My First Million: EMERGENCY POD: ELON BUYING TWITTER - Our Reaction and Explanation (Hilarious)

Okay, so so you don't have to lose if in this case you are not successful in you know the board

Does not accept your offer. You've said you won't go higher. Is there a plan B?

There is

I

Feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to

Let's travel never looking back. All right, we're live breaking edition

Sean just texted us and said we got to do this Elon thing

Sounds like you've got a lot of opinion or you have a lot of opinions. I got some opinions. I got some opinions for sure

first let's summarize

What happened and then tell me how you I guess like how you initially heard about it and how you reacted to it when you first heard

All right quick break to tell you about another podcast that we're interested in right now

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All right back to the show

So let's start from like

All right, so the weeks and months and years ago Elon has always criticized

Twitter saying how he loves it and I actually think he's one of the top ten most followed accounts in the world and of the top

Ten he's one of the few that is actually actively posting as a normal person would and he's

Criticized Twitter for doing some for banning free speech things like that for basically being too liberal

He didn't ever say that word, but that's kind of what he's getting at right and about 10 days ago or a week ago

he bought nine percent of the company and

and

Then he said announced that he was gonna join the board of directors and

The weekend after he announced that he was joining the board of directors

He started posting things like let's turn Twitter's HQ into a homeless shelter. I actually lived next door to Twitter's

Headquarters in at 9th and market year a couple years ago

And it's basically like no one's there because the pandemic shut down that area of the city and it's full of homeless people

And he said let's shut down it Twitter HQ and turned into a homeless shelter

He tweeted because nobody's going to work anyways

Yeah, because no one's gonna work anyways, please don't go anyways

So he took it it was two jabs that he took and then also he said

Should we create an edit button button? Yes or no?

And he tweeted basically three or four things like that then on Sunday or sorry

Last on Sunday night. He was supposed to join the board on Monday. He said I'm not joining the board

and

To a couple people or people who are a little bit in the know of this kind of granular stuff

They said well the reason he's not joining the board is when you join the board of a company like this

You can't own more than 14% and so by not joining the board

He can now buy the whole thing and that happened on Monday. It's Thursday

Morning first they were playing patty cake with each other. He's like, you know, the news comes out

Then it's like the CEO of Twitter Parag is like hey

I'm so happy to have Elon Musk on our board. He's the best

Jack Dorsey says so glad to have Elon on our board. Elon says so glad to be on the board Jack

You know, they're they're all playing patty cake and then one day later or two days later something like that. It becomes

He's actually not joining the board. He basically goes hostile

And now at 6 a.m. 7 a.m. This morning. It was announced that he was going to buy Twitter

Right away when he bought 9% of the company

I think the stock jumped 10% the day he did it, but

It's current valuation was like

43 billion and I think he offered to buy it at 53 building billion give or take I forget the exact amount

But it was a nice premium not a huge premium, but a nice premium

And here we are now waiting for what's gonna happen next and

By the way, I think Jack Dorsey I do actually think he was somewhat genuine

I think the CEO of Twitter was not genuine that guy doesn't even tweet like he's not even a user

Like have you read his tweets? Like he just tweets like screenshots of PDFs. He follows me. That's all I know

And so he's good in my books, but I hear the man you have an excellent taste in who you follow

Well, that's he might be the man, but he's not like a power user of Twitter

Like he's like, I think I know how to use Twitter better than he does. You know what I mean

Yeah, for sure you do

Yeah, so he tweeted on January 20th, then February 16th, then March 3rd

You know before that November 30th. So, you know, he's guys tweeting bi-monthly

Yeah, so like whereas Elon actually

Gets it. Yeah. So anyway, that's where we are now. What's your take?

So I think there's a couple different things first. I want to just say

baller move

I've I've been on the record of saying I think Elon can be kind of cringy with stuff

He says in public. I think he's an amazing inventor. I think he's he's a

amazing, you know visionary and

You know a force of nature for sure, but I think he's kind of cringy in the way he kind of

For somebody who's like, you know trying to be kind of like an engineer's engineer

He sure does do a lot of stuff to like make himself seem cool and like try to be cool

And he just comes across try hard each of me, but this was not that not just the move

I'm gonna read you. Have you read the letter? Yes. I have it up. Let's letter is

Bad ass. So that ass he he created an offer. Dude, that's so funny that we both like

Go gravity. I was good. That's exactly what I was gonna bring up was the writing is the writing is amazing

I'm just gonna read it word for word. So he goes. Yeah

So he this is part of his like sec filing

He goes I invested in Twitter as I believe it's potential to be the the platform for free speech around the globe

And I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy

However, since making my investment, I now realize the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form

Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company as a result

I'm willing to buy 100% of Twitter at 52 40 54 20 per share in cash a 54% premium over the day

I began investing 38% over what I you know, the day it was announced

My offer is my best and final offer if it is not accepted

I will not read I would need to reconsider my position as a shareholder

Twitter has extraordinary potential period. I will unlock it

So that was the start and then there's one final thing he goes best and final and he just bullet points a this is this is the

Goal, this is really cool. This is where he to put his nuts on the table

He goes I am not playing the back-and-forth game B. I have moved straight to the end

I am not playing the back-and-forth game and I've moved straight to the end

It is a high price and your shareholders will love it. That's the best slide your shareholders will love

Yeah, if the deal does not work given I have I do not have confidence in management

Parag sad parag face nor do I believe I can drive the necessary change in the public market

I will need to reconsider my position as a shareholder. This is not a switch

It is he says it's not a threat. It is entirely a it's a it's a threat

Biggest biggest threat. I've ever seen it's like saying this is not a threat

It's like saying like I'm not trying to be racist, but or like it's like dude

What you're about to say is gonna be racist right don't take this the wrong way. Yeah, you're gonna be you're about to be really freaking rude

You're about to get offended

He says this is not a threat

It is simply a good not a good investment without changes that need to be made and those changes won't happen without taking the company private

but this is

The best line of all these is I have moved straight to the end. That's my new shit, dude

I have moved straight to the end. That is my new shit

Sean's new shit is I have moved straight to the end. I'm just gonna be using that left and right

negotiations

But the net tomorrow's milk road is gonna start with I have moved straight to the end

You know when I talked to my wife tonight and she was a you know cuddle a kid

No, I have moved straight to the end. If I go if I go in line somewhere

I'm gonna stand at the end of the line. I'm gonna say I have moved straight to the end. That is my new shit

What a line. It's good man. How about the fact that he's so

This was basically when he says send via text is that literally does he mean that this is an email that was sent in text format

And then there's voice format or is he saying this was a text message you think yeah

I don't know what that part was. It's like it's like it the file that there's like a screenshot of it

It says like oh, it's almost like he's like hey Siri send this to the SEC send this to Jack in my address book

It's like which Jack do you mean? Yeah, so I don't know what that part was. It sounded like that part was

I think he sent a message either to Jack or Brett Taylor the chairman or whatever and said Taylor the guy from Salesforce

Yeah, Brett Taylor. Yeah. Oh, I think he's the chairman of the board

Oh gosh, and so I think he sent it. I think he sent it to him. I think it was to him and it was saying

Here's my offer letter. This will be public tomorrow. So I think it you know, it was giving a heads up to whoever I

Do not think this is gonna go through

What and why do you think that I?

think that I

Okay, so there's this app called blind. It's very inside baseball app like typically only

The you basically have to have an email at a large prominent tech company to use it

So I don't even have I mean maybe HubSpot has the ability to use it, but it's like this all the time at Twitch

It's awesome. So like Amazon, Apple

people shit whining

Gossiping but you do it anonymously and they you have to be an employee at the company to be on there

So you know these are not just randos and they'll like it's they basically will complain about stuff that they should be made fun of like

I only make $450,000 a year

How is that how am I able to survive in the SF or what is everyone making right now?

My salary is blank post your salary below whatever and I got some screenshots from the Twitter blind and

The people who use blind I do think are not the representative of the normal employees

But they basically said that like 5050 thought it was a good idea and 50 thought it was a bad idea

so

But the reason I don't think it's going to go through is I do think that management and a large

Vocal subset of the Twitter employees are gonna throw a fit enough that it would make this hard to go through

But it's not the employees who get to decide I mean what do you mean?

No, I said the management. I think management could could could cause such a I don't know what they could do

This is it's it's a I think this is like if I don't know the exact mechanics of these takeovers

So, you know, there's people much smarter than me about this stuff

But this is something that basically the the board has to decide and it's like a share the shareholders

If I'm a Twitter shareholder this stock hasn't like

Stocks have been basically a poor performer for like a decade. I used to own this like 10 years ago and

You know the stock prices, you know, it has not been like this up into the right curve and you're getting a whatever

What is a premium versus today? So today's price is it's now 45

He offered 54. So

That's what I like a 20-something percent premium don't do public math, but yeah, but you know, would you take that premium?

And and also what he said I think one thing he said was he would try to retain as many private shareholders as possible meaning

You wouldn't have to sell to be in favor of the vote of this going through you could like, you know, keep your shares or whatever

I think that I just think that there's like some like I've read enough like finance books

That there's all these crazy things like the poison pill which frankly, I don't even understand a lot of this

There's all these like weird like, you know art of war type of things that you can do

I think I don't think it's as easy as well. I'm the top bidder. I think there's all these weird things

But anyway, the thing here's the thing about Twitter. Do you know what? All right, so Twitter's market cap as of today

It's 34 billion. Of course, we're like a nice pullback right now for tech

So it's probably 30% higher a year ago, but whatever right now. It's

34 billion, you know what snapchat is?

50 about 55 and here's the thing about Twitter is I believe they have way more users and

It's the center of culture right now

I maybe not the center, but it is a center of culture at the moment and their ad platform is dog shit

It's the worst ad platform all the big dogs

So if they could figure this out, they should be worth way more the thing is I don't think Elon gives a shit about ads

I think he's gonna try and figure out a way how to make money other than ads

But Twitter's ad platform is really bad

So I do think that this company Twitter is way undervalued and way under monetized and they they don't ever innovate

Although lately they've done some cool stuff

But it's been like, you know, 10 years 10 years, I think right yeah

And by the way, here's here's a couple of takes on the on the situation. So

Cuban mark Cuban came out and he was like, I think he goes, I think Elon is f-ing with the sec

He goes his file filing with the sec allows him to say he wants to take a company private for

54 20 which is like, you know before he used to

sec find him like crazy because he said I'm considering taking Tesla private for 420 funding secured

And so he got to now do it the official way and just put a five in front of the 420

He had bought the shares a couple months ago

This is gonna this this news of him buying and now of the potential takeover that drives shares up

Let's say they don't accept his offer. Well, then he's he already said I'm gonna sell my shares if you don't take my offer

So he's just gonna make a huge profit off of off of these shares, right? Like he's gonna make

You know, like, I don't know whatever like I think he bought the shares for three billion

If he sells it, you know for for, you know, like whatever 20 30% gain

He might make up close to a billion dollars off of just f-ing with Twitter and he gets all the fame

remember we were talking about our friend who our friend Alex who from morning brew who's gonna

Who's I'm a buying puppet golf courses and we were like

This is the optimal spot. You said the announcement. You got all the praise. You don't have to actually do it

Like the check get the picture with the check and and post it on IG

You don't don't actually give yourself all the headache and the work of actually running and owning that business

So Elon is at that's perfect spot right now. So that's that's one take on it

Other takes so, you know, some people, you know, like crypto Twitter basically so there's this do you follow this account punk 6529?

No, I think I know who he is. I'm actually gonna click file now. What is it punk? What so punk 6529?

So this guy's one of the like best Twitter accounts to follow

He's sort of like post these kind of like thought-leadery things about crypto

Yeah, I know this guy. He's great. Hey, he's great

He's I think in a very short amount of time like couple months. He's built, you know

He's got 320,000 followers now because he's just had like really good takes on things

On things like this and he said what did he say he goes

He said something like, you know

He's he's basically like, you know, Twitter should be a protocol. It's a short messaging protocol and

It doesn't need to be owned by a single company

Nor does he says if you're excited about Elon taking over Twitter or upset about Elon taking over Twitter

Well, both of these are the exact same problem. Our global short messaging internet protocol should be completely unaffected by who's the CEO of some random company in, California

In that same spirit, let's talk about, you know, what what a future, you know protocol like this could be

And I think that's one of the like

That's not like what's gonna happen here

But I think I think it is like no one company owns email, for example

Right, but but like which is a protocol for sending messages that are long form and but one company does own

Twitter protocol and because of that, you know

You can't just choose like if this was a protocol, you could say I want to use the client that has no

Algorithm I want to use the one that has a really tight algorithm and shows me nothing. No, no right-wing stuff

You would be able to have way more choice as a consumer and what way more companies would be able to innovate and build on top of Twitter

If it was a protocol not a single company

So kind of is that something doesn't matter who's in charge. I don't even think that's logistically possible at this point though

Or is it?

Not really for Twitter. It's like almost like it's easier for the next thing. Yeah, right

That's what I'm Jack. Jack Dorsey has said he's there's a project called blue sky

Which is the idea of like turning Twitter into a decentralized protocol, but like who knows like how realistic that is and how much

Of that is just like, you know lip service

So we're working on it and like, you know, right check in in five years and see how it goes

Let's talk about this angle here, which is actually maybe the most interesting which is a

Best troll ever so like this guy is like a child and it's some of it's not funny

This one is very funny

But be I actually think and I think Paul Graham said something like this this I'm not convinced that this would be good for Twitter

But I think definitely there's a for sure possibility

That it could be good for Twitter, but I think there's a for sure certainty that this is horrible for Elon Musk

Consistently the guy makes decisions that are funny and cool and leave people like shocked that

They did that but it's kind of like eating an entire orange including the peel

It's really funny and hilarious that you actually did it and we're gonna laugh about it forever

But I'm shocked that I do a guy in college who ate an entire orange and entire lemon one time in one sitting including the peel

And I'm like that's hilarious that you've done that I have a story

But now forever but that's gonna suck for you for a while

And so that's kind of like what this is like this is gonna be bad for Elon for a long time

This is not gonna make his life more fun. This is gonna make his life a

significantly worse significantly harder

It's so much more pressure. This is not a smart move for his personal life

Well, the point he's at right now is brilliant because what does this say about Elon? This says number one

I'm super rich. I could just buy Twitter. How about that?

Somebody tweeted out they go Elon said

Okay, you know, you don't want me on your board. Okay. I won't have a board seat. I'll have all the board seats

Hey, right. So so so that's one piece which is like if you in case you forgot I'm way richer than all of you

Okay, second thing is why are you doing this Elon?

Are you just you just want to own it have more power like think about when Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post or whatever

It's like what are these billionaires trying to do? They're trying to control us

Elon's is like these tech companies are effing effing it up

Which that's already the way that a lot of people believe is that these tech companies have too much power too much control

They're shaping the narrative. They're they're not free speech. So he came out as

I'm doing this for free speech

It's like, ah, how you gonna are you against free speech, right?

Like, you know, raise your hand if you're against free speech. And so he virtue signaled free speech on top of it

He did it in like a bold and bowler way where it's like gonna give him like way more attention and fame and a bunch of reasons

Why people will talk about him and he's gonna make money from it

You know just by like buying the shares beforehand then creating all this ruckus

And then like, you know being able to sell out if he says, oh, well, I didn't get it, you know

So so I think and he can kind of be the underdog of like, yeah, you know, they

The the powers that be wouldn't let me do what I wanted to do

I was gonna make this shit awesome, but uh, you know, they wouldn't let me do it

They tried to they tried to squash me dude. How about the fact that we just did an episode where we recapped the milk road where?

You where Peter teal had this like outlandish headline where which it might be true

No, I actually don't think it's I think he was joking a little bit where he said Warren Buffett's a sociopath

And he went to list about all the reasons why Warren Buffett who called him. Hold on

He called him the sociopathic grandpa in Omaha

Yes, who but like Warren Buffett that his stereotype and it's probably actually not true

Is that he's this nice old man who's just all shucks

I just happen to do it whatever and Peter teal is this evil guy who causes like all the grandpa a

Sociopath and then you've got Elon who does the craziest shit on earth imagine these guys when they're

25 30 years old and they had a little something but maybe not like that much and

What type of fun would it have been to be in the same room with these fucking shitheads?

Who are who are it's like the perfect combination of like capable enough to pull it off crazy enough to think it's funny and

It's just all this perfect combination. I can't imagine being around these guys when they were younger

Yeah, exactly Ben pull this tweet up. So he's at Elon right now as we're talking. He's at Ted and

You know who's there is our boy and our boys

Andrew Jack so he's at Ted right now. He was there to talk about whatever SpaceX Tesla, whatever dude, of course

Yeah, of course, you know

It's a 30-minute talk about Twitter. And so Ben, can you pull this link up in in the screen share?

We should watch this. This is Elon Musk talking about his plan B

If the deal doesn't go through for Twitter, so I haven't watched this video because it's how this just got tweeted out just now

So I want to hear I want to live react to whatever he says here 30 second

Do you while Ben's finding that clip pull it up in but while Ben's finding that clip. Do you think so like I

Don't buy like that nice stuff

But like let's say like I see a car that I like and it's like

$50,000 and I'm like, yeah, I'm just gonna buy it and I'll figure out how to insure it

And I'll figure out where I'm gonna store it after I'm buying it

Like it's kind of a big deal because it's like a $50,000 thing

But like it's not gonna kill me. Do you think that Elon is thinking about it?

Like I would think about like a $50,000 car or is this like

Like how well how thought out do you think this is? Well, let's let's look at this

So Elon net worth right now is 265 billion dollars. I think yeah, but I can't I don't think that that I don't I don't think that like

That's entire I that is true in a sense of a net worth

But he definitely has a lot of debt because he's got a sell. I mean, it's not like that liquid. I would think so

Even if you we don't know all the details and we don't know how we don't know all of his personal financial situation

But let's just take the high level numbers for a second

that's I

Think it you know like whatever

Roughly 20% of his net worth that he would be putting into this so that's a lot

You're worth $10 million as you buying a $2 million asset, right?

The difference is is that you only have 8 million if you're worth 10 million left

Which is a lot, but like you're not gonna go and buy a bunch more $2 million things with Elon. You still have

70 or 50 your billion. Yeah

Like 200 billion to fall back on it. Yeah, whatever it is. We have this clip. I want to see what he says

I don't know if this is gonna be good because it just happened just now, but then let's play this and I want to hear it

but the truth matters to me a lot really like

So pathologically it matters to me. Okay, so so you don't have to lose if in this case

You are not successful in you know, the board

Does not accept your offer. You've said you won't go higher. Is there a plan B?

There is

I think I think we would like to hear a little bit about plan B

For it for another time I think another time. Yeah, all right. I

I that's a nice tease. All right, so

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That's great nice

Well played well played in that in that case. I don't know the plan B could be right like launching his own

Launching his own thing. I think it's probably I don't think that would that's a good plan B

Twitter is

It's really hard

You know like how many people say they're gonna create a social media product and how many people try and how many have

Worked so a lot try everyone tries when they first start and there's like three, right? Right tiktok YouTube

Facebook and Instagram and

You know what I mean, there's three

Yeah, I do think it would be very very hard

This would be much better is to buy the existing asset, but how's Trump's things doing? What's it?

Do you know what the I mean? It's like horrible, right?

I downloaded it because I was like I gotta see what's going on on this thing

But I haven't spent too much time on it. It was like crashing like crazy like the first day. So yeah, so I social

I don't think building it is maybe that's the plan B. Maybe he's gonna be like a everybody

Truth social that's what we're going right because then you get the Trump stands and the Elon stands together together

That's a lot of people who are like

Devoted followers of those two the problem is they hate each other

and also

Elon doesn't care about making conservatives happy. He cares about

Trolling so if you only have your own audience on there, it wouldn't be very fun

Right, you know, I mean he he doesn't like getting people cheering

He'd like he likes pissing people off or ruffling feathers and the thing about the truth

I you know what? I think that's rooted in I think that's rooted in his father lying to him

And so Elon's dad so listen

You went you went there daddy issues is it all comes back to daddy

Everything I think not everything I think that most things in life are genetics

and then the other half is things that happen to you from ages like zero to four and

I that's really I mean someone is young

What was he lied to between maybe ten would we even know maybe ten but I do think like things happen

You're two and three like like it actually impacts you but let's go up to ten

And I think that like he's had a troubled relationship with his dad and his dad just wasn't around and I have a feeling

There's a world where his dad was like I promise I'll be at this game

I promise I'll do this or like, you know, like, you know, I'm working on this huge business deal

It turns out he's like unemployed and he or he doesn't show up to the game

I think that there's like something like that that has happened that he's like

Obsessive compulsive about the truth. I actually do believe him when he says truth

Hmm

What it is that way, sorry, what did his dad lie to him about? I'm just made that up. I don't know but I know that his dad

His dad

Well, no, what his dad wasn't around like his dad let like was

He left his mom and like he wasn't very present in his life

And I think he was kind of rude to his family and I'm just guessing like there's a world where like he's like a just one

Was kind of an asshole and was kind of messing around

And just doing for sure the things that you value come from your experiences

Like, you know, people who value authenticity is because they've dealt with in authenticity people who value, you know

family is typically because they've had either great experiences of the family or

Terrible experiences of the family that they want to rectify it, right? So you definitely are shaped by that

So if he's telling us, you know, I'm sort of like what I don't even he said in that like a maniacally or whatever he said like, you know

maniacal about the truth

I think he said I think he said he said obsessive

I think I think he says like or he said something like to its point

It's almost a problem that he goes right care about the truth

And like, you know, okay some percentage of that is just again virtue signaling

But you know, let's take him out his word for it

You know, let's be clear. What does he think is happening? So, you know, like

What is untrue, you know, like there's like free speech cool people gonna be able to say anything those not those are not necessarily gonna be true, right?

It's just this belief. There's a belief that you know

The answer to bad speeches is more speech not censorship. So, you know, I get that

But I'm not sure really what his ideas are, right? Like if you if you look at the list of ideas, I forgot what I

saw this screenshot of

Elon's Elon's

Twitter

Ideas, let me see if I could find this real quick. I don't even I think that like I'm not well versed in like the political scene of Twitter and like

I understand why people want free speech

Obviously, I know the Donald Trump example and that's just like an example. Everyone hangs on

I don't know tons of other examples. One of them being this Hunter Biden story

Which I don't even remember what the story was but I know the New York Observer, which is a conservative paper in New York

They said Hunter Biden. I think it involved prostitutes. I think it involved drug addict being a drug addict things like that

They published it Twitter suspended them and turns out a year and a half or two years later

It was true and New York Times wrote a very similar story saying the same things happened

They posted it and they weren't banned and I think that there's a handful of examples like that that people are pissed off about

but I'm not sure if it's like

Rapid other than I mean, but one could argue it is rampant if the most popular if the president can't use Twitter

Yeah, I think that's probably like the strongest

The strongest like you know example, hold on. Okay, so I'm just gonna read this out loud real quick

Because all right here. Let me

Yeah, let me read this out loud. Here's a list of what Elon has tweeted since

You know since he kind of announced that he what he was gonna do and

before he

Left the left the board he goes the first one tweet was

Vote to remove the W from Twitter. So just titter and there's poll options were yes, and of course

God, that's so stupid. That's that's what that's kind of a cringe joke

Exactly turn proposal number two turn HQ into a homeless shelter number three eliminate ad revenue

Number four, just say that Twitter is dying number five

Overhaul the blue checkmark policy number board with that. He said he was gonna smoke weed at the next board meeting

He posted a meme of him smoking weed at the Joe Rogan at the next board meeting

The next one an edit bunnet

And the next idea and they just put this in quotes free speech like there was no idea of how or why or what you know

Like just free speech and the last one was open source Twitter algorithms

So like you know, so the people were like, you know, Elon's gonna save

You know, it's gonna save Twitter. It's like well if you

If you pay attention to the the ideas that he had

We're not the most earth-shattering ideas between our our titter homeless shelter, you know quote unquote free speech

But you know, what were these ideas our friend Nikita who?

Seems like he knows what he's talking about with some consumer apps was like, I you know

Maybe I like Elon. Maybe I don't but running a car company and creating PayPal and a solar business is a lot different than like

The kind of art that it takes to create a consumer tech product like Twitter and I totally agree with that

You know like think about this like what someone's like

Well, we're gonna create this thing that you can only rate 140 characters nine out of ten normal people would be like

What if that let's make it so I can write as much as I want or let's just make it so anyone can edit it and

Do all this other stuff and they're like no no no we're gonna do this weird thing

It's kind of like vine like you only have four seconds to make a video four seconds

No one no one can do that. It's like no it's actually and it creates in a whole art out of it

You know what I mean? And so I think Twitter will or Elon could potentially be a little bit too rational and logical to create the magic of

Twitter

So I have the complete opposite take I think if the guy can land a rocket

Rely on a rocket on its butt in the middle of the ocean and he can make electric cars that are awesome

Pretty sure he could like you know figure out this social media thing now

The problem is he's still doing those other things like fucking Albert Einstein ain't gonna create YouTube

You know what I mean like he's not gonna create it. He doesn't need to create it

He's just he's a he's a he's a leader and he's a first principles thinker, you know like do who do I have more faith in?

Parag or Elon I have more faith in Elon than I do for I well

Yeah, but that guy running that guy's running that he ain't you know, he just making sure the train show up on time

He's not building the train. Well, that's the problem, right? Like, you know, that's why it's plateaued

That's what user growth was like

300 million monthly active users like whatever five years ago and now it's like 340. It's like it hasn't grown

Much at all plus, you know other problems of like hate and scams and other stuff

So my take is is that this is the ultimate example of social media ruining everything

So like think about and you're in my day like I know for me how much time and productivity from like useful

Awesome activities. I could be doing

Just check a Twitter about tick tock and whatever you know social media is this like distraction time suck

It's like damn this guy's trying to make us multi-planetary and like self-driving cars and like get us off of fossil fuels

He's getting distracted by social media. He's just doing it at the biggest scale like not just using social

He's like I'm gonna buy it and then I'm gonna have to fix it

And it's like dude. No, no, no, just just do the thing where you help us like go to Mars and have self-driving cars that are electric

Like those are the useful things

Solving social media is like just another distraction just done at Elon scale if he dies in the next five years. Would you be surprised?

I would not be surprised. I would not be surprised either

Do you think that would be the way that that would that's does this story have to end that way like no

I don't think he's gonna die that I don't think he's gonna die like I would you know low probability

But I do think that

It would turn him into like the greatest cult hero ever well, it's kind of like

You know everyone talks about Tupac and I've got Tupac in my background here. I love Tupac

You know he died when he was 25 he was only 25 and people talk about this guy being like yeah

A lot of people don't know that he was 25 biggie was 24

Okay, and so people are like oh, they're the best rappers ever and I'm like well

They didn't really have that long of a career so like Jay-Z and M&M. They've done it for like, you know

20 years now, so they definitely have and and and but the reason we say he's the best ever is because he died young and

It's like all the potential so in some way. I'm like that's he like can do the same

He should go out on top. Maybe then we'll remember him as being the best

I mean, would you want to die and be the Tupac of newsletters or what?

No, I wouldn't want to know but I'm not Elon

You know there's two things I know in this world like that, you know

There's crazy guys in the world like Elon and the second thing is I'm not one of them

That's that's what I know is there's weirdos like him and I ain't it

We should end it on that just to reiterate your angle Sam

You're of the opinion that Elon has daddy issues and you hope he dies. Is that correct?

Um, I

To the first point 100% he has daddy daddy issues. Yeah, show me a successful person

I'm gonna show you a fucked up dad for sure without a doubt. Okay

The second thing do I do I hope he dies 100%?

No, do I think it will be an even better part of the story? Yes, unless he has some like

What's the guy's name the rich guy who created the airplane that?

Leo or a movie Howard Hughes unless he has some kind of weird Howard Hughes thing where it becomes even more or JD

Salinger where he just disappears and it becomes even more of this like mystery then yeah

I'm on board with that

But if he just gets old and he just begins like pinging himself and dies

I'm like oh fuck like you can't he can't go out that way

Yeah, yeah, that's actually a better question, which was what's the right way for Elon to go?

You know like heart attack. No, just he was overworked and stressed now

That's that's for that's for the common man. Well dying on Mars like crashing exactly that's a great way

He's gotta be the guy who goes to Mars died dies in the process taking taking man farther than they've ever gone before

That's gotta be the way he goes or just disappears space or he just disappears and just like no one knows where he is

and he just he's he lives in a

Trailer in world and he has to get when he goes out. He has to say he's Satoshi Nakamoto. Also. He has to just he's

Smartest move he could do right if I'm his PR team. I'm like listen Elon

Before you go we need to

Claim the Satoshi thing

That's just the cherry on top of your legacy is if you were Satoshi

There's no way to disprove it. What if you're gonna go anyways, so

No, so that's the last little little thing he should do on his to-do list on bucket list before he before he kicks it

Dude, this is awesome. Alright, that was not where I thought we would end it with him dying

But that's a that's a good impromptu episode. I think Ben. What do you think?

Loved it. I loved it. I

I

Think I think it's bad investment. I think Elon's having fun if you

Had as much money as he had. Why would you not spend your time just having fun? I think he's having fun

I don't think he's having fun. I don't think he's having fun. I think you think he's doing as an investment

You think this is a strategy. I think that he's kind of playing the

role of a court jester

Where he's laughing on the outside and it appears to be fun and he everyone's laughing with him

But also he's crying on the inside. I

Think I do I do not think that his life is enjoyable in any sense of the word. I

Don't either but I think he's getting enjoyment from this probably

Yeah, like it's like a I think it's a but I think it's our version of like

When you tweet something funny or I tweet something funny

I also like he like giggity like I'm like I'm like quack my family guy like giggity. That's hilarious

But like it doesn't it's not like I'm happy like three days later from that and feel like content

Right, right. Yeah, you're saying he doesn't come across like a content happy person

And hell no said in many interviews the to that extent, you know things like you wouldn't want to be me

That's not what you know a very happy content person says, okay, great or I will find death as a relief

Right. So those are pretty you know, it's as strong as it gets. You don't have to read between the lines there

But to Ben's point, I do think that he gets off on being you know, the class clown

The guy who gives the middle finger to the to the to the system, but he's he's taking FU money

And he's saying FU. So, you know, he's he is enjoying I think the stunt aspect of it

And I don't think he's doing it as a economic investment

I think he's he's doing it as a combination of maybe 20% stunt

Publicity stunt and maybe 80% mission and maybe I'm wrong on those sliders. Maybe it's more like 5050 or you know

80 20 the other way. I'm not sure I I think it's 80% mission 20% stunt not an economic investment

But I do think it's economic as we say on the on this on this my first million podcast

Yeah, we're big on being post-economic

Late-stage capitalism. That's what we're known for but I do think like you look at Jeff Bezos who bought Washington Post

I don't know. He paid like a billion for Washington Post. Oh, I think he paid $200 million

Okay, 200 million nothing but at the same time he got nothing like Washington Post

Gives you a voice I guess

but like you don't even have full editorial control and

Like could if you wanted to but he could if you want to I think what he got is a little different

I think at the time that was seen as like

Cool power move like we all know about that. So it did work in that sense

The second thing he got was something many rich guys have

Just vanity, you know collectibles items. Oh, yeah, I own this I owned, you know, this farm

I own this basketball team. I own I own these things you've heard of

That there is a sort of rich guy toy toy chest thing. I agree. It's like owning a sports team

It's like a journalism sports team

but I think like from the functionality standpoint of like actually being able to have a voice like

Buying Twitter is sort of the same thing

But he's getting the only voice that matters like he's getting the only thing that can actually

Drive and change public opinion if you wanted to pull that move

How much is like CNN

Hmm

What's a parent company?

Well, I think they just merged did they

Maybe between five and ten billion I would guess

Yeah, look up a lot of things for your buck

But news corp, which is the one so basically Rupert nerp Murdoch started Fox, which is he started this one company that

Recently had to separate because it was a monopoly on news and those two companies became news corp

Which basically owns Fox news and Fox news affiliates and then 21st century Fox

which is like the movies and TV shows and

Collectively that value is like I think a hundred. No, no

Or 50 13 billion

Both of them combined. No

Maybe I don't have the second one. What's the news corp news corp class A is 13 billion

That's the least valuable or the less lesser of the two. What's the more valuable one Fox 21st century?

I think that's what it's called. I

Don't know dude. I think this is the one

Fox corporation Fox

Okay, I don't know if this is the right Fox Fox corporation 30 billion. Yeah, that's it. That's it. So fit 43 total

Yeah, and this is the right one and they're way more popular than CNN. So yeah, I've seen it can't be that expensive

But who the fuck wants to own CNN?

These dudes who want to own Washington Post and Twitter, right? Why not?

Do you know how many people watch CNN at any given point? Like they're real-time viewers

It's like sometimes as low as tens of thousands of people like it's not it's it's not a significant amount of people that are watching it

at any given point

There's chicks on Twitch doing ASMR that have more viewership than CNN like in the middle of the afternoon

Yeah, that's what I'm saying like CNN like not really, but it's hilarious that I said that I mean

There's like cool shit like Anderson Cooper is pretty cool

But like it's just like fucking dentist like you listen to it when you're at the dentist

Like it's not like a pretty good when you're trapped in its share being tortured. Yeah

It's like shooting situations and like going to the dentist for like the only times that I've got like CNN on or when you

Go like it. Do you ever go to the do you ever get coffee in the morning in Fox or at McDonald's?

They always have like Fox playing in the background. That's like the only time I like see the news

That's hilarious. Did you see the CNN plus like fail fail? Yeah, dude

What do you expect you like you can't just like put a plus and then a paywall on like the shit that no one cares about

And hope that they automatically do courts shut down their paywall today, too. It was the same thing

It's like you can't just call courts a pro and expect to get more money because the main courts already sucks. Yeah

You know what I mean like you just put a bow. I'm like hey for it though

Like you can't put a bow on a pile of poo and it automatically isn't a pile of poo

But that's basically what a lot of these companies do and it's not the right move

Yeah, the plus thing is just like a dead giveaway. It's like that's a tell a plus or pro

All right, that was good

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.