Labor of love. It’s the greatest show on earth. Okay, it’s the greatest show on my earth. But let’s take it from the top: back in April Elon Musk, one of the most prolific and successful entrepreneurs in history, purchased a 9% stake in Twitter, the behemothic social media giant presently shaping the national information landscape. What began as an open platform at odds with centralized power had itself become a dangerous tool for censorship on behalf of the One Party State, and following the purchase of Elon’s stake it was immediately obvious the Billionaire Shitposting God of Silicon Valley intended to shift the platform back to a position of neutrality. The media class, broadly in favor of political censorship, considered the prospect of less political censorship an act of war. Thousands of pieces were written. In the weeks that followed, Elon’s stake evolved into a Twitter board seat, followed by a bid to purchase the company outright, before the deal finally and dramatically — it seemed — collapsed.

Elon argued Twitter lied about its bot problem, Twitter argued this wasn’t true and also if it was it didn’t matter. A few pages later, the company that only moments prior did everything in its power to prevent Elon’s takeover was now suing the man to force the sale. Months of legal Hell followed, a trove of Elon’s text messages were subpoenaed, and last week a slice of the man’s private life was delivered to the public discourse. But while Elon’s behind-the-scenes strategy was characterized by the press as capricious buffoonery, emboldened by a clown car cabal of dumb money, an honest look at his texts paints a far more thoughtful story. It also foreshadows the most recent development in this probably once-in-a-lifetime tech industry telenovela: Monday night, Elon submitted a letter with the SEC confirming he planned to buy the company at the original price proposed. Tuesday afternoon, Twitter accepted the deal.

It now seems — once again SEEMS — Elon Musk is about to own Twitter. Unless this is an elaborate stalling tactic, which, I mean… I’m not going to lie to you and say that isn’t possible.

*rips cigarette*

But back to these idiot writers, who were only days ago celebrating the demise of this deal.

After Elon’s select texts went public, Charlie Warzel produced a story that first shaped the public’s perspective on the matter in a piece predictably titled “Elon Musk’s Texts Shatter the Myth of the Tech Genius.” Here, the case was artfully made Elon is an idiot because 1) the man sees no contradiction in removing spam from Twitter while allowing real people to share their unpopular political opinions (???), 2) he briefly considered some potential role for blockchain on the platform (???), and most importantly 3) goofy people sometimes text him.

This final point — not Elon texting, but other people texting Elon — comprised most of the media’s focus. From VICE, the world’s “rich and famous” were groveling. From the Washington Post, it was “a who’s who of Silicon Valley” begging for a fraud’s attention. Such stories were then awkwardly cited as evidence of Elon’s folly. But the first and most obvious problem here is people who text Elon are not Elon, no matter how badly a failed Substack writer wishes it the case. Then, who are we even talking about? The source material from which this narrative is woven consists almost entirely of a few texts, out of hundreds, and from a single acquaintance: Jason Calacanis, a popular podcaster who — you may have heard — once invested in Uber.

Now, it’s true Jason texted Elon somewhat cringey things like “Day zero” and “Sharpen your blades boys” and “You know I’m ride or die brother — I’d jump on a grenade for you.” Though it’s unclear how this is shocking, given this is also how the man speaks in public? Jason further shared a few product suggestions (some of them good!), and an earnest admission of his dream to run Twitter. A few other people texted dumb things. At one point, Marc Benioff offered to share his thoughts on the groundbreaking notion Twitter could be a digital town square, which Elon curtly rebuffed. Then, amidst the awkward texts, several venture capitalists expressed perfectly reasonable interest in investing, and this is sort of it. This is sort of all the evidence used to construct the fiction of Elon’s ‘wild and crazy’ cacophony of reckless, embarrassing texts.

The latter funding portion of the communications — after Elon decided to take Twitter private, and began to field messages from acquaintances and investors eager to participate — did attract some good faith skepticism. While Dan Primack would later join his friends in the press, tweeting several stupid things on the broader subject, his criticism here, while misguided, did not strike me as malicious:

But while I can’t speak to the specific thinking of folks like Marc Andreessen, I can understand why a venture capitalist might not have required a spreadsheet of financials from a publicly-traded company, the financials of which are publicly available. In terms of strategy, Elon has publicly and consistently stated his intention to keep the platform free (in the political sense), tackle the spam problem, and give us the goddamn edit button. It’s true, no one seems to have asked the man for a pitch deck. But I find it surprising so many reporters find it surprising that a lifelong serial entrepreneur with three industry-redefining companies under his belt, a multi-billion dollar war chest, and unmatched clout among top-tier talent would inspire confidence. A bet on Twitter is absolutely still a risk, even with Elon’s involvement, but risk is the business of venture. What exactly do you think you’re writing about?

The most interesting story here is, predictably, what’s been ignored. I read the texts. Largely what I saw from Elon, his acquaintances, Twitter’s board, and Jack Dorsey, the architect and former CEO of Twitter — weeks before the funding conversation — was a mix of thoughtful commentary on the importance of free speech, with a couple allusions (I believe) to BlueSky, the decentralized social media protocol Jack has spoken about for years. The early relationship between Twitter’s current CEO Parag Agrawal, Elon, and Jack appeared to be collaborative, and the board seemed to be useless. Elon was perhaps more hopeful the company could be reformed as it stood, while Jack believed a decentralized approach was the only way forward, but values were aligned. That this initial spirit of collaboration on a clearly ideological mission would so thoroughly evade the public record is strange, but stranger still is the suggestion these texts comprise anything more than a rough sketch of history.

Throughout the messages there are many obvious allusions to phone calls and meetings of which we have no public record. Early on, while Elon still maintained what seemed a positive relationship with Twitter’s board, there were several allusions to meetings in person. There seems to have been a call, or calls, with Parag, in which the company’s codebase was discussed, and there were further requests from Elon to speak to the team’s engineers. From where I’m sitting, it looks like this request annoyed Parag — an engineer himself, perhaps insulted by the implication he was just a manager — which possibly fueled his later decision to send a paragraph-long text reprimanding Elon for a tweet. Elon’s response, now famously, was “what did you get done this week?” Then he said he’d be taking the company private.

Critically, and for some reason barely reported, the text messages do address the thinking behind the need for actually taking Twitter private. It wasn’t ego, or Twitter’s woke employees, or some petulant irritation with Parag, though that relationship obviously did sour. While Elon didn’t seem to know the extent of the bot problem, and perhaps felt stonewalled by Parag on that front, the bots were a significant focus. They had to be eliminated. But “purging fake users,” while critical, “will make the numbers look terrible.” The stock would crash. The only way to protect the company while they fixed it was for Elon to take it off the market.

There’s nothing but hints of strategy here, friends cheering the efforts on, and holes in the timeline presumably filled by meetings and calls. Ah yes, and similar focus, none of which is here accounted for, on at least four separate companies.

What a MORON.

I was reluctant to cover these texts. Elon isn’t a politician or a criminal. He’s a private citizen, and this all feels a bit invasive. But the messages are public now, they’ve been grossly mischaracterized, and this is the sort of media malfeasance that honestly just annoys me — not only for the distorted picture painted, but for the failure to present reality.

Elon’s question to Parag pertaining to the CEO’s weekly priorities appears to be the question by which he himself lives. Is he technically a genius? I don’t have an answer to that question. But in the world of business no one really measures men by such abstractions as “smart” according to Brooklyn-based censorship enthusiasts only. There is the somewhat cynical question of “how much money have you made” — Elon has made literally the most — and the tech industry’s cut on the question, which is “what have you built” — Elon has built a platform for finance, the most valuable automobile company in the world, and a literal rocket ship factory. In between shitposts and updates on his global satellite network, he is also now presently speaking cryptically about his possible acquisition of one of the most powerful speech platforms in human history.

What did you get done this week?

-SOLANA