X Gon’ Give It To Ya: Elon Musk and the $44 Billion Ego Trip
By RICHIE D MOWREY for The Sassy Gazette (The Gossip You Didn’t Know You Needed)
INTRO: The Bird Is Dead — Long Live the Troll King
Once upon a time, Elon Musk was the tech world’s golden boy — a walking TED Talk with Iron Man fanfic energy. But then he bought Twitter, and the mask slipped. Underneath the Space Jesus exterior? Just another rich guy with a meme addiction, a savior complex, and a deep fear of women with blue hair.
He renamed it “X,” presumably because “Midlife Crisis” wouldn’t fit on the app icon.
This isn’t a timeline. This is a crime scene.
Let’s go.
PART ONE: $44 Billion and One Bad Impulse Control Problem
He Bought It As a Joke — and We’re the Punchline
Elon didn’t want Twitter. He made a trolling offer, tried to back out, got legally cornered, and then had to cough up $44 billion like a guy who lost a dare to himself. The man paid the GDP of a small country just to make sure his tweets got more likes.
And what did we get?
- An unhinged man walking into HQ holding a literal sink.
- Mass layoffs via cold, impersonal emails.
- A platform spiraling into its final form: LinkedIn for conspiracy theorists.
Hardcore = Hostile Work Environment
His next move? Slash the workforce, kill remote work, and demand employees be “hardcore.”
Translation: Sleep under your desk, ignore your kids, and pray your boss doesn’t replace you with a chatbot named Grok.
Spoiler: He still might.
Free Speech, But Make It Fascist
Musk claims to be a “free speech absolutist,” which apparently means:
- Reinstating banned hate accounts
- Boosting disinformation under the guise of “balance”
- Banning journalists who hurt his feelings
- Shutting down anyone who mocks his… performance
He even banned the word “cis” while letting white nationalists trend. So yes, speech is free — if you’re awful enough.
PART TWO: Welcome to X — the Platform Formerly Known as Useful
The Rebrand Heard ’Round the World (Followed by Crickets)
One day, Musk woke up and decided Twitter didn’t deserve to exist anymore. He renamed it “X,” because of course he did. The man’s entire naming strategy sounds like rejected deodorant lines.
No rollout. No public input. Just a sudden switch from “bird” to “baffling.” And a crane yanking the sign off HQ like it owed him money. (Also: no city permit. Because rich people never have to follow the rules.)
Why “X”? Because Narcissism Starts With N, But Elon Can’t Spell
This man has a fetish for the letter X:
- SpaceX
- X.com
- Model X
- And of course, X Æ A-12 — the name of his actual child-slash-password-reset question
Rebranding Twitter wasn’t strategic. It was a monument to ego.
Now the platform feels like a haunted shell of its former self — a digital ghost town where bots, trolls, and crypto bros outnumber real users 10 to 1.
Ad Apocalypse Now
Advertisers dipped. Fast.
Because while Elon might be fine cuddling up to anti-semites, IBM and Disney are not trying to sponsor that energy.
So what did he do? He blamed everyone else.
He told Bob Iger (Disney CEO) to “Go f*** yourself” live on stage — because nothing screams “visionary leader” like a public tantrum at a tech summit.
Revenue tanked. Reputation went down with it.
But hey, at least he’s still got that blue checkmark army of incels and NFT grifters.
PART THREE: The Everything App That Does Nothing Well
AI Won’t Save You, Boo
In the middle of the chaos, Musk launched Grok — his “edgy” AI sidekick that makes ChatGPT look like a Rhodes Scholar. Trained on a steady diet of dad jokes and Joe Rogan clips, Grok is what happens when an algorithm tries to impress Reddit.
Grok is supposed to save X. Spoiler: It won’t.
You can’t build trust with a chatbot when the humans have already logged off.
The Everything App That’s Mostly Just… Broken
Musk swears X will be an “everything app”: banking, messaging, shopping, porn, maybe public executions — who knows. But so far, all it offers is:
- Glitchy timelines
- Dead links
- Broken search
- And a livestream of Elon Musk’s fragile masculinity melting in real time
Users are fleeing. The verified system is a joke. The content is worse than ever.
But sure — let’s add banking. What could go wrong?
EPILOGUE: The Emperor of X Has No Clothes — But Plenty of NFTs
Twitter wasn’t perfect. But it was, at one point, a global conversation — fast, funny, vital. Under Musk, it became a shrine to self-importance and spite.
He broke it, named it after a variable, and now expects us to be grateful.
We’re not. We’re watching. And we’re laughing.
Because what’s funnier than a billionaire burning $44 billion to chase clout — and still coming off like a guy who peaked in his high school debate club?
Stay snarky. Stay sharp. Stay logged off.
— RICHIE D MOWREY, for The Sassy Gazette
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