It’s been a year of comically short tenures. Liz Truss spent 45 thrilling days as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Elon Musk may last only a bit longer as CEO of Twitter. The Tesla and SpaceX honcho purchased the social media giant for an appalling amount of money, and he instantly left his mark. A month and a half later he may be leaving, after holding a poll in which voters overwhelmingly voted for him to step down. Unlike some people, he may actually acknowledge voters’ wishes — with a catch, of course. But his news promoted yet another round of jokes, including from another older king of social media.
I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job! After that, I will just run the software & servers teams.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 21, 2022
On Tuesday night, nearly two days after the poll closed, Musk announced he would follow through on his promise to leave if asked. “I will resign as CEO, he wrote, “as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job! After that, I will just run the software & servers teams.”
It’s a vague promise, laced with his usual attempts at humor. Then again, there’s such a low bar when it comes to people honoring voters’ wishes that this is almost heroic. Almost.
Since the possibility of Musk actually stepping down as Twitter CEO was raised, some have had jokey suggestions on who should replace him. One of them was Tom Anderson, one of the co-founders of Myspace, the world’s first global social media service. Anderson wasn’t like Musk. Apart from forcing everyone to be his friend — and therefore having his picture on their wall — he knew well enough to leave everyone alone.
— Tom Anderson (@myspacetom) December 21, 2022
Musk launched the poll on Sunday after he’d already been on a roll. After a week of briefly suspending journalists he didn’t like, he spent the weekend briefly suspending another one then and enacting an instantly infamous new rule that banned people from linking to rival social media accounts. His antics have proven unpopular with many users as well as his investors. He’s instead cozied up to far right extremists. In other words, he’s alienating people who would buy his electric cars and embraced those who never would.
Anyway, if this is the end of the Musk era of Twitter