IBM pulls X ads as Elon Musk endorses white pride

Absolutely shocked that the South African oligarch/gamer is a white supremacist.
- He’s not a gamer just wants the incel cred
  
  His desperation to impress a bunch of dweebs on the internet is as bizarre as it is pathetic.
- I feel like this is an example of the dangers of surrounding yourself with a monoculture. Maybe Elon was always exactly this way, but he was seemingly previously tempered by the notably distinct moderation policies at Twitter. Once he owned it and stripped that moderation, there's nothing holding the pendulum anymore and he swings pretty far the other direction.
  
  Maybe he was always this way and not public about it, but things changed for the worse right around when his trans daughter came out.
  Between that and covid I think he went down a rabbit hole further entrenching things and turned into a MAGA type as that rabbit hole does to those that go down it.
  And now he won't even listen when his brother and the chair of the board of Tesla tells him he's hurting the brand.
  Edit: just to clarify, "the woke mind virus" is what thinks took his daughter away, and now he is hellbent on destroying it, not realizing it's him who's been infected by hate and bigotry
  
  So once he wouldn't get in trouble for openly being a bigot, he openly became a bigot?
  He owes his entire life to apartheid and slavery in all senses that matter. And even when he was everyone's hero and a real life Tony Stark, he threw a temper tantrum when divers chose to rescue children and not stroke his ego. To the point he accused one of the divers of pedophilia, ran an investigation, and used a team of lawyers to protect himself from any consequences.
  Musk has always been a dipshit
  
  And why democracy is important as a form of error correction. People can have their opinions, and inevitably we all get things wrong (magnitude of things we get wrong varies a lot). But when someone has a large concentration of power we all have to deal with the fallout from their malfunction. Companies the size and import of Twitter, Facebook, Reddit should be democratically controlled, some kind of cooperative.
  
  I can't tell which is the bigger influence but he has certainly gone down the right wing rabbit hole and also insulated himself from all critique as a billionaire who has everyone he talks to regularly on his payroll or otherwise benefitting from him. A bad mix.
- Also the part where his parents ran an emerald mine there.
  
  Zambia. That's where the mine was.
- There are days I wait for it, but I imagine one of these days the top is going to pop on South Africa and we are going to not like the skeletons we find there.
  
  but I imagine one of these days the top is going to pop on South Africa
  What do you mean by this?
- To be fair, gamers are the most oppressed minority.....
  /sarcasm
- Once an Afrikaans always an Afrikaans. I bet he vacations in Orania lol

Imagine being literally the richest person in the world. You can afford anything, you can go anywhere, you can do anything. But you spend most of your free time begging for attention from absolute strangers. What a pathetic little bitch.
- Enough money helps you have the time, energy, and nutrition to craft happiness. You can pay someone to do the lawn, clean the house, and handle some day to day tasks. You can sleep without worrying if you'll afford food and a roof tomorrow. You can get healthcare.
  After that it's up to you. If you put the money in charge you'll be miserable. If you spend all that extra time going down conspiracy rabbit holes you'll be miserable and try to make everyone else miserable. If you craft some hobbies that you enjoy, get in shape, maybe learn to play an instrument, go rock climbing, travel to see the sights, and generally don't worry about what loud people on the Internet do or think of you then you'll have a pretty good shot at happiness.
  Money can't buy happiness, but it can give you the opportunity to find it.
  
  We have to assume all this pleases him
- Right? If I had even a fraction of a percent of his wealth, I'd disappear into a life of anonymous bliss, never to be heard from again.
  
  MySpace Tom comes to mind. Bless that guy.
  
  This is the line of thinking that gets me to listen to the “no such thing as an ethical/moral/good billionaire” types. These are people who had $50 million, $100 million, $500 million, and decided they had to keep working, acquiring, and exploiting.
- Right? If I was that rich I'd get attention by... actually doing helpful things with the money.
  Shit commission a giant statue of yourself that urinates Coca-Cola into a public fountain, free coke for everyone, just go to the PP Statue! That's what I'd do....
  Course I'm female so my statue would have to be squating, that may make it unwieldy...
  
  Creative liberties may be taken when designing a statue of yourself, so don't worry, you can take any pose you want
  
  If you're squatting, it comes straight down instead of in an arc where the wind can blow it around. Easier to fill your cup that way. I endorse this plan!
- He really does need a hobby. Maybe he can take up sailing or adventuring. Then we don’t have to hear about him at all until some fawning obituary lauding his contributions to humanity and recognizing the pioneering spirit that led to his tragic and early demise.

I’ve always thought being “proud” of your race, any race, is a weird concept.
Like, you didn’t do anything to be white, or black, or asian. Why would you take pride in something you had no agency in?
- Sexuality
  Nah. Queer pride is a good thing.
  It's not pride as in "I am proud of this painting I made." Rather, it's pride as in "rejecting shame for being queer".
  
  Given the amount of people that seem to base their whole personality exclusively using this list, it will be a long while before we can move away from these as a collective.
  
  Sexuality
  When people talk about "LGBT Pride", they're not talking about the "a feeling of deep pleasure or satisfaction derived from one's own achievements" definition, they're talking about the "confidence and self-respect as expressed by members of a group, typically one that has been socially marginalized" definition.
  It's almost like words can have more than one meaning.
  
  The last point could be argued, most people say/mean “proud of being their friend/brother/whatever”, and having mutual esteem with someone does take a degree of agency. It’s obviously moot if you have family ties with them but they hate you, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen people being proud of achievements of people who hate them.
  The rest I agree, it feels weird unnecessary tribalism most of the time.
  
  A bit of stretch but this why I don't like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_designation_of_origin. It is supposed to guarantee quality, but why wouldn't someone be able to make the same quality of cheese given the same cows and quality process anywhere else? It seems to be some kind of weird territorialist pride.
  
  In the abstract, yes, but when a group of people is oppressed because of one of those identifiers, it stops just being a born trait. It also identifies that you're oppressed. Celebrating who you are with regards to that kind of trait (sexuality, sex, race, etc) isn't a celebration of being born a certain way. It's a celebration of self acceptance, and an act of rebellion.
  You aren't proud of what you were born with, you're proud of what you were born with, because some people have tried to punish you for that what.
  
  We can add college in there. Choice of college means next to nothing about someone's intellect and personality. Usually it's just rich and/or "legacy" people getting into the prestigious schools. They are almost always pushed into it, or convinced into it by others.
- It's a participation prize. Congratulations, you were born.
- I "proud" of my poor eye sight, and and "proud" of my genetic high cholesterol 🎊🔥💯
  
  I don't get it. Why would one be? The whole point of pride is to in some sense feel and experience joy over the things that we like about ourselves or that stand out in a positive way. But maybe I'm missing something.
- With whites you definitely have a point, but it’s a little different when whites have at various times in history attempted to erase your culture in numerous ways, including outlawing your language, clothing, music, dance, martial arts, traditional healing systems, religious beliefs, hair styles, etc, while converting you to what they believe to be valid and acceptable.
  
  That’s being proud of your culture though, not your race. Culture is something you willingly engage in, and you definitely have the right to be proud of it (and that includes Italian culture, Greek culture and all other types of white culture as well).
  But race? Saying “I’m proud of being black” means nothing when American black people and African black people barely have anything in common that isn’t the color of their skin.
- If you belong to a group that has been historically oppressed, being proud of your race/culture is a sign of rebellion.
- It’s weird to have pride in race if you experience no adversity because of it. Since white people don’t face the same kind of challenges white pride just feels like “I’m proud of my privilege”, whereas with black pride it’s more “I’m proud of who I am despite the challenges I face because of it”. Same goes for other things like LGBT pride, it’s celebrating who they are even if it cause them a lot of hardship.
  
  Couldn't it be sort of an affiliation with the full history of the White Man, for better or for worse? I don't take pride in my skin color, but it does represent a fascinating time in human history and early human migration. This is purely academic of course, no actual person who says they are "proud of being white" would ever say that or likely even be aware of the history and the science, but it could be.
  The problem lies in the definition of "pride". You can be proud of who you are without comparing yourself to others. You can be proud of who you are without thinking less of others, or treat them as inferiors. In fact I'd say it's mandatory but not everyone gets that.
  Not sure where I'm going with this, not arguing for or against per se, just exploring the concept because it's complex, interesting, and sadly ever so topical.
  
  Anyway "white" is too broad an identifier to mean anything, unlike groups which have had their cultures systematically oppressed. There's already widely accepted celebrations of "Irish pride", "Italian pride", "Polish pride", etc. Not a lot of specifically "English pride" celebrations because the British empire already made that the default for centuries.
  This "pride" thing is specifically meant to mean "we survived, and continue to survive." Anyone advocating for "white pride" doesn't even understand what they're talking about. There is no "white identity" to be protected because it has never been under threat of annihilation. It's like stationing a battalion of troops around a public park in a suburb because you're convinced that The Enemy wants to take it over. Nobody's coming for your playground equipment.
- It's all semantics either way, just treat people with kindness and respect, and then you can be proud of who you are. That said, I don't think there's anything wrong with being "proud" of ones features or traits. For instance, I have very blue eyes that have passed down through a ridiculous number of generations (n.b. not the exact same set), and I'm "proud" of them, in the sense that I'm glad I have them, that they remind me of my heritage and ancestry and family, and I hope that they will pass on to my offspring. I won't cry myself to sleep if they don't, but I think it's "nice".
  Is there something wrong with me feeling this way? I don't think so. How could it be? It's nobody's business how I feel about my eyes. I go out of my way to treat people with kindness and respect, and I am proud of that. But also the eye thing.
  Maybe that's the problem, perhaps we should just stop nagging and lecturing each other on our identities and preferences all the god damned time. Aren't you all tired of it also?
  
  I can relate, I also have a weird hair quirk my grandma had as well, I like it and I’m glad I have it, but I wouldn’t really say I’m “proud” of it.
  Yes, in the end it’s all semantics and there’s nothing really “wrong” with it, I just find it weird, like astrology or ultras, idk.

NOW can we fucking can this guy? SpaceX? Tesla? He's already flushed the cancer-formerly-known-as-twitter so we'll leave him that one.
The significance that it's IBM calling it first should not be lost on anyone.
- Significance = IBM supplied Nazi Germany with the tech to catalogue the Jews during the Holocaust.

So, Elon dislikes that white people can't be proud of being white.
Why would a person of any race be proud of their race? Shouldn't people be proud of their own accomplishments, and those of the people they've helped?
I never really understood the rationale here. I support Pride Month for example, but I think the language is kind of wrong.
Shouldn't people be proud, despite traits which have historically been denigrated?
This is a serious question BTW.
- When your ancestors have been targetted, racialized, abused and enslaved for centuries and the effects of that are still felt to this day, and when you are still being racialized and abused because of the colour of your skin and your heritage, you feel like you have nothing to be proud of. The world is telling you you don't matter, that 'your kind' deserves it.
  THAT'S why POC are so adament about being proud. Because when a racist tells them they're worth nothing, and when the world tells them they're nothing, they need to rely on themselves and their community.
  Being proud is resistance. Against all the shit that has been done to POC, and the shit that is still being done today.
  White pride is not resistance, other than resistance to the idea of black pride taking over from a centuries old status quo where white people were the only ones who 'mattered'. You're not resisting anything with 'white pride'. You're taking away voices and dignity of POC.
  It's no wonder the only people who unironically say 'white pride' are fucking nazis. That should inform anyone about the whole concept of it. Don't weaponize your whiteness.
  
  I was sitting here thinking it's pretty silly to be proud of things you have no control over, even if you appreciate it over other possible variations of a given attribute. Using it as a means of personal or societal deprogramming is valuable, though, so long as it doesn't extend to denigrating people who are 'other', otherwise you end up with the same problem but different people suffering.
  
  That's a great writeup
- In my mind, LGBTQ Pride is generally called that because Shame was, at least in contemporary history, a huge driver in suppressing LGBTQ existence and freedoms. If it was called LGBTQ No-More-Shame, it would remain antithetical but might not be as catchy. I'm sure other groups will employ the same argument, but it is difficult to overstate how powerful shame and social stigma specifically suppressed LGBTQ expression, and still attempts to in some ways.
  
  There are other better choices than No-More-Shame.
  LGBTQ Honor / Dignity / Glory (on second thought, this one may conjure images of bathroom stalls, so maybe not this one)
- He's completely wrong too. Celebrating American, European, or general Western heritage is very commonplace, to the point that the US even has a holiday for itself. If that isn't enough for someone, then odds are they're just a fucking racist.
  Most of the time, there's a country or region you can celebrate the heritage of. The only exceptions are Jewish people and black people, but that's because they had forced diasporas, persecution, and/or slavery. Their ethnic identity to a region was stripped from them.
  
  I mean I'm mostly German but don't really celebrate it. A: I don't feel at all German. B: there's a bit of history surrounding Germans even though none of my ancestors were in the country for any of that. C: I'm already the dominant culture/race where I was born. What would I be celebrating? That I'm the same as everyone else? We could have a big cookout where we celebrate our culture by eating the same food we eat every day, wearing the same clothes we wear every day, etc. Oh wait this is already every get together...
- I think everyone should be proud of their race, which is the human race... No matter ones ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc. we are all the same race. Yes, I know in this context race means something else. But, my point still stands. If everyone would stop worrying about our little meaningless differences and realize that we are all the same race. We would be much better off. Yes, I know that will never happen.
  
  This has always bugged me. It's strange how labeling someone as "racist" actually works in the racists favour; you're partially validating their point by implying there's a greater biological gap than actually exists.
  Bigot works well as a replacement if this bugs you, and it's probably more accurate, people with "racist" views are more likely to be homophobic too.
  
  Biologically we're the same species, not the same race. There's no concept of race in humans
- Why would a person of any race be proud of their race?
  In the cases of actively oppressed people, particularly people that were assigned a race regardless of actual national origin, and then were denigrated for being that race, it's a point of pride to say that "our people" (who you basically forced "us" to become not on the basis of our shared heritage or nationality but purely on the basis of lumping together everyone with the same color skin) survived and thrived, and eventually developed our own culture despite the shitty circumstances.
  White people don't fit into this category because nobody forced people to be white and then said they weren't citizens in the country or that they could only live in certain towns, forcing them to band together as one and develop their own white people culture with basically strangers, and nobody robbed them of their history and forced them into brutal chattel slavery for hundreds of years.
  Edit: Most white people who care to do so still have an understanding of their lineage, national origin, religion, and/or festivals, and many of those are or were celebrated in their own ways: St Patty's Day, Octoberfest, Christopher Columbus Day (which was basically an Italian pride day originally), Catholic holidays, Jewish holidays, etc.
  
  This opens a whole new can of worms for me.
  Can a gay person who has never experienced homophobia rightfully celebrate Pride Month?
  Can a black person who was adopted by white parents and has no black cultural influence be proud of being black?
  In any case, I understand the sentiment, I'm not saying "I don't understand why black people want to be recognised and celebrate the victories afforded to them by their ancestors".
  What I don't understand is the specific vernacular of the word "pride" in these cases. Rosa Parks was a BAMF, but why would I be proud of her? I didn't put the idea in her head, I didn't give her the courage to sit at the back of the bus.
  Whether I'm black or white has no bearing on whether I should be proud of anything outside of my own influence; I'm convinced identity politics gets us nowhere.
- This is human nature at end of day. If it's not being white/black, it's your football team, what country you're from, or on lemmy crap like whether you use Linux or not.
  I never understood it myself but people are morons.
  
  Absolutely. Tribalism is toxic.
  At least Linux is a choice.
  I use Arch BTW.
- I get the sentiment, and it's not a black and white (sorry for the pun) answer I think. And yes, celebrating your culture should be good for everyone.
  Unfortunately, some people saying "pride" mean "There are great things in the culture and people where I emigrated from" and some people mean "the culture and people where you emigrated from are trash". And "white pride" has historically been used by people meaning the latter.
  Pointing out that "white pride" COULD also mean the former doesn't remove the implication it comes with for the latter. If I wanted to express the former, I would pick different words. A person doing otherwise usually either expresses ignorance, callousness to the second implication, or them just trying to get away with saying it meaning the second thing by hiding behind the first.
  
  Just to clarify, I'm not asking about the implication of "white pride", just the semantics of pride in general.
  It reminds me of "Black Lives Matter" - of course they do, but too many people heard "only black lives matter", when what they're trying to say is "black lives matter too".
  These twits responded with "All Lives Matter", which, of course, is also true, but the implication is the discreditation of the suffering of black people.
  I think a lot of these issues, unfortunately, are a failure of the Left. There are so many slogans which are either poorly thought out, or intentionally inflammatory. For example, "defund the police", "all cops are bastards", "math is racist".
  We can't expect the Right to read between the lines, it's up to the Left to use better language so we don't give them more ammo.
- Because in this case it's talking more about KKK type of "white pride".
- It's totally okay to be proud of aspects of your heritage. It's important to also own up to harm done by your ancestors too, especially when you benefit in tangible or intangible ways from that history, which becomes less expected of you the more injustice was done to your ancestors vs done by your ancestors. However.... "White" is not a race, white is a skin tone, there is no universal white heritage, even "European immigrant to America" is far from a monolithic heritage. "Black" being considered a heritage confuses some people but that's because "black" is shorthand for two things that aren't directly skintone. "Black" refers most commonly to the shared experience and built/rebuilt heritage of the descendents of slaves who's culture and heritage were stolen from them, brought mostly to the Americas from West Africa, and then systemically oppressed for generations. "Black" can also be used to describe people who share the experience of oppression based on their black skin color regardless of their specific history.
- I think white people have the least to be proud of of any other people.
  What have we accomplished? We stole land, science, math, technology, the whole concept of civilization, and pretty much anything else you could think of, from non-white people. We stand on the shoulders of colored giants, and act relish the scent of our own shit because of it. Literally a lesson in “history is written by the victor”.
  Basically all we really have that’s purely our own is our art, philosophy, and religion. And even a lot of that is stolen and built upon.
  
  Damn, now THAT'S some racism
- Why would a person of any race be proud of their race?
  I support Pride Month for example,
  why would a person of any gender would be proud of their gender? You seem pretty selective.
  
  The irony of claiming I'M the selective one by quoting me, but missing the next line which reads "I think the language is kind of wrong".
  The implication is I support the idea of a time to celebrate marginalised communities and to raise awareness for their current battles, but I think the word "pride" is the wrong word.

Anyone still on Twitter at this point for whatever their reasons, have to recognize what group they are in.
- Sadly my local emergency services still uses them to let the community know what’s going on. Denver PD is still doing a good job updating their page and I wish they would move to Mastodon here sooner rather then later
  
  You could suggest to connect their Xitter to a mastodon server so it automaticaly forward posts (crosspost), could be a good thing for a first move!
- Looking at my twitter feed it's immediately obvious what group I'm in; Gays. Gays everywhere.
- It's not that easy for a lot of users. People created a network on it and they can't change so easily as theirs jobs depends on these networks.
  
  That is true and is something those in control of these sorts centralized social media services count on. Why Reddit was so cocky about the impact of the protest just blowing over. Sort of did. We the people feed the powerful and cannot stop.
- Yep, if you have a Twitter account you're a Nazi. Full Stop.
  "If there’s a Nazi at the table and 10 other people sitting there with him, you got a table with 11 Nazis."
  
  My Mom told me I couldn't have a second helping of ice cream, she's LITERALLY Hitler!
  
  Commenters will be seething against Elon Musk while simultaneously using his platform for 4+ hours a day and still pretend they're good people.
  
  Like buying a Tesla at this point. You're a Nazi cunt if you do so 🤷
  
  Damn, TIL I became a Nazi when I first visited my grandparents as a child. Thanks for letting me know, at least I can lean into it now. /s

People were unironically comparing this man to Tony Starks lol. 🏃🏾‍♂️
- Phony Stark
- Ironman was the bad guy for that whole civil war thing. ... oh fuck
  
  Um...hate to say it, but Steve was the bad guy in Civil War, not Tony.
- The funny bit is that originals Tony Stark was meant to be utter human scum but Hollywood wanted to make him less of a douchebag.
- I mean there was a point where he was someone worth championing...now? He's scum.

For context, here's the full tweet Elon is endorsing as all these articles are omiting it for some reason
Jewish communties have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them.
I’m deeply disinterested in giving the tiniest shit now about western Jewish populations coming to the disturbing realization that those hordes of minorities that support flooding their country don’t exactly like them too much.
- I'm curious. In this context, what are "whites"? Are Jewish people not white now or something? Or does "white" mean something else to him?
  
  I'm pretty sure by white he means white, non-jewish europeans which also includes white americans since they're from europe aswell but wether jews are considered white depends on who you ask. I believe that most jews don't think of themselves as that either, though some do. I'm guessing it has something to do with being an oppressed minority. Then again white supermacists for example don't consider them white either because they're not "pure" or something.
  I don't think there's any conclusive answer to this. In my opinion focusing on skin color is a stupid question to begin with. Asians aren't generally considered white either though they seem pretty white to me. Friend's wife is black but her skin is barely darker than mine. Go figure.
  
  They mean normal. Non-ethnic. You know how there are aisles in the grocery store for foods from various cultures? Think of the potato chip aisle. Default human, with basic features and simple ideologies. Christian, western, self-determining, literate but not erudite, proud and apathetic, powerful and resigned, and thoroughly egocentric.
  That's how they see the world. It's a special level of narcissism borne from generational privilege. When they talk about "whites," that's what they mean, because they don't have any sort of self awareness or concern for how they are perceived by others.
  
  You would have to measure your head to convince Elon that you're white enough.
  
  Draws a lot of attention to the fact that "white" is a construct that is tied up intimately in supremacy narratives. Irish and Italian people were at times not considered "white" because they were discriminated against as immigrant populations. To the supremacist, whiteness defines an "us" so whether Jewish people are considered "white" is really depends on the level of anti semitic sentiments present.
  It's part of why "White Pride" is a really bad idea. Part of the experience of being white is tied up in the legacy of exclusion based on class or othering and how genocides, murders and exploitation based on the ideas of white supremacy shaped the world through empire and those systems haven't exactly been dismantled. Until whiteness is basically "fixed" so that this is a factor of the distant past the correct way to interact with one's own whiteness is more to reflect on the complexities of the history and modern application of it and realize that while being light skinned isn't something to be ashamed of throwing a party about it is still in poor taste.
  
  Jewish people have never been "white" to antisemites. (Real antisemites, I mean, as opposed to people who have the gall to say Palestinians are human.)
  
  "are Jewish people white" is one of those questions where the answer seems to ebb and flow with the tides.
  
  Jewish people generally receive the same treatment as Anglo-Saxon/Caucasian people from society, as they have similar skin tones, but they are minorities in the sense that Judaism has been famously historically discriminated against.
- Huh, my dogs are going crazy. Weird.
- Thanks for transcribing the tweet so that others don't have to give it excessive clicks. This might be his new worst mask off moment.
  Unfortunately, a bunch of people will probably act shocked while continuing to use the platform that he owns 80% of rather than move to alternatives.
- I appreciate you providing the actual tweet... but I have no idea how to translate it. The double/triple negative really throws me for a loop and I don't even know how to read this. I assume there's more that has Elon talking white pride somewhere else? Am I blind or naive in not seeing the problem in the post?
  Edit: Oh, I see, the post BEFORE that one was saying asking people to "just come out and say 'Hilter was right'" if that's what they believed and this was a response by someone. Ouch.
  
  Jewish communties have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites
  Translation: Jews are woke anti-white "cultural Marxists" pushing "reverse racism".
  that they claim to want people to stop using against them.
  Translation: antisemitism and woke stuff are literally the same
  I’m deeply disinterested in giving the tiniest shit now about western Jewish populations coming to the disturbing realization that those hordes of minorities that support flooding their country don’t exactly like them too much.
  Translation: I don't care about Jews recognizing antisemitism in minority populations.
  I honestly have no clue which minorities he's talking about here, or if it's just some generic conflation of all non white groups.

About fucking time, IBM.
- Given what I have seen from working with a company that worked with them chances are the person who handles the ads is about 80 years old and hasn't actually clocked in the past decade.

X CEO Linda Yaccarino has said that most of the platform’s biggest advertisers have returned after dropping the site due to its moderation changes, but Media Matters previously showed that they’re spending far less than they used to. Yaccarino responded later on Thursday, writing that X has been “extremely clear about our efforts to combat antisemitism and discrimination.”
"There is no bombing at the airport"
- “There is no ~~bombing at the airport~~ war in Ba Sing Se”
  I try to help

Elon is slowly but surely tearing down everything he has created.
- Elon is slowly but surely tearing down everything he has ~~created~~
  Bought.
  
  Always a good distinction. Ever see presentations from the actual founders of Tesla? They are impressive.
- What has he created? He bought himself into Twitter and Tesla... and the work is essentially done entirely by other people. i.e his employees
  
  Yep. And his pet projects that he personally drives always crash and burn. He's the one that pushed the autopilot feature hard despite his engineers publicly objecting.
  
  what has he created
  One of the best PR campaigns in modern history. Just five years ago people on both sides of the political spectrum were seeing this guy as one of the smartest humans alive, who would actually put man on another planet.
- Elon is slowly but surely tearing down everything he has ~~created~~ bought.
  Fixed that for you
  Every single accomplishment he has involves buying a company that was already doing it, establishing himself as a "founder", and then taking all the credit.
  
  He could have gotten away with it too. I never drank the Kool aid with that guy. I know the charismatic sales tech evangelical type too well. I deal with them daily at work. When they stay in their lane they are fine, they bring in the business.
- He's tearing down everything that other people created, you mean?
- I was about to buy a white Tesla but now I'm not so sure about the Tesla at all, but especially that combination.
- All he had to do was shut up. He could've thought all this stuff, maybe done some of it, and still been hailed as a hero. But the more he opens his mouth, the harder he makes it for anyone to overlook who he really is.
  The lack of self-reflection going on here is so painful to watch.
- Or he’s unlocking the only way to sell EVs to American conservatives.
- Other people always did the actual work - he's just less effectively handled now, so his personal incompetence is harder to hide.
- Except that so far he hasn't faced any real repercussions. He keeps selling cars and internet and getting contracts from NASA. A bunch of banks may have to write off their twitter investments but, much like trump for several decades, it will not significantly impact his ability to get new credit.

- Apple's already out. Disney dropped today as well.

The guy that still has no idea why his kids hate him, at it again.
- Am I out of touch?

Why were they even adversing on Ten?
- You mean 10-Chan?
- ...do you mean xitter?..

I'm honestly not going to do business with anyone who still maintains a presence on that platform much less advertise on it. Cheers to IBM for stepping up.

Tell me you're South African without you know.
- That scene at the South African embassy in one of the lethal weapons movies. Oh man, fiction is so crazy. Right?
  
  Did you know that South Africa helped Israel develop their nuclear armaments program?

I find an odd sort of satisfying humour that we know exactly where IBM draws the line, and it's right there.
- It hasn't always been exactly there though....
  
  All the more reason to have a hard line there now, I suppose.
  
  Yep, now look up the dark past of basically any large corporation that existed at that time... wild stuff.
  it makes me wonder why, when we see WWII movies or documentaries, why they are doing everything analog? Typewriters, handwritten letters, when we know they had IBM computers, which were sold to the Nazis including during the war, in direct contravention of sanctions. Could it be they want to hide that unsavory bit of history
  
  I find some dark amusement in knowing there is a wiki page called "IBM and the holocaust" haha. Not gonna read it though
- Doesn't have to be a line, might just be the last straw

Twitter/X is going to end up selling boner pills and conspiracy theories. Way to burn through 44 billion dollars, Elmo.
- I'm not seeing where the "return on investment" comes in. I just see a lot of wasted money.

Is there a list somewhere of the companies advertizing on this thing? Could be useful to ask them what they think about that!

Hey guys I think this Elon Musk guy might be not so great...

A white south african guy is racist? I'm shocked, shocked I tell you.
- Well, not that shocked.
- That's Apartheid Boy for you.
  Xitter is a Nazi bar because its owner is a Nazi.
- You are as racist as he is..

It's surely only a matter of time before he becomes a climate change denier, right? He's gone all in every other right wing weirdo ideology.
- How unsettling would it be if the CEO of SpaceX became a flat earther?
  
  I would then be convinced that we are in a timeline where The Onion controls the universe
- What do you think SpaceX, mars colonization and Cybertruck are about? His bizarre twist on climate is to sell to rich prepper folks the post-apocalyptic fantasy that they will get something to drive while they wait for their ferry to the mars colony where, one would assume, they would reign over the pleb workers. More libertarian than fully alt-right or traditional conservatism.
  
  That's actually a good take
- No he's pretty on board with climate change. That's why joined Tesla as a funder.

The company that sold automation to Hitler: "This guy is a step too far"
- The art of debate and discussion today is watered down to, "...but but that other thing is evil too!"
  Can't talk about Uyghurs genocide because European settlers killed natives 500 years ago. IBM and Musk can both be bad. Same as time changes things and people.
  Stop distracting from Musk's wrongdoings. What happened 90 years ago was 90 years ago. We can't change that. What we can do is influence change today. Thanks to IBM for not allowing their money to fuel Musk's machines.
  
  I uhhh think it was just a joke...
- I did not know that about IBM's history... 😬
  
  Probably shouldn't look up any car companies then...
- I'm no apologist but literally the country of Germany let that dude do all that shit but we've kinda let the whole country off the hook for that at this point, seeing how it was a really long time ago and the people involved aren't in charge anymore.
  Have you seen their offices from the 1970s? It's like wall to wall Eames chairs. IBM deserves another chance.
  
  No, look, you're not wrong. I'm not saying modern IBM is responsible for the holocaust or something like that. But:
  It's important that people know the context of this company. Even if the executive team has followed the eightfold path and achieved enlightenment, what the context informs you about is why this should matter to IBM, why they might be responding to Musk.
  Corollary to #1, an awful lot of companies took the hint over a year ago and fled Twitter then, so I think we can fairly ask, why does a company with this history not react immediately and in the strongest terms to any hint of white supremacist bullshit. If they want to show us they've changed and should be completely let off the hook, there should be people working there whose entire job is "make sure IBM is never implicated with Nazis again". God knows they can afford it.
  The whole interaction gives us something to think about; less about IBM and more about Musk, as in, how low has he sunk that even IBM is finally reacting?
- Look everyone, a funny observation. Or is this an open invitation for debate?
  Please debate me. PLEASE RESPOND.
- I think you'll find none of the same executives at IBM in 2023 that were alive in the 30s/40s.

So was this guy semi normal in the head at some point?
I am really wondering if he has been deteriorating over the last years.
- Consensus from those with closer experience is that he's always been kind of an asshole, just not a crazy asshole. Also, the whole "Elon's a Tony Stark genius" was literally a marketing campaign and he used to have a really good PR person. He fired that person some years back (want to say around '17-'18?) got on twitter and let that fully rot his brain.
  I think this is a fairly predictable outcome when you fire anyone who contradicts you and seem to spend your whole day hotboxing your own farts with a legion of minions in tow who will stop at nothing to tell you what a great experience that is.
- Ketamine is a hellva drug!
- I don't know for sure... I kinda liked him several years ago, but it was before all the media exposure, so he may have been this crazy his whole life
- Probably not but appeared to be before developing a Twitter addiction and the Sub Incident.

So will I still get downvoted into oblivion for calling him the white supremacist that he has always been?
Probably.
- You're wrong!!!...about getting downvoted.
- Nah. Saying bad shit about Elon is guaranteed upvotes around here. Welcome brother

At this point, if anybody asks, I never had a Twitter account. It's way too embarrassing to admit otherwise.
No normal public figure/organization would ever to be associated with this disgusting behavior, but this is the inevitable results engagement centric personalized algorithm, as conflicts create the highest amount of user engagement for the platform.
Most public organizations/figures should really think about running federated social media accounts on their own server, because having control over the server is the only way to 100% ensure your freedom of association online.
- I don’t think it’s embarrassing to have had a Twitter account in the past. It’s not like anyone could have known Elon was gonna buy it
  
  And Twitter wasn't all bad. People used it to spark, spread and fuel several sovial and political changes. It was the modern townsquare.
  It's too bad it only amplifies nazis and fascists now, but there was a time when regular people had a voice there.

And this is why all news of Elon isn't necessarily good news nor free advertising for him. We don't have to trip over ourselves when he breathes, but when he's a piece of shit? Spread it as much as possible.

They just wait until they have everyone kissing their asses and fuck you money, then they let you see who they really are.

Elno fanboys will be like:
He just does that so users can enjoy less ads on X! 5D chess again, he is so smart UwU
- "5d chess... First principles" **lick lick jerk jerk
  -Lex Fridman in his last podcast

This app once sparked social changes and political revolutions. People used it to hold the guilty people accountable.
Then Elon bought it with funding from Saudia Arabia and a few others.
Then he made all the cartoonishly wrong changes. Now the app is dying.
It doesn't feel like incompetence to me. It feels like the app was murdered by the rich and the powerful for whom 44B isn't that big of a deal.
- Can we please stop with the conspiracy theories and/or acting like Musk is smarter than he actually is. The fact that Musk tried to get out of buying Twitter is proof that there was no grand plan to take down Twitter. If you have a plan to buy Twitter and tear it down you don't go to such lengths to weasel yourself out of buying Twitter. And if you have a plan to take down Twitter you also must have a reason to take it down. I can't come up with a reason beyond pettiness and I somehow doubt anyone would spent billions out of pettiness. Even Musk in his pettiness to buy Twitter tried to get out if it.
  The one other reason I could think of is trying to silence specific people, but then it makes no sense to tear down Twitter. What does tearing it down accomplish? The people you want to silence will move to a different platform and the other people who are the audience to those specific people are also driven to other platforms. You don't spend billions to annoy people into using a different platform. You spend billions to drive away the people you don't like and keep the audience, then it won't matter if those undesired people speak up because there's nobody to listen to them. If the goal is to silence some people then tearing down Twitter accomplishes nothing.
  The more realistic explanation is that Musk isn't smart and doesn't know how to run Twitter.

Isn't he South African?
- Maybe he as some assets the South African government can nationalize.

He needs to have Mypillow come and advertise his last remaining dollars.

Musk is good friends with Joe Rogan btw
- What else do we not like about Joe Rogan, other than doing that interview with Theo Von?
  
  He's the gateway to the alt-right for young men.

Yaccarino responded later on Thursday, writing that X has been “extremely clear about our efforts to combat antisemitism and discrimination.”
To be fair, this is true. Elongated Muskrat is making it very clear what their efforts are.

The nuts and bolts are loose on this one boys.

At this rate xitter might as well die a slow death.
- This is the slow death.
- It's written xitter but the x is spoken like sh

90 years ago and IBM would have twittered harder
- It’s so appropriate that this attempt by Musk to repeat history is just a low-effort reboot.
- Maybe they pulled advertisement but then put in a bid for a human tracking system. They can sell it for pretty cheap because they've already got a working system.
- Character arc?

At some point race should fade away as some other trait like eye color or attached/detached ear lobes.
Having said that: if everyone who has attached lobes is being blamed for the world problems then I think you may get push back.

Crash and burn, baby.

Tragic, but unsurprising.

bUsInEsS GeNiUs

🎶It’s historically ironic!🎶

Well, shit.... our expectations were low, but god damn.

How the times have changed...

Cheering for a total explosion on the launchpad this Saturday
- I'm not. A lot of work of actually smart and skilled people went to it. It may be the private sector, but I still cheer for it as the achievement of humanity.
  
  Yeah, human progress! It's not a rocket program unless there's a nazi involved. Otherwise its just a sparkling missile.
  
  It's too bad that it doesn't belong to humanity.

Elon continues to get worse by the month.

Musk is either trolling, a complete idiot or playing 4D chess. I don't understand why he would make statements like this. He is a business man no ? He must understand that what he says may have an impact on his business.
Being proud of your skin color is stupid as fuck.
- I don't know why you're giving him the benefit of the doubt here. What in his history over the past few years has given you any evidence that he is not a complete fucking moron?
  
  I'm always open to explanation. He did have success with many of his company. Just saying he is an idiot that got lucky does not feel all that satisfactory but hey, we all look at the man and see an idiot so maybe he is. Or he has so much money that he just doesn't care to blow a couple billions. Afterall, you can live very comfortably with just a few millions dollars.
- I think it's much more likely that he's just a bigot with way too much money and an ego so large that he cannot even accept the possibility that he might ever be wrong about anything.
  
  That one falls under "idiot". To be a bigot when you have all the physical and intellectual resources of the world at your disposal requires either a deliberate effort to remain ignorant or the lack of mental capacity to process facts.
  Those are just two different flavors of idiocy, and they typically go hand in hand.
- Musk is either trolling, a complete idiot or playing 4D chess.
  This one is easy to answer: he is a complete idiot.
  He must understand that what he says may have an impact on his business.
  He has fuck-you money and there is nothing he can do that negatively impacts this, so he doesn't have to give the littlest of shits. That's what being absurdly rich means.
- I'm pretty confident in saying it's not 4D chess. His big mouth cornered him into having to buy Twitter for meme stock prices, then over the course of a year he managed to shit away more than half of it's value, LOSING more than 20 billion dollars.
  He's not trolling, trolls don't throw 20 billion dollars in the fire just for a giggle.
  He's a full on idiot. His greatest accomplishment and largest positive contribution to society is all the work he's putting in day after day to abolish the myth of Billionaire Exceptionalism.
- He's an asshole first and a businessman second.

By the 1930s, the new Nazi government needed that technology — and recruited IBM for the job. Tabulating machines made tracking lines of Jewish descent possible, even if a German citizen’s family had married out of the religion or converted generations ago.
I dont agree with hate even 1% but some of the companies are the pot calling thee kettle black
- so just because their company supported nazis 90 years ago they have to be racist all the time now?
- Haven't you heard of IBM's 90 year long CEO Mecha Hitler?

Yeah, remember exactly 1 year ago with the huge frenzy around twitter going to shut down because of Musk's take over, the shutting down of some server capacity and the firing of more than half of the workforce. 365 days later Twitter didn't collapse, it retained most of its user base and it is still going just fine. those companies will be back when the dust settles just like how mastodon refugees went back after changing their twitter handles to mastodon ones.

"White Pride" is something only a slave needs

I'm with Elon here. Fuck the ADL.
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/adl-palestine-terrorism-letter/
- Huh. Seek help.
- "As long as Hitler takes care of the bad Jews, I'm all for him!"
- Twitter is heavily censored under Elon; it's just that it's the people opposed to authoritarianism and fascism who are being censored now.