'The Scythe Man' by Mayank Chhaya, directly inspired by the great Edvard Munch.
On hearing about the merciless manner in which Elon Musk has fired half of Twitter employees conjured up in me visions of a farmworker swinging his scythe to hack through a field.
Going by an assortment of reports it seems the sackings were indiscriminate and cruel in the way they were handed down via unsigned emails. It has been reported that those who got their emails on their company address are safe and those who got their emails on their personal emails were fired.
He may not have intended it that way, but Musk’s action has come across as gleeful and even spiteful. If one did not know better, one would think that he bought Twitter only to close it down. Clearly, he wants it to remain alive and well and profitable after sinking $44 billion of his and other investors’ billions in a company he knew was a perennial loss-maker. Now that he is in-charge, by his own admission Twitter is losing $4 million a day, a burn-rate which would leave it in a $1.4 plus hole in a year’s time on top of the $1 billion that he is reported to owe in annual interest.
I have had my share of schadenfreude in the hours and days after Musk took over Twitter but I am being a dick because thousands of people’s lives have been hit by the firings. It is unfathomable what his plan really is for a social media platform that he considers transformative for the world. Transformation does not happen in empty offices, by brutally scything through a corporate field and in the midst of people’s sighs.
Musk’s biggest challenge, of course, is to stem the revenue flight after big advertisers have either completely stopped or paused worried about the direction that the platform is headed in. Experts say the mass firings of entire teams of departments such as curation and others are deeply problematic when it comes to monitoring and preventing hateful misinformation and falsehoods which have become the fodder of social media. It is for that very reason that advertisers have pulled back.
On his part, Musk insists that there is no dilution in moderation at all and what is happening is a direct consequence of activist groups mounting a campaign against Twitter. Complaints about a distinct rise in hateful tweets have abounded. So much so that in keeping with his cheeky outlook, Musk now calls himself “Twitter Complaint Hotline Operator”. That’s funny but he may not have the last laugh as doubts and questions mount over his unsparing handling of Twitter employees so far.
Even though he has introduced a monthly subscription fee of $8 if you want the much-coveted blue tick with your name, its ability to generate vast sums of money he will need to recoup the staggering investment remains seriously doubtful. At this stage it does feel as if he has bitten off more than he can chew especially because of his three other major preoccupations, Tesla, SpaceX and the Boring Company. Notwithstanding his extraterrestrial origin, Musk too has his limits.
For a while it was amusing to see him throw around the figure of $8 to anyone and everyone, including Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and broadcaster Dan Rather. Who would have thought that eight bucks would matter so much to the world’s richest man who suddenly behaves rather penurious?