Earning that paycheck, one way or another.
King of Comedy
Elon Musk really loves his jokes. Since he's the world's richest man and the boss of several high-profile companies, that means everyone around him has to love them, too.
That probably isn't a point of friction at Musk's long-standing ventures, like SpaceX and Tesla — companies that he built up, where he's earned a devout following of loyalists who are used to his shenanigans.
But as revealed in "Character Limit," a new book about the billionaire's calamitous takeover of Twitter, New York Times reporters Ryan Mac and Kate Conger lay out how the social media site's employees quickly had to learn that, because Musk "loved to be admired," all of them had to be ready to laugh at his jokes — or else risk the fate of so many of their former coworkers who found themselves out of a job after Musk's ascension.
Some of his attempts at humor went over better than others. Mac and Conger write about one especially awkward interaction that took place after a Twitter executive was summoned to meet Musk for the first time.
After learning that the exec used to work at Google, Musk began to talk about how he was angry at Sundar Pichai, the tech titan's CEO, because he didn't put antennas into Android phones that would let them connect with SpaceX's Starlink internet service.
On a tangent, Musk then brought up that he had a friend that worked on Google's Search products. According to this friend, Google skirted anti-trust regulations by deliberately keeping its share of the search engine market under 70 percent.
"Get it?" Musk said, smirking. "Sixty-nine percent?" He looked around the room, raising his voice as he hoped for an amused reaction. "Sixty-nine percent!"
Change of Scenery
That anecdote almost sounds too much like a bad movie gag to be true. But then again, we're talking about a guy who heralded his Twitter takeover by hobbling into its headquarters holding a kitchen sink, and offered Wikipedia $1 billion to change its name to "Dickipedia."
We can't speak to how well he's ingratiated himself with the rank and file by now, but according to Mac and Conger, his personal team of sycophants have tried to appease their boss by changing some of the decor to reflect his sense of humor.
"Near the tenth-floor conference room that he often inhabited while in the office, they put up a Galerie de Meme, or meme gallery, framing printouts of some of the billionaire's favorite juvenile internet jokes," the authors wrote.
His team also replaced some of the honorees in a Wall of Fame for the site's best tweets with a few of Musk's own, such as his joke that he'd buy out Coca-Cola to put actual cocaine back into its drinks. Hilarious.
Near the commons area, someone even built a photo collage dedicated to free speech — one of Musk's obsessive ideals. Alongside such historic documents like the US Constitution and John Milton's "Areopagitica," hung a picture of Musk lugging the sink into Twitter headquarters.
Even though the site continues to bleed advertisers and has had its workforce utterly annihilated, it's heartening to hear that Musk — and his lackeys — are keeping up their usual good cheer.
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