Karl Puschmann: Musk proves himself toxic to common sense, Twitter and comedy

Elon Musk is battling a celebrity exodus, backlash from advertisers and new imposter accounts at Twitter. Photo / Herald montage, AP, Getty Images

It’s been just over a month since Elon Musk, until recently the world’s richest man, cracked one of the worst dad jokes I’ve ever had the misfortune to see. Musk, who fancies himself quite the funny guy, tweeted a video of himself lugging a bathroom sink and a smug grin into the foyer of Twitter’s San Fransico’s head office.

He captioned his tweet: “Entering Twitter HQ – let that sink in!”

Ba-dom-ching! Not-so-much.

They say start as you mean to go on, and it appears Musk took that advice to heart. Ever since that terrible opening gag, Musk has worked hard to turn his newly purchased social media platform into the Elon Musk Comedy Special. He posts unfunny memes, he jokingly retorts to tweets by his favourite celebrities and he often writes ‘lol’ at the end of tweets that are not in any way lol.

The fact is that for all his riches and rocket ships, Musk is just not funny. At all. Can’t buy him lols. No. Everybody tells him so.

Instead, all he’s succeeded in doing is producing daily instalments of the Elon Musk Twitter-Disaster Variety Hour. Each day, he spearheads a new calamity. A new boneheaded decision. A new tweet that chips off another sizable chunk of the respect that had been afforded him when we all believed he was a visionary of technology and not a clueless and petty man whose natural instincts appear to be absolutely woeful.

The only smart thing he’s done since his offer was accepted was attempting to weasel out of it. However, once Twitter’s management had their plump fish on the hook for US$44 billion, they weren’t about to let him swim off. Instead, he was made to go through with the deal and was forced into selling three large chunks of his personal stash of Tesla shares and borrowing an additional $13 billion just to be able to pay for it.

Twitter has never been the most profitable of companies, spending a lot of its lifespan in the red. But it had recently steadied itself and begun turning over a small profit. As a keen Twitter user himself, Musk had big ideas on how to maximise the profits of his newly acquired company. His first money-making idea was to fire half of Twitter’s staff. The second order of business was to bully those he didn’t fire into staying by sending an email saying only those who were “hardcore” would be kept on. He has since converted boardrooms in Twitter HQ into makeshift dormitories for his skeleton staff to sleep, a brainwave initiative that attracted the attention of the San Francisco Department of Buildings Inspection who have launched an investigation.

Another big-brain move was to democratise Twitter’s blue check identity verification system. By democratise, I of course mean commercialise. For some bananas reason, those down the far-right rabbit hole of conspiracy nonsense had afforded great status to these blue checks and had come to believe that “the elites” were lording it over them by displaying them. This was demonstrably not true. The blue checks were simply an identifier that Twitter had verified that the celebrity, sports star, politician, company or news organisation was in fact who they claimed to be.

Musk, who has lost his grip and slipped down this rabbit hole, believed this as well. He said anybody could have a check if they paid him $20 a month for the privilege. Power to the people’s wallets! Notably, horror author Stephen King said he’d never pay that so Musk jumped into his replies with a counter-offer; “How about $8″. King declined.

It also led to Musk becoming a laughing stock as once the verification system was disbanded thousands of people, including the celebrities he’s so desperate to impress, all rushed to change their Twitter name to Elon Musk, complete with verifying blue check.

His next trick was to start unbanning people that had been banned for their racism, sexism, threats, ill behaviour and attemp to overthrow the US government. Desperate for a win, Musk tried to bring back the one man who understood the power of Twitter more than most; Donald J Trump. Embarrassingly, Trump publicly declined, saying he preferred the toxic waters of his own social platform Truth Social before putting the boot in and calling Musk a bootlicker who would have “dropped to his knees and begged” if Trump asked him to do so.

Like a chicken with its head cut off, Musk is now running around haphazardly. He implements orders only to reverse them shortly later when the obvious problems or illegalities of his instructions surface. Just yesterday, word got out that he’d stopped paying the rent. The new subscription blue check system keeps getting delayed and, according to CNN, hate speech on Twitter has “dramatically” surged since his takeover. Comedian Dave Chappelle bought him onstage at a show this week and the crowd booed for more than five minutes.

Musk may be too rich to fail but he’s certainly giving it a good shot.

As a long-term Twitter user, every day is a temptation to permanently log off. The discourse is dropping and it increasingly feels like you’re wading through muck. Worse, your timeline is now fed an unhealthy amount of Tweets from the so-called “Chief Twit”, Musk himself.

Chief Twit ... lol? Sigh. It was his terrible comedic instincts that got him into this mess in the first place. The offer to buy Twitter for $54.20 a share was little more than a juvenile stoner joke that absolutely flopped when Twitter’s management accepted it. It must be the most expensive joke ever told as, almost immediately, Musk’s deal began tanking the value of his other company, the pioneering electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla. Since taking over Twitter its share price has plummeted 28 per cent.

Let that sink in.