No Muska Please

Twitter, ‘the digital Town Square’ according to Elon Musk, is in a churn having to swallow hard this ‘big bite’ by the bad boy billionaire. $44billion thumped on the Board table with such ‘elan’ by our new tech- baron Elon.

The perfect takeover artist did it ostensibly for maintaining his image of being a ‘speech absolutist’ (Whatever that means). The Twitter blue bird is all of a flutter and a large chunk of Twitterati is in a blue funk.

The ‘poison pill’ strategy didn’t work to keep Elon’s marauding hands off the social media giant. It is only the likes of Socrates who could drink the cup of poisonous hemlock to uphold his views.

Our gentle Bharat Bro, newly eased into helming Twitter, had apparently a backseat driver in the guise of Jack Dorsey who was eased out of the Twitter CEO’s post under pressure. Still on the Board he has warmed up to the new maverick owner. So how could the Twitter Board refuse an enticing offer by Musk?

But the majority of the employees are not very chuffed at the modern day Croesus taking over the reins at age 50. There are issues about no content moderation ending up in a troll invasion and less tolerance of diverse views.

Elon Musk himself displays a singular abrasiveness when criticised. And his first Tweet after twitter’s privatisation in response to the alarm bells ringing around the social networking platform used by more than 200 million users every day was ‘The extreme antibody reaction from those who fear free speech says it all’!

Perfect adolescent petulance and glee at generating envy on the possession of an expensive toy. Ab to Musk ka hai , aur Muska hi chalega! Who knows he may persuade Trump to get back on the platform. He tweeted his displeasure over content moderation policies of Twitter’s top lawyer Vijaya Gadde straight off the bat. She was the one who barred Trump from Twitter.

Musk put his hand in his e-vehicle company Tesla Inc.’s cookie jar to scoop out some millions towards the acquisition of Twitter. He is still not spaced out with his Space X company launches giving people thrills without spills. For it was his team’s innovations in making the world’s first orbital class reusable rocket called Falcon 9 that has the world in thrall.

Musk’s theatrics have to be taken with a big pinch of salt. Do not lose your sleep over his next takeover targets. He wants to rejig ‘good ole’ Coke to put cocaine back into it and even take over the friendly McDonalds to fix all the ice-cream machines. He can tweet to his heart’s content with more tongue in cheek juvenile jibes since he will be the Big Boss. Elon is more a jesting knight than a jousting one.

Full marks to the Amul creative triumvirate to make instant use of the Twitter takeover in its Amul cheese advertisement. Brilliant punning with super marketing! ‘Yeh cheez badi hai Musk Musk! And the tagline, ‘Share it, don’t have it Elon’! is a scintillating combination of a Bollywood song, punning and soft marketing with the advice of sharing the product. Iranian cafes in Mumbai could emulate Amul and give the neighborhood “Maska Bun’ they serve an image makeover. Call it ‘Musk-ka-Bun’ till the current hubbub about Twitter lasts.

But then Iranian cafes in Mumbai have survived and retained their quaint character without Musk’s help so far. Britannia Company has the salted biscuits advertised as ’50-50: Maska Chaska’. Now the Twitterati will have to display ’Musk-ka-Chaska’ willy nilly---not 50-50 but 100 percent Musk’s own.