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.
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
how about @rsmccain and Milo and frankly why has Trump decision not been made?
The guy is a former president and running for president, this is a no-brainer
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 Piècederésistancethe 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
The St. Louis Cardinals were up 2-0 in the top of the 9th of game 1 when a graphic came up on the screen saying that the Cardinals had never lost a postseason game when up 2-0 in the ninth. The Phillies ended up scoring 6 runs winning the game and the series.
Yesterday the Astros were up 5-0 going into the 4th when on the screen came a graphic saying the Houston Astros have never lost a postseason game when up by five. The Phillies tied the game by the 5th and won in extra innings.
As Yogi Berra said, “It ain’t over till it’s over”.
As of yesterday Justin Verlander who got a no-decision in yesterday’s game is 0-7 in World Series play and holds the highest ERA of pitchers with more than 30 innings pitched in World Series history.
I find that rather incredible. Verlander is without question a first ballot hall of famer1. He led the league in Wins, ERA WHIP and hits per 9 innings last year With 244 wins he has an actual chance of getting to the 300 win mark and if you watch him pitch over the years the person who most comes to mind in terms of style is Curt Schilling. Throws strikes and strikes out a ton of guys, walks very few but on the down side gives up HR’s and doubles on occasion to guys who can make contact.
Yet Schilling is legendary in World Series 4-1 with two more rings (3) than Verlander (1).
Given the similarity of stuff, style and grit I just can’t see how Verlander and Schilling produce such different results in World Series play.
Of course if Hoston wins this series nobody will be talking about or worrying about Verlander’s series stats except Verlander.
1Subject of course to having acceptable political beliefs in the eyes of the liberal sports media
How DARE Tom Brady decide to honor his contract and all those fans who bought season tickets to watch him play this year! No wonder his wife left him!
Gisele will of course land on her feet. She’s much richer than him and will have no shortage of a choice of rich accomplished men who will want her to choose from.
That she would break up their family over a season of football when Brady had stated that he would be playing through age 45 for years and for which he had a contract to play, is to me a narcissism on a huge scale. Would it really have been that hard to wait three more months?
This goes to show that wealth and fame does not guarantee happiness.
It’s day three of the Musk Era on Twitter and if you want to see the difference in real terms here it is explained in one tweet:
Update Free Twitter:
I've now gained 60,000 followers today since @elonmusk replied to me this morning.
FYI – Elon replied to me two other times in the past and I barely got a follower bounce. So that’s not it.
I’ve never got beyond 3500+ followers myself despite questioning Trump at press conferences and long interviews with Ted Cruz and some serious coverage of presidential campaigns and given that the blog is not of the scale it once was I likely will never reach the numbers other have but I’ve always presumed that was on me.
A lot of people think the return of Donald Trump to Twitter will be the sign that the era of censorship will be done. The moment I’m waiting for is different.
I use tweetdeck and because I follow Stacy McCain so closely I kept a column of his tweets up. On the day he was suspended the error messages: User has been suspended came up.
Stacy had 80,000+ followers at the time and his blog is his primary source of income. This was a direct attack on a conservative with six children’s ability to support his family by a bunch of leftist apparatchiks out to crush dissent and was the herald of what cumulated in the banning of Trump
Rather than remove the @rsmccain column I’ve left it there all those years and every time I open tweetdeck the “User has been suspended” message has come up and it refreshes several times an hour while I’m on the page.
When that column is populated again then I’ll know that free speech has returned to twitter.
The full statement is available at Glenn’s site here.
I’m wondering if someone at Twitter in a last act of defiance will “accidently” lose all Trump’s old tweets so the account will have to start fresh. I’m sure it will be an accident.
What will be really funny will be the reactions on twitter, particularly if he’s back up before Monday.
In a post earlier today I talked about how corruption has a lot to do with the failures of Russia in their War vs Ukraine and also how the media protecting them helped preserve this corruption.
Don Surber is a retired newspaperman who writes a very good blog at donsurber.blogspot.com and has for a lot of years. A few days back he wrote a good, but not all that provocative post about the corruption at the FBI. A couple of days ago in his daily update of the news closed with this:
FINALLY, I received this email from Blogger.com:
“Your post titled ‘How to end the FBI’ has been deleted.” No reason. No rhyme. No appeal. Just deleted. The email cited community standards but the community has no say in what those standards are, so they are by definition not community standards.
This tells me that none of this is happening in a vacuum and that it will either end it a collapse of this corruption or a collapse of our freedoms.
If anything confirms the need for this novena, confirms the choice of St. Matthew as the best patron for it.
So let’s go out on a high note of prayer.
St. Matthew Novena - Day 9
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
Dear Lord, we thank You for giving us St. Matthew as an example of holiness. Help us to imitate the devotion to You he showed in his years of service to Your Church.
St. Matthew, you were called by Jesus to leave behind your old life as a tax collector and follow Him. After this, you devoted the rest of your life to following and serving Him.
Please bring my petitions before Christ Whom you served so faithfully!
You wrote of Jesus’ life and ministry in your Gospel so that others could come to know Him. You devoted the rest of your life to preaching the Good News and helping to establish the Church.
Pray for me, that I may be as faithful a servant of God and His Church as you were. Pray that I may always be eager to put my gifts to use serving God.
Please also pray for the FBI agents involved in the arrest of Mark Houck.
St. Matthew, pray for us!
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
Read more at: https://www.praymorenovenas.com/st-matthew-novena
Da Techguy's (no longer backup) Blog 