On Scott Adams - there's a cartoonist named Keith Knight who had some thoughts. Keith Knight does a few irregular (i.e. not daily) cartoons, "The Knight Life", "The K Chronicles" and "(th)ink". Hulu made a show loosely based on him which ran for a couple of short seasons - the show was called "Woke" so that should tell you something about his politics. And he's African American. So Keith Knight said in a recent Patreon update that the grind of producing a daily comic strip is hard work, and in the case of a strip like Dilbert, the best days of which are far in the past, the returns are significantly diminished. A lot of work for not a lot of reward. Some cartoonists retire when they don't want to do the work any more, and they kind of fade away. Scott Adams found a way to retire while still keeping relevance - he got himself cancelled. Now he doesn't have to do a daily strip any more, and if he does feel like doing more cartoons in the future, he's got a built-in audience. Imagine him releasing a new book, making an announcement on Newsmax or Lindell TV or whatever, "The cartoons the libs don't want you to see! On sale at CPAC for only $99.99!" And because those people have no standards, he can just slap together some lazy ass shit and it will sell very well as long as it's at least a little bit racist. I know nobody here is worried about his financial well-being, but he'll be just fine. Whether he believes what he said doesn't matter - he said it and it was awful and he doesn't deserve our attention any more - but he's well on his way to a lucrative post-mainstream-cartooning career as a right wing grifter.
An interesting development which I came across elsewhere. Social media has effectively exited the news business which drove the run up. Facebook has been out for a while, and tiktok has driven Snap, Insta etc towards creator as opposed to news orgs. And it's broadcast not social. For a longtime Twitter drove the news agenda, but now Musk has basically wrecked that - chrono is busted, real news sources disincentivised. Garbage heavily pushed. So the idea is it doesn't really matter who you follow anymore. The subscription models being launched e.g. by Meta are for creators not users. And I don't think the main idea is that you make money via ad splits like Youtube creators. I think the idea is more that you are promoting something. The take I heard is that twitter may well not survive this transition - as it's not as good as the other platforms like Tiktok, and Musk killed the thing twitter was good at. e.g Reddit is now streaking ahead for discovery.
Great post. I think this is the case for the likes of Taibbi as well. They get a sniff of the grifter money on the right as a fanfic writer.
Musk deciding to cos-play as a J6 truther is a new level of insanity even for him. He's openly siding with Tucker who was just revealed to be a creator of fake news in order to apologise for insurrection. This man is CEO of a major public traded company
The term "corporate governance" is revealed to be a 21st century catch phrase which really means nothing.
It's really remarkable how the Telsa board have no power at all. When it all goes wrong we'll be treated to endless podcast series and Netflix documentaries about how this could have happened
One of the simplest joke formats there is, and he still totally misses. pic.twitter.com/otJaCtKbUP— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) March 23, 2023 At least he is trying hard.
It's kinda sad. He's such an obvious case of arrested development. Last night my wife and I finally got around to watching "Foxcatcher", the story of John du Pont, the weirdo du Pont heir who spent his own money to fund his fantasy of being a coach & mentor for USA wrestling. It was so obviously an attempt to buy friendship and camaraderie outside the control of his mother. Chilling stuff, but while du Pont was a ridiculous figure who ends up committing a horrible, senseless murder, you can see how his life of privilege and entitlement warped his ability to function while also shielding him from the slightest bit of self-awareness.
Two examples on this page alone of how not to mess up the joke. For Elon's next tricks, he's going to flub a "NOT" joke Borat-style, then mess up the "who's got two thumbs" setup, and finally, fail an updog.
Considering his father had a child with a stepdaughter that is 4 decades younger, he will stumble trying to wrap his head around the family tree.
Musk fired the press relations division in Twitter. When you email "press@twitter.com", you get a poop emoji sent back to you. No joke. I mean, the whole idea is a joke. But I'm not making it up.
I'm putting this here, but it could also go in the Florida Woman thread, or the Education thread. Article about the principal of a charter school in Florida who was scammed by someone pretending to be Elon Musk - she wrote a check for $100K in return for which she thought Elon Musk would contribute millions to her school in return. https://www.wesh.com/article/elon-musk-scam-florida/43467925
Was "Musk" posing as the Statute of David?!? Yes, you bastards, let that one burn an image into your brains!
The Failing NY Times, the LA Times, Buzzfeed, Politico, Vox, and the Washington Post have all said they won't pay for a blue check from Twitter and won't reimburse any employee that gets one. The Post said the check no longer "represents authority and expertise".
right what is hard to understand is you could make a serious case as to why the likes of the NYT should pay twitter millions per year for gold check. But twitter completely failed to make any case.