Whatever happened to nice, geeky Elon Musk?

A screen grab taken from a video posted on the Twitter account belonging to Musk (yes, it has a blue tick) showing the day he walked into Twitter HQ in San Fancisco carrying a sink in October, before his contentious takeover of the company was finalised. — Twitter/AFP

Elon Musk bought Twitter for US$44bil (RM204bil) recently.

And he did it in typical outlandish Musk style, carrying a kitchen sink into the Twitter offices – to “let that sink in”? I guess. It was definitely Musk declaring victory in purchasing the social media network, and sure enough he tweeted, “The bird is freed”.

Musk is Twitter’s saviour. Or at least that’s the picture he’s painting. But remember, he didn’t want to actually buy the company. He offered to buy Twitter earlier in 2021 and then flip-flopped about it, and Twitter sued Musk to make him honour his commitment to, basically, overpay. So Musk buying Twitter isn’t a win, it’s a big loss for him, despite him getting ahead of the narrative to play it like this is what he wanted all along.

Now he’s scrambling to figure out how to make money from Twitter. The platform is very good at spreading news and information in real-time but no one has really figured out how to monetise it.

Musk’s first idea – which he forced Twitter engineers to stay in the offices and work on over his first weekend as Twit Overlord – was to get users to pay for their blue verification ticks. Eight bucks a month (RM37).

Then Musk, ever the free speech enthusiast, banned American comedian Kathie Griffin for “impersonating him”, and stated that imposter accounts had to labelled clearly as parody or they would face lifetime bans. A free speech enthusiast making the parody label itself a parody is, you guessed it, parody. Or it should be.

Now there’s talk that eventually Musk wants to put all of Twitter behind a paywall.

Doesn’t sound like an open public square. Sounds more like a money grab by someone who has realised there’s no way this company he just bought is going to generate enough revenue to pay back the billions he borrowed to buy it in the first place.

And yes, Musk is one of the world’s richest people, but that’s mostly tied up in the stock of his electric vehicle company, Tesla. To buy Twitter he needed help from American banks and the Saudis. And be certain that everyone who gave Musk money is going to want that money back at some point.

But who knows, maybe Musk’s plans to charge for the blue tick and put Twitter behind a paywall will work. After all, Musk built Tesla. Helped build PayPal back in the infancy of the Internet, he’s smarter than you! And Musk is most definitely smarter than me, and a much better business person – but let’s be clear about one thing: ego trumps intelligence.

And I know ego.

And that’s what I smell all over Elon Musk. All over his tweets. All over his preening appearances where he’s making duck lips posing for photos at the Met Ball while his mum laughs behind him like he’s a preteen boy just having some fun and not a 51-year-old man who should know better.

This image of Musk as the world’s smartest man, tech genius, wearing leather jackets, slim-cut jeans and plain T-shirts is all a carefully cultivated creation.

If you see pictures of the real Musk, who he was before all this, balding, geeky smile, he looks every bit the tech nerd. He also looks like a nice guy. Bright, talented, bound for great things.

But the geek eventually decided he didn’t want to be a geek anymore. He clearly got a hair transplant, a stylist, maybe even some writers to help him appear witty on Twitter. And you know what, all that is fine too. Go for it.

But don’t start believing your own hype.

Musk, who probably wants to be the closest thing we have to a real-life Tony Stark, is drinking his own Kool-Aid. And now he’s purchased his own favourite app in Twitter and there is a version of the future where this does not end well for him.

Does he have a plan? I’m sure he does, but remember, all that intelligence is useless if Musk has let his ego take control.

What if Musk’s priorities aren’t innovation and business as much as they are attention-seeking to make up for all those years of having to earn the spotlight? If that’s the case, the Musk that owns Twitter is a very different Musk than the one who got him there.

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Big Smile, No Teeth columnist Jason Godfrey – a model who once was told to give the camera a ‘big smile, no teeth’ – has worked internationally for two decades in fashion and continues to work in dramas, documentaries, and lifestyle programming. Write to him at [e-mail] and follow him on Instagram @bigsmilenoteeth and facebook.com/bigsmilenoteeth. The views expressed here are entirely the writer's own.