The X Factor

What can one say about Elon Musk’s mercurial mind? Most people in this digital age suffer from ADHD, but Musk is a certified case of attention seeking syndrome, what is known as a histrionic personality disorder.

Not surprising that he wanted to lift the Twitter ban on Donald Trump, birds of a feather flock together as the saying goes. To abandon an established logo in favour of an ambiguous alphabetical glyph smacks of an eccentric disruptor.

A brand riding on billions is trashed suddenly and the microblogging site Twitter is ‘x-ecuted’. X is a variable in mathematics, perhaps a trope for Elon Musk’s chameleon persona.

The little blue bird evoked tenderness and ‘tweet’ was a sweet word for a message. Even politicians were berated for not tweeting on an important issue.

Enter Elon Musk, with a fat wallet of $ 44 billion, on the digital stage to acquire Twitter. Alarums and excursions!

The whole affair is almost like a Shakespearean tragi-comedy. The jousting knight after the initial flip-flop buys the website, and starts his vengeful sacking of employees who had slapped a court case on him for trying to renege on the deal.

Not content with showing what a potentate he is in hiring and firing, he decides to change rules arbitrarily and eventually decides to let go of the blue bird and its tweets. Rest in peace sweet bird!

A day before the silly act of killing the blue bird, Musk tweeted, “And soon we shall bid adieu to the Twitter brand and gradually all the birds “.

A bird brain act despite his legendary mental prowess. Was he ‘spaced’ out axing the bird in favour of X? Was he killing a mockingbird? (wonder if he’s read the iconic book by Harper Lee!)

Most of the sinewy staff on the Twitter rolls had voluntarily left, hence the ire bottled up inside against the dissenters must’ve led him to ‘meta-morph’ Twitter into a stylised white X against a black background. He certainly wasn’t thinking of Malcolm X , considering he got all the T-shirts with #Stay Woke slogan exchanged for #Stay at Work at the Twitter HQ in San Francisco.

Unfortunately, the exhortation didn’t work as employees left in droves.

The new logo birthed by the tech-baron shows his fixation with the letter X. His first big company was x.com. He has the storied SpaceX going strong and has plans to build another company called xAI.

He forgets that X evokes some unpleasant associations too. X-rated is stuff that has crass language and it is a rating given for sexually offensive movies. The boss says that X will be an ‘everything App’ unlike Twitter, with messaging, videos, and a financial platform. Tweets will be called x’s.

As always, the meme industry is quick in manufacturing some delightful definitions. One meme suggests: “Those who leave Twitter will be called ‘exes’”. Musk has enough exes in his marriage portfolio as it is.

Who knows if Mark Zuckerberg got under his skin with rebranding Facebook as Meta, and now with his competitive messaging platform, Threads. Musk took the plunge to rebrand Twitter.

Whether there is method in his madness or madness in his method , only time will tell. Advertisers have been pulling out though and Zuckerberg who was under a cloud earlier for data mining on Facebook is suddenly a refuge for social media users escaping from Musk shenanigans .

The two tech-giants threatened to have a cage fight in a series of tweets. Elon called Zuckerberg rude names and Mark threw the gauntlet back at Musk asking him to choose a location for the fight.

Being younger and a blue belt in Jiu jitsu perhaps accounted for his cool dude attitude. But Musk is no shrinking violet and has started practicing his chops in martial arts.

In the meantime, Dana White, the President of the Ultimate Fighting Championship which is world’s premier mixed martial arts competition, has been in conversation with both. Are they serious or mock serious ?

The preferred location is Las Vegas but trust Musk to add some spice to this mega brawl by tweeting that it could also be held at the Roman Colosseum. Here come the Tech Gladiators!