I feel the need to begin this post with that disclaimer because it appears people are getting very sue happy these days and as an attorney I know I’m protected by Hustler v. Falwell if its satire. Of course, the truly funny thing about this is the sad reality.

***

I recently received some unfortunate news. It appears that my blog posts will no longer be automatically posted on Twitter due to a disagreement between Twitter and WordPress. While I have no problem posting links myself, I find this fact to be a little indicative of Twitter’s management as of late. Finding myself a bit frustrated, I decided to call Twitter and complain. The following is a transcript of my call.

(Dial Tone Three Times, then a pickup)

Heavily accented English: Hello Customer Service, this is Elon.

Me: Elon Musk? What the Hell are you doing answering the phones? You own the company.

Elon: Well, in case you haven’t heard, I made some layoffs to make the company profitable, and someone needs to man the phones.

Me: I mean, there’s no way you could be this understaffed.

Elon: Then there were the people who quit, because they hated working here, and then when others tried to tell me that, I fired them because you’re not supposed to tell the boss bad news.

Me: Okay, I get it. It’s for the best. I mean who better to complain to than you?

Elon: Well, I am pressed for time, so if you could hurry up.

Me: It’s about the WordPress thing. You know. Twitter isn’t automatically tweeting my blog posts when they go out.

Elon: You can’t do that on your own?

Me: Yes, but I am wondering what kind of disagreement you would get into with WordPress that would cause you to stop this service. It’s a small thing, but it makes people wonder.

Elon: They just weren’t being reasonable. I only asked to increase their annual fee by 500 percent.

Me: How much was the old fee?

Elon: Like, five dollars a year. They couldn’t pay $30?

Me: Mr. Musk, I think this goes to the fact that you never really understood how the internet worked.

Elon: I know how the internet works! I tweet! I watch YouTube videos! I’m not a Luddite!

Me: I mean you decided to buy Twitter without any experience running any social media company. It’s not like building electric cars or space travel. Being good at one thing doesn’t make you good at another.

Elon: Oh, so you are so smart. Well, let me ask you: how would you make money with Twitter?

Me: Most social media companies make money by selling ad space. Have you tried that?

Elon: (Hurried scribbles, as if desperately writing something down)

Me: (Sigh) Mr. Musk, maybe you should consider selling Twitter.

Elon: I won’t sell unless I have a buyer who will rigorously pursue the truth.

Me: Mr. Musk, Twitter isn’t about a pursuit of truth. It’s about seeking out your personal political echo chamber and shouting your views into it to have them repeated back to you. It’s about a million bots trying to sell porn or cryptocurrency to the most desperate people on the vast cultural desert that is the internet. It’s about hundreds of thousands of amateur authors trying desperately to sell their self-published books against all hope. Social media is a black hole of despair that people fall headlong into due to the lack of meaning that exists for them in the flesh world. Political correctness is just a symptom of the problem where people try to find community through online political groups that they can’t find in their daily lives. Making Twitter about the pursuit of truth would require abolishing it and founding some other website where people could explore complex subjects at length rather than being limited to three short sentences.

Elon: Huh, I guess you’re right.

Me: Right, so you will sell Twitter?

Elon: No, I’m going to continue destroying it with my shitty management born of mindless slogans and assumptions about business taken from entirely different industries. Then, after it’s dead, someone can found that other site you were talking about.

Me: I think it’s called having a blog.

Elon: Really? How do you do that?

Me: I use WordPress.

Elon: Great. Fuck you.

(The other side hangs up. Phone rings dead)