Is this like when that Roman emperor named his horse as a senator, or are we not quite there yet?

The most sane interpretation is that Elon Musk was payed to dilute or destroy Twitter. I can't think of anything else that would make sense.

Throwing 44 billion dollars on a company and then gutting it for everything that was valuable including a unique brand that had even its own verb?

But the sad reality is probably that a 12 years old narcissist edgelord in the body of a billionaire wanted a vanity plate.

Seems like a reasonable theory if it's the price to be paid by those in power to avoid future revolutions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_Revolution

Or to foment one of his own ;)

It's funny how many people buy into that theory. If the idea is to destroy Twitter, he would have bought it and shut it down. Making that meme real would have been the ultimate boss move and far easier than adding features to it and getting constantly yelled at by cry bullies.

This would explain things, if there was a credible suggestion for who's pulling the strings.

The theory of Elop destroying Nokia (consumer) makes sense, because he was at Microsoft, went to Nokia sold it to Microsoft at diminished value and stayed there for a good amount of time. But who would pay Musk for this? And how will he be compensated? Afaik, he's lighting a bunch of his own money on fire. Although, there has been a lot less news from him on Tesla and SpaceX, so maybe it was all a plan to keep him out of those spaces.

I've seen theories about Saudis paying for this in order to prevent the next Arab Spring, in which Twitter played a key role for the protesters to organize themselves. Seems a bit far-fetched, but these days, who knows?

The initially-too-high offer plus downturn in his stock value right after, meant a deal structure that damn-near doomed the company anyway (tons of debt).

Best-case (for him), Twitter as we knew it dies and he manages to turn the burnt-down ashes into something profitable enough to overcome that hurdle. Twitter per se cannot reasonably get out of the hole he's dug for it.

Though, arguably, the brand itself was a huge part of the value, and he just threw that in the trash.

You know a guy's going down a weird path when all defenses of his behavior amount to "I know the last twenty things he's done have looked insane and none of it's made any money, but he's got a secret genius plan, I swear! 5D chess!"

The US is already there, with an almost brain-dead 90-year old Senator being as good as gone, so that a privately-owned company doing whatever its largest owner thinks fit for the good of the company going forward doesn't even get close to that.