2021
October 28, 2022: Elon Musk buys Twitter for $44 billion. That's forty-four billion dollars.
He had tried to buy it for a while, and it was hard to work out the kinks of the deal.
Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone and Evan Williams; and was launched in July of that year. The social media service grew quickly: By 2012, more than 100 million users produced 340 million daily tweets. Twitter, Inc., was based in San Francisco, California, and had more than 25 offices around the world.
A signature characteristic of the service initially was that posts were required to be brief. Posts were initially limited to 140 characters, which was changed to 280 characters in 2017. The limitation was removed for subscribed accounts in 2023. In 2020, it was estimated that approximately 48 million accounts -- 15 percent of all accounts -- were run by Internet "bots" rather than humans.
One of its biggest users was Elon Musk, the South African-born tech billionaire who bought out other people's creations and passed them off as his own. Born with a thin skin, he couldn't handle the fact that, of the people on Twitter who didn't fall for his bullshit, half of them mocked him, and the other half blocked him -- even when he created new accounts with fake names, known as "sockpuppet" accounts. He said it was an insult to free speech. So he decided to buy Twitter, and set his own rules about free speech -- which, of course, had nothing to do with free speech.
Musk had begun buying shares of the company in January 2022, becoming its largest shareholder by April, with a 9.1 percent ownership stake. Twitter invited Musk to join its board of directors, an offer he initially accepted before declining. On April 14, Musk made an unsolicited offer to purchase the company, to which Twitter's board responded with a "poison pill" strategy to resist a hostile takeover, before unanimously accepting Musk's buyout offer of $44 billion on April 25. On October 27, Musk and Twitter closed the deal, with Musk tweeting "the bird is freed."
In essence, the richest man in the world spent $44 billion to force people to pay attention to him. And we thought Donald Trump was an egomaniac.
UPDATE: As it turned out, Musk and Trump had more in common than we thought. Having changed the name of the company to simply "X," Musk used it to promote Trump and smear President Joe Biden and, after he dropped out of the 2024 election, Vice President Kamala Harris. He even appeared with Trump at campaign rallies, making them the ultimate in toxic masculinity.
But it was even worse than that. On October 25, 2024, Politico revealed that, also in October 2022, Musk had stopped giving aid to war-torn Ukraine through his Starlink program, and shifted it to the country trying to destroy and take over Ukraine, Russia -- the country that had been helping Trump. Musk had even been aiding Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.
Both Trump and Musk had thus become agents of an enemy nation. Trump, as an American, should have been prosecuted; Musk, as a foreign citizen, should have been deported.
In the end, Musk got what he wanted: Trump got back into the White House. This led a lot of people to call Musk "the Co-President." It could also, legitimately, be said that Musk had now gotten what Trump previously wanted and got: The power of the Presidency without the responsibility.
Late in 2024, a new social media platform named BlueSky moved into operation. The idea is that it would be what Twitter had been before, even looking like it, but that people would get blocked as soon as they told easily proven lies, meaning right-wingers wouldn't last long. As Craig Brittain, a tech entrepreneur who ran for the U.S. Senate as a Republican from Arizona, but opposes Trump, wrote:
Elon Musk/Adrian Dittmann is the most blockable man on the planet, who literally changed Twitter against everyone's will because he was being blocked by the majority of users, so that they'd have to keep seeing his posts in their feed. The idea was that no one would block him anymore. Wrong again.
In a 2018 episode of the YouTube series Epic Rap Battles of History, "Epic" Lloyd Ahlquist played Musk, while "Nice" Peter Shukoff played Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. In hindsight, they did this battle way too early: Musk looked like something of a hero at the time, but has since revealed himself to be even more villainous than Zuckerberg. And while each character accused the other of racism, Musk's has since been revealed to be truly abhorrent.
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October 28, 2022 was a Friday. Game 1 of the World Series was played. The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Houston Astros, 6-5 at Minute Maid Park (now Daikin Park) in Houston. J.T. Realmuto hit a home run in the top of the 10th inning, after the Astros had come back from being 5-0 down after 3 innings. However, the Astros went on to win the Series in 6 games.
Two college football games were played. Florida International beat Louisiana Tech, 42-34 at Riccardo Silva Stadium (now Pitbull Stadium) in the Miami suburb of Miami. And East Carolina beat Brigham Young University (BYU), 27-24 at LaVell Edwards Stadium in Provo, Utah.
There were 11 games in the NBA:
* The New York Knicks lost to the Milwaukee Bucks, 119-108 at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee.
* The Cleveland Cavaliers beat the Boston Celtics, 132-123 in overtime at the TD Garden in Boston. Donovan Mitchell and Caris LeVert each scored 41 points for the Cavs.
* The Philadelphia 76ers beat the Toronto Raptors, 112-90 at the Scotiabank Arena in Toronto. Tyrese Maxey scored 44 points for the Sixers.
* The Indiana Pacers beat the Washington Wizards, 127-117 at the Capital One Arena in Washington.
* The Orlando Magic beat the Charlotte Hornets, 113-93 at the Amway Center in Orlando.
* The Atlanta Hawks beat the Detroit Pistons, 136-112 at the Little Caesars Arena in Detroit. Trae Young scored 36.
* The Minnesota Timberwolves beat the Los Angeles Lakers, 111-102 at the Target Center in Minneapolis.
* The San Antonio Spurs beat the Chicago Bulls, 129-124 at the AT&T Center (now the Frost Bank Arena) in San Antonio.
* The Denver Nuggets beat their arch-rivals, the Utah Jazz, 117-101 at the Ball Arena in Denver.
* The Phoenix Suns beat the New Orleans Pelicans, 124-111 at the Footprint Center (now the Mortgage Matchup Center) in Phoenix.
* And the Portland Trail Blazers beat the Houston Rockets, 125-111 at the Moda Center in Portland.
And there were 6 games in the NHL:
* The New York Islanders beat the Carolina Hurricanes, 6-2 at the PNC Arena (now the Lenovo Center) in Raleigh, North Carolina.
* The New Jersey Devils beat the Colorado Avalanche, 1-0 at the Prudential Center in Newark.
* The Boston Bruins beat the Columbus Blue Jackets, 4-0 at the Nationwide Arena in Columbus.
* The Winnipeg Jets beat the Arizona Coyotes, 3-2 at the Mullett Arena in the Phoenix suburb of Tempe, Arizona. Blake Wheeler scored the winning goal, 32 seconds into overtime. The Jets had been the Atlanta Thrashers from 1999 to 2011. The Coyotes had been the original Winnipeg Jets from 1972 to 1996.
* The Vegas Golden Knights beat the Anaheim Ducks, 4-0 at the T-Mobile Arena in the Las Vegas suburb of Paradise, Nevada.
* And the Vancouver Canucks beat the Pittsburgh Penguins, 5-1 at the Rogers Arena in Vancouver.
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