Elon Musk destroys the old Twitter – because he perceives it as “woke”.

Opinion

renaming
X instead of Twitter: Musk and the wrecking ball

There is an almost unprecedented willingness among the disciples of Elon Musk to attach a deeper meaning to every business decision of their idol, no matter how erratic. Buy an economically ailing social network for $40 billion? He’ll know what he’s doing. Fire most of the workforce, stop moderating content, implement a reading limit? There must be an elaborate plan behind it that we mere mortals just can’t understand. “We can’t judge that from the outside,” said recently Tech investor Florian Leibert in an interview with Capital. At first they laughed about Tesla and SpaceX, but in the end Musk was right. And if there is “a change in leadership in an agile tech company, then there will always be a rumble”.

And so Musk’s recent radical decision to simply abandon the previous brand name of the social network Twitter is interpreted so benevolently by those who continue to believe that Musk is playing four-dimensional chess. The new name X, so this reading goes, will be the new, oversized brand of the super app whose vision Musk has been pursuing for a long time and into which he wants to transform the old Twitter. That it “rumbles” a bit – given.

Brand experts are still throwing their hands over their heads. Twitter is one of the most recognizable brands in the world, not only among users of the service. It has found its way into colloquial language and even into official dictionaries – a brand can’t really achieve more than that. And while things can get rough on the network, for many the Twitter brand and associated light blue bird imagery has a warm, comforting vibe to it. The gloomy X is quite different – it fits more with the “Mad Max” aesthetics otherwise favored by Musk, with cybertrucks and the dystopian idea that we have to save our civilization on Mars.

Elon Musk has become politically radical

It is well known that the letter X has a special appeal for Musk – in the late 1990s he founded a start-up under the corresponding name, which later merged into PayPal. He bought back the domain X.com in 2017 and named his son X Æ A-12, among other things. It is his own obscure fascination that he lives out on Twitter – and not a highly strategic business decision, as the Twitter CEO Lina Yaccarino, who he installed, wants the public to believe.

What is really behind Musk’s behavior is most aptly the American these days Tech commentator Casey Newton analyzed: Musk has become politically radicalized and is on a quest for revenge against anything he perceives as somehow left-wing and “woke” – for him that includes Twitter, with its urban employees, liberal power users, tight moderation standards and, of course, the correspondingly charged brand. Newton calls it “cultural vandalism” – and that’s how Musk’s Twitter project should be understood, not as a venture that should ultimately bring him money. Musk not only flirts with conspiracy theories and right-wing ideas, he has long since fully internalized all of this. There are enough examples of this.

Anyone who interprets an ingenious product strategy or a long-term business plan into this approach ignores two essential points: First, there is no plan, everything follows Musk’s impulses. And secondly, if there is a pattern that goes beyond snapshots, then it is this: Elon Musk is currently on the move with the wrecking ball against a project that he dislikes politically. And, conveniently, it also belongs to him himself.

This article first appeared on “Capital.de”.

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