"Musk’s appointment would have started on Saturday, 'contingent on a background check and formal acceptance,' according to [Twitter CEO Parag] Agrawal. 'We... believed that having Elon as a fiduciary of the company where he, like all board members, has to act in the best interests of the company and all our shareholders was the best path forward,' he wrote.... Throughout the weekend, without revealing that he had turned down the board seat at Twitter, Musk posted a number of ideas to transform the social media company and its products. One of the suggestions was a coarse joke in the form of a Twitter poll. Musk asked people to vote on whether Twitter should drop the 'w' from its name. Doing so would turn Twitter into 'titter,' an allusion to female anatomy."
From "Elon Musk decides not to join Twitter board, says CEO Parag Agrawa" (CNBC).
An allusion to female anatomy! To "titter" is to laugh. But I guess there are people — I'm thinking of Beavis and Butt Head types — who hear the word "titter" and titter over tits. And I wouldn't be surprised if Elon Musk intended to amuse such people, and CNBC did say allusion.
Anyway, you can see good reason for Musk to decline the position. It's right there in Agrawal's statement: background check and fiduciary duty.
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53 comments:
Doing so would turn Twitter into 'titter,' an allusion to female anatomy."
two things continue to amaze me
1) how incredibly ignorant reporters are
2) how incredibly aware reporters THINK they are
This shows up, in Every News article, Every Day
Also, Musk on the board reduces the chance of a takeover bid with a premium price. Musk actually not being on the board is good for shareholders.
Shorter Elon: I do not think that word means what you think it means.
As long as he doesn't say anything about cows...
It seems so bizarre to me that a phrase like "free speech" is used in the context of Twitter. We have at-will employment in the US, but we're going to demand that Twitter establish just cause for deleting accounts or censoring Tweets? It's a free service. Twitter users aren't even Twitter's customers; they're the product. Pardon me, monetizable daily active user.
Elon doesn’t always drink.
But when he does, he prefers Dos Equis.
Also, being on the board limits the amount of stock he can own. If he's not on it, he can buy the whole thing.
Musk can also buy more stock. He’d be limited if he was on the Board.
Book: Titters, a first collection of humor by women, 1975 or so.
My mind only went to the laugh definition for titter when I first read the tweet from Musk... but where the absence of the "w" gets problematic is for the other words that have become common usage in describing twitter content...like a "tweet", he/she tweets, etc.
If Musk had joined the board, he would have been limited to owning no more than 14.9% of Twitter stock.
By refusing the seat, he can in fact pursue a hostile takeover and seek a majority interest in the company.
So not great news for the status quo at Twitter.
Board seat would have limited him to owning 14% of the company.
Does this make Musk Upper Class Twit of the Year?
What would CNBC have said if he'd suggested switching the i for an a?
I think his unwoke ideas might keep them from going the way of MySpace and AOL. The recent forcing people to sign up to see more than 3 tweets isn't helping them expand, it's a big turnoff.
Background check and fiduciary duty. Please. I hope you're kidding.
Musk thought better of being handcuffed by being on the board. He can assert a great deal of influence by owning more of the company over time. He can, in fact, influence who is on the board.
If they wanted Hunter Biden on the board, they'd put him on. Don't hold out fiduciary responsibility for a company that has made censorship their hallmark, their signature. They are a social justice organization first. Fiduciary doesn't enter into it. But it will if the stockholders assert themselves. And one just might.
As for background check...let's see: Started up Paypal, check. Started up Tesla, check. Started up SpaceX, Neuralink, and The Boring Company, check. And started up Starlink, check. He's clearly a slacker.
As for Parag Agrawa. He's certainly not the brightest bulb in the drawer, but at least he's sufficiently woke. Should brush up on his vocabulary if he thinks titter is all about breasts. Musk's suggestion to drop the 'w' was stating the obvious intent of Twitter. It is there to titillate. But only from the approved side.
Also Sprach Deep State.
Heh. We'll put him on the board and he'll say annoying things and we can ignore him.
Sure.
Stewardess joke, 1970s, "Would you like some TWA tea?"
The comments were approved in bulk, which is why so many mention the same thing -- the limit on the amount of stock he could buy. That's in the article too.
I don't think Musk has the right mentality for serving on the board. They were trying to rein him in. Why would he do that?
A man lost his job for saying "niggardly," which means:
"grudgingly mean about spending or granting : BEGRUDGING:
or
"provided in meanly limited supply"
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/niggardly
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/niggardly-attitude-to-word-costs-man-job-1.1258732
All of this was foretold in this most prophetic film of our age:
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2021/jul/19/idiocracy-a-disturbingly-prophetic-look-at-the-future-of-america-and-our-era-of-stupidity
J. Farmer said...
"It seems so bizarre to me that a phrase like "free speech" is used in the context of Twitter."
Then this will be a fun experiment for you. A private citizen pushing a private company in a direction the nomenclatura find ......icky.
J. Farmer said...It seems so bizarre to me that a phrase like "free speech" is used in the context of Twitter. We have at-will employment in the US, but we're going to demand that Twitter establish just cause for deleting accounts or censoring Tweets?
Why does that totally normal thing seem bizarre to you? Free speech is more than just the 1st Amendment. It is a societal value. Second, as Musk accurately pointed out, twitter is an electronic public a square. When someone invites the public in a private space, they also invite regulation. That is neither new nor controversial. What's more, you agree with it.
Why would he do what? Or did you mean why would they do that? He'll fit in. Everybody on both sides know how this particular game is played. Board game. Ha!
That CNBC laughingly jumped from titter to tits tells you all you need to know about the mentality of CNBC editors.
Althouse said...
Anyway, you can see good reason for Musk to decline the position. It's right there in Agrawal's statement: background check and fiduciary duty.
Heh, heh, heh. Althouse said douche.
Musk is probably one of the most public CEOs in the U.S. or world right now in terms of his actions and thoughts, as well as his accomplishments.
His pursuit of Twitter appears to be because:
1. They've been struggling and probably represent a solid investment opportunity.
2. He's acting against their increasingly restrictive speech standards aimed predominantly at those who express "right-aligned" views. Twitters acts over the past 2 years have been despicable in terms of promoting use of their platform for shared speech and then cracking down with suspensions or expulsions with little notice, process, or appeal. The only platform worse, to me, is YouTube and what they've done with businesses built around hosting content on YouTube.
I also think, like Ann, that Musk doesn’t have the mentality to serve on Twitter’s board. He’s a player, not a team member.
I expect he changed his mind on advice of his lawyers. Can’t trade on inside information, etc. Directors in broadly held public companies often have only a few days in a year when they are cleared by the lawyers to trade company stock.Restrictions arise from a host of things, including quarterly earnings reports, M&A, law suits, SEC investigations, and anything else that can have a material effect on stock price. Too confining and inviting of law suits for Musk.
Another potential reason for Musk not joining the board:
"Matt Bilinsky, a business attorney, suggested that the reason Musk did not join Twitter’s board was because he would not have been able to say much about the company publicly. “Since the Board announcement he’s been crowdsourcing ideas and chatting via Twitter,” he tweeted. “He quickly realized that’s all over as soon as he actually joins the Board and tapped out.”"
I thought from the beginning that Musk joining Twitter's board was a head-scratcher. Too many negatives, not enough positives. I wonder if he really had any intentions of going through with it in the first place.
I think Musk would have known about all the restrictions faced by being on a board before he accepted the board position. Maybe he had another plan for accepting, then walking away from it.
What are they going to find on the background check? Maybe he's part of the Biden Crime Family? No. I know: He has a company that is a huge CO2 generator, it burns kerosene and methane, sometimes as much as 6,800,000 lbs. at one time. That makes him a mega-climate crisis criminal. Yeah! He provides a physical service instead of Twit's mean-spirited messages. Providing goods and services to actually accomplish something useful is a good reason to stay off of Twit's board. For Elon's sanity's sake, not for Twit's health.
"Wince said...
Althouse said...
Anyway, you can see good reason for Musk to decline the position. It's right there in Agrawal's statement: background check and fiduciary duty.
Heh, heh, heh. Althouse said douche."
She also said doodie.
Now that Musk has confirmed that Twitter would not treat him in good faith, he can proceed with holding the threat of a hostile takeover over their heads for entertainment value (tests blade with thumb; smirks) - or he can buy them out before lunch. Nice to have that kind of leverage, no? Let's see how Twitter reacts to this next test. But I predict he'll end up buying them out. He's seen that the other social media platforms have all encountered existential hostility, one after the other from competitors and platform hosts alike, and he's enough of a Libertarian to not like that kind of thing.
I think Musk is going to accumulate enough stock until he can just appoint the board he wants- his only other option at this point is to sell what he owns, and he doesn't strike me as the kind of person that gives up in a fight.
He might be held responsible for doing something about the problems he currently likes to complain about if he is on the board.
He also wouldn't be able to Tweet about the company as he likes to.
Many others have already stated very clearly why a board seat would handicap Musk at a strategic level. He is not there to serve the existing mission and culture of Twitter. He is there to stir things up. From what's been said by Twitter insiders and employees, I think it is abundantly clear that they would treat him the way the Swamp treated Trump when he took office. Musk's board status would not just inhibit his penchant for making interesting, sometimes controversial, statements to the world; I think it would cripple him. Everything he said and did --everything, not just his remarks about Twitter-- would be measured for its possible effect on his duty as a fiduciary of Twitter not to disclose (or even hint at) its internal workings and non-public issues and plans. I could easily imagine him being peppered with lawsuits seeking real money for stock moves allegedly caused by any number of random remarks that were allegedly made in breach of his fiduciary duty as a board member privy to confidential information (but we can't be told what the information is, that's confidential!). And he in turn might have to sue to be given the same full and candid disclosures as other board members: how would he know that Twitter management was being absolutely even-handed in sharing information with board members?
And every time he entered the boardroom, the whiff of sulfur would surround him: he's a troublemaker, he's not one of US.
All this condenses to simple folk wisdom, here in the reversed form of the old adage: Better to be outside pissing in, than inside pissing out.
“It seems so bizarre to me that a phrase like "free speech" is used in the context of Twitter”
Not bizarre if you consider twitter a common carrier.
Sort of like, some think not accepting a woman’s right to an abortion is bizarre, until you are forced to accept the baby has rights.
I see Musk, outsmarting the one dimensional thinkers…again.
Sure, the richest man in the world can't pass a background check of any kind.
What would keep him out? He's a crook? They're all crooks.
He snorts coke and smokes weed? Who cares!
My car had to pass a smog test once. It was old and I was worried it would need a lot of repair. I had a friend who was in the testing business. I told him I was going to bring the car in but was worried about it passing. He said, 'Don't worry...it will pass : )
Musk is from South Africa and speaks something closer to British English than what the US calls English.
A "tit" is an idiot. I guess titter would be something closer to babbling idiots.
Musk is the ultimate team player, just look at what his teams build. Most boards are about justifying high executive compensation and pumping the stock price. Their "team" is at the top of the pyramid and smoke and mirrors trickles down.
The problem with Musk is he would be exposing rot and decay like Gordan Ramsey going through a failing New Jersey Bistro on kitchen nightmares.
Cernovich take:
If Elon took Twitter board seat, he’s limited to owning under 15% of the stock and also would be caged via fiduciary duties.
By declining a board seat, he’s either over Twitter already or he plans to go much bigger.
The next step is for Twitter to adopt a poison pill, or for it to throw itself into hands of a white knight, maybe Google or Bezos. Stay tuned.
Beavis, looking at a golf ball: "Tit lee ist!!!" The intellect that thinks of tits when they see the word "titter" is not much higher than Beavis'.
J. Farmer said:
"It seems so bizarre to me that a phrase like "free speech" is used in the context of Twitter. We have at-will employment in the US, but we're going to demand that Twitter establish just cause for deleting accounts or censoring Tweets? It's a free service. Twitter users aren't even Twitter's customers; they're the product. Pardon me, monetizable daily active user."
I assume then that you're OK with Musk acquiring at least a controlling interest (or even more broadly, a majority interest) and thereafter causing Twitter to adopt a "free speech" policy contrary to its current curated model.
The day before this went down: Elon Musk wants to turn Twitter HQ into a homeless shelter.
It sounds like they offered him the board seat out of fear and loathing.
From dictionary.com.
titter
verb (used without object)
to laugh in a restrained, self-conscious, or affected way, as from nervousness or in ill-suppressed amusement.
"he can proceed with holding the threat of a hostile takeover over their heads for entertainment value"
That's what I thought he was really doing to begin with. He wanted to see some heads explode and was willing to spend almost 3 billion dollars to do it. There are worst ways to spend money.
Ann needs to understand that official corporate statements and press releases are specifically designed to reach the Beavis and Buttheads of the world. Confusing titters with female anatomy was no oversight.
But I guess there are people — I'm thinking of Beavis and Butt Head types — who hear the word "titter" and titter over tits.
Actually, we titter hysterically.
Musk has been on, or dealing with, company boards forever. It's ludicrous to think he wasn't or isn't fully aware of the duties and limitations of board seats.
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