poll.

This doesn’t count multipliers from the untold number of people who have commented on it, retweeted it, wrote about it etc,

What does all this accomplish? It demonstrates to all the advertisers that the left is trying to pressure to run away from Twitter that Mr. Musk can literally deliver millions of eyeballs almost at will.

Now if you’re trying to repress a particular point of view that’s a bad thing, but if you’re trying to get the word out about a product like Brighto

…that’s just what the Doctor is willing to pay for.

Twitter may not be real life but it produces real eyeballs. Elon doesn’t give a damn if you like him, or hate him or think his buying Twitter is an act of war, he just wants you talking about, writing about and above all TWEETING about his product.

That’s the prize he has his eyes on, anything else is just gravy.

Update: A quick example of this, check out what the Times of India is tweeting about

There’s another million eyeballs half way around the world.

Comments
  1. harryvoyager says:
    November 19, 2022 at 12:01 pm

    And it’s a brilliant B Ark, because if the telephone sanitizers are game to work hard, they’re still around cleaning the phones.

  2. In The Mailbox: 11.21.22 : The Other McCain says:
    November 22, 2022 at 1:30 am

    […] Midrats, also, A Portuguese Man of … Curiosity? Chicago Boyz: A Grand Puzzlement Da Tech Guy: Elon Musk and Eyes on the Prize, So why did Jen Kiggans not make the news?, and Elon Musk Reinstates Trump and accidently […]