Entrepreneur reacts to Elon Musk buying Twitter - CIFC Episode 134

And so Elon writes back to him, he says, what did you get done this week?

What a perfect response.

And then he says. And then he says, I'm not joining the board. This is a waste of time. On 14 April, he made an offer. On April 25, there was an agreement made, and it's for a ludicrous valuation.

It was like, 30% above.

Yeah, yeah.

It's called a bear hug.

Okay, so what? Explain that.

So usually a bear hug is done.

Hello, sir.

Hello.

Welcome back.

Me too.

So today, it's a remarkable day. It's actually Halloween today that we're recording. This will be out in a few days, but Daddy Elon has done it.

Oh, D. Trump's back.

Yep. So we're gonna roll the intro, and then we're gonna talk about Elon Musk and his takeover of Twitter.

Ex Special Forces sniper turned entrepreneur, I've scaled numerous businesses to eight figures. My name is Matt Ryder. This is my podcast, and I'm telling you to put that coffee down.

As we start, let's give some timeline.

Right.

Because I've done some research. I'm actually. I've actually done the research here.

Young Jamie.

So what happened was on January 31, must start buying shares in Twitter.

Yes.

Right.

By April, he owns 9.3%. Because of that, he was invited to join the board, and he was gonna do that. Twitter were obviously feeling like something's happening here. Why has Daddy Elon bought 9.3 of us? And so he was gonna join the board, but then he'd started tweeting somewhat irresponsibly on. In their opinion, and he had a tweet that asked, is Twitter dying? And so then the CEO of Twitter, in a.

Probably a.

Wanting to tank them in an attempt to kill.

Yeah.

The CEO texts him. Now, all these texts have come out.

Because this Jack Dorsey, when he's CEO. No, this is post Jack Dorsey.

Yeah. And that guy's name. Let me look it up. I can't remember. I wrote it down somewhere. Anyway, doesn't matter. He's fired.

Gone. Gone.

But so he texts him. He texts Elon and he says, it's. It's my responsibility to tell you it's not helping me make Twitter better in the current context. In reference to his text.

This is fair enough.

Yeah.

And so Elon writes back to him. He says, what did you get done this week?

What a perfect response.

And then he says. So he sends that. That's one text. And then another one comes through. They. In the screenshot that they have Available of that. It doesn't have the time stamp. So I don't know what the. Yeah, I don't know what the difference was in between.

What did you get done this week?

Yeah, what did you get done this week? And then he says, I'm not joining the board, this is a waste of time. So then this is in April now he says that he's going to make an offer.

Right.

So he, he, he, this is in April. He says he'll start making an offer to take Twitter private and in on 14 April. He made an offer on April 25. There was an agreement made and it's.

For a ludicrous valuation. It's like 30% above.

Yeah, yeah.

So that's got a bear hug.

Okay, so explain that.

So usually a bear hug is done privately.

Okay.

So the board has a responsibility to act in the fiscal best interest of the shareholders. That's what the board is there for.

Right.

And if he makes an offer that is in the best interest of the shareholders, like they, they have to take it of their mandate. Now the, the board of Twitter is a, is a fairly left leaning board and so is the entire organization. And obviously he's not, he's come out as a Republican, yada yada.

Right.

So they're at odds there because they are like, oh no, he's going to.

Yeah, he's a guy.

Yeah, he's a bad guy. Yeah, Orange man, bad type stuff. And so get onto Orange Man.

Yeah.

But so doing it publicly, it, it put them in a position where he, like they almost, they had to say yes, otherwise the whole board could lose their job.

Yeah.

Because it's like, well, you're not acting in the financial interest of the shareholders because like every shareholder at Twitter would have been like, yes, please give me a 30% premium for my stocks. So he was fucking Ben, terrifying them. You will do it.

So it's interesting you say that, that they were acting in the best interest of their shareholders and perhaps not themselves because of how things did eventually unfold. So let me carry on. So on April 25th there's an agreement made, right. And that's this 44 billion dollar gonna buy it, which is overpaying for all the shares.

Yeah.

And he, he's a, you know, like nobody knows exactly who all of his investors are in that. Nobody's talked about that. But there's some Saudi money.

Oh, there's a lot of all different types of money.

Yeah, yeah.

Because like the thing is they'd have to get special interest groups to get that money because it wanted so much money. But also like the, the revenue to. To earnings. Like the. Sorry, the earnings to valuation ratio of Twitter is mind bogglingly stupid. I think it's like 190 times or 160 times gross revenue. Not ebit, not how you would normally.

Yeah.

Like they're barely $100 million in revenue.

Yeah.

And they're.

And there's several hundred million dollars in debt.

Yeah. They've never turned a profit.

Yeah, never.

It's like. And There was a YouTube video which we can maybe put somewhere up there on a day in the life of working with Twitter, and the person didn't work. They were like, I went to the commissary and I, I got a chai latte and then we just chilled out in a silence pod. And then I took a meeting. And then it was like four hours later, took another meeting. And then it was just a whole bunch of ping pong and like random shit.

I mean, awesome.

It's just equity and diversity, people. That's. That's what Twitter's become.

Well, evidently. Okay, so then on May. So April 25, agreement made. On May 13, the deal's on hold because of spam accounts. And so Elon just starts talking about, there's so many spam accounts. There's so many. And he offered a lower price.

Yeah.

So then Twitter come out and the CEO says that less than 5% of their accounts are bots.

But refused to give any evidence. Right.

Yep. Refused to give any evidence. And in response to that, Elon just tweets the poo emoji. Richest man of the world and the CEO of Twitter.

Right.

So just a poo emoji. Tag him.

Say he doesn't know anything about social media.

Yeah.

Greatest social media mind of our generation.

Yeah.

Paraga is the guy's name.

Paraga. Yeah.

So he adds him with a poo emoji. So then in June, still trying to walk away and claim the company is actively resisting and thwarting information, his information rights, he's still trying to get out of it in June, in July, he tries to officially call off the whole thing. And that's when all these like lawsuits and everything go crazy. It started as musk pushing and Twitter resisting. So, like initially he was trying to buy Twitter.

Right.

And they, you could tell that the board, as you said, was like a bear hug of like, oh, we kind of have to now.

Right.

In the interest of our shareholders.

Because he did it publicly. They're in. They have to.

But now the tides have turned and they're like, no, you're fucking buying this company.

Right, yeah.

And so the stock price tanked. Exactly.

So in July, Twitter formally sues Musk and he sues back. And it all revolves around their inability to think.

I think Musk used Link Laters, I think, as their main.

What's that? What do you mean?

The nasty and nasty, like.

Oh, the lawyer. Yeah, yeah, right. Well, it didn't work because. So the whole lawsuit revolves around the bots and that they can't provide accurate data on that. And in August, a whistleblower exposes that Twitter actually has no way to count that.

Right.

So goes in front of, you know, whatever it goes in front of in America, and they don't properly count spam accounts. And Musk uses that to further try and get out of the deal. Then on October 4, he proposes closing the deal on the original terms and acknowledges in a call that was like a. It's not a media thing, it was on a call to someone else. So the call was recorded that he's grossly overpaid. And as of October 27, he owns Twitter. So then on November.

Let that sink in.

Yeah.

So on November 8th, that's when it'll become. Or they take the first steps in it actually becoming a private company. So that's the timeline. Kind of weird. Like I. Is that how you remember it?

Did you notice that? Did you report at any stage when. When Musk managed to liquidate $8 billion of Tesla into his personal account without. Without ever hitting the news?

So that's the, that's the interesting part, right? Like, speculate with me. Why do you think all this happened? Because, you know, I'm a daddy Elon fan like everybody else, right. I think that he is a different type of human. I'm sure that he makes mistakes, but he's clearly neurodivergent in some way or another.

One of those Valerian human beings that only comes out of like hibernation once every 10,000 years, possibly in order to hurt or kill us.

Right.

We'll find out.

I'm. I'm Team Elon and I'm hoping that he is a good guy because if he's a bad guy, we're all cooked. Like, you know, when we eventually all own Teslas and the Tesla just like the doors lock on it one day and driving you to the incineration factory, like that'll be a problem, right? Yeah, I'm hoping those days come. But. So there was some speculation me and you talked about, like, maybe the Whole thing was just so that he could take money out of. Out of Tesla without it being.

It took 8 billion liquid.

So people would think, oh, he did that in order to pay for Twitter. So there's nothing wrong with Tesla. Don't worry about that.

That's what I would say. I reckon, like, I reckon he wanted to buy Twitter. I think he probably wanted to buy it and then went in, realized he was going to grossly overpay for it. But then, like, he kind of raised the money, done the things he wanted to do, and then I think he probably realized this is a pretty good time to liquidate some cash because, like, hey, look, everybody, look what's happening over here. Because, like, there's no other person who could liquidate $8 billion of their own stock without completely crashing the company. Like, if Mark Zuckerberg did that, there would be no Facebook to log into the next day. It would be just a bereft company. So that. I think that that's probably what happened. Like, it probably started as a genuine incident, intent to want to buy it, and then from there realized he could probably get away with this at the same time. Because that is the hard thing about being a billionaire that owns a giant tech company. If there is a hard thing is a lot of your money is very, very locked up. So, like, what Zuckerberg? Zuckerberg's obviously very wealthy man, but from a cash reserve standpoint, he wouldn't have that much compared to what he's worth because he. It's all locked. But, like, Facebook is him. He is face Facebook.

Yeah, yeah.

So the moment that he tries to liquidate anything like that, all the stockholders would just run away.

Yeah.

So, like, there's not many people that have been able to do that successfully. And 8 billion is a decent nest egg, I think.

So he. You reckon Elon now has that 8 billion in cash, essentially?

Well, yeah, he does. I mean, he paid half of it in tax, but yeah, man, like, and.

Of the billionaires around, there aren't many cash billionaires.

Yeah.

That have that right.

That's sitting in the exceptional. Yeah, I mean, may. He's invested in other things since then, but that dude has a ton of liquid. He pulled it out. I don't know what he put it into, but it wasn't the Twitter deal.

Yeah, yeah.

Like, that's all other people's money. So, like, I think Elon's probably playing 4D chess. I think in terms of an entrepreneur, he's probably the greatest entrepreneur ever live.

Yeah.

Better than Rockefeller and all those dudes, like, yeah, he's, he's, he knows what he's doing.

Yeah.

And he's a doer as well. He's a very interesting CEO because he is also the head engineer of SpaceX. Like, he's the head engineer.

Yeah.

So, yeah, it's a very strange situation, but Twitter is an interesting one because the valuation is crazy, stupid, crazy stupid. Like, and I don't understand, like, you know, but that happens heaps in tech. Like, I was talking to a guy the other day, his company just got valued at $1 billion. They have a $1 million top line revenue.

Yeah, right.

So, so what, what's, where's that coming from?

Well, who knows? So there's two types of valuation. Essentially there's a VC valuation and a finance valuation.

Okay.

Finance valuation is how a bank would value your business. Like, if a bank were to value Twitter, they would value it at nothing, be negative money.

Right.

But what, the valuation that you're seeing is the last round of money that they raised based on that number. Okay, so like Twitter is worth $150 billion. No, no, no. They managed to find some putts who runs a VC firm to buy 3%, right. Or whatever, at the valuation of.

Okay.

Or like the stocks are at a valuation of. So when you buy shares in Twitter on the, on the exchange, like that percentage equals that. Because they managed to raise money on that and then when they IPO'd, they managed to maintain that.

Right.

And go up. But it's not real. It's fucking pretend.

Well, it's realist shit to the people who just got their shares bought.

Right?

So right now Twitter is for sure worth $44 billion.

But, you know, in a month's time, there's a private company be worth less.

Yeah, well, that's, that's what's going to be interesting, right, Is like, what's the, what's the plan for Twitter? So let's talk. So now he's got it, right? Like he owns it. It's done.

Be interesting if he buys Rumble next. That'll be really interesting.

Yeah.

Who owns Rumble? Yeah, I don't know.

I don't know. But I had to look through all their terms and conditions the other day and actually today, right, because seventh levels starting Rumble and there's like four different ways that you can have your content on there. And depending on the way that you have it on there is how much of the monetization split you get. Okay, so you can choose to allow Rumble. That's exclusive content.

Yeah, Right.

Okay.

So Rumble. But you have to choose all or nothing.

Right.

So you can have exclusive, and that includes YouTube. So you can, like, literally post nothing anywhere else that. So you can't repurpose that video anywhere else.

Okay.

Right.

Just that video. So you have to make specific, specific.

Rumble content, and you get a very high share in the revenue.

Yeah.

The next one down, like, how high?

What sort of percentage?

I can't remember, but it was like. I think it was like 40% of the revenue.

Okay, but that's still not better than YouTube. YouTube's like 50%.

Is it?

Yeah. Yeah.

Well, in some cases, it's. It's more than 50%. In some. Some creators, it's like 55%.

Yeah. Right.

Maybe I may have read it.

Right.

I was perusing, but I know there's four types. The next one was completely exclusive except for YouTube.

Okay.

So you can still post on YouTube, then it was exclusive and then added in a bunch of stuff. And then it was personal use.

Right.

So personally. So you get no revenue.

Right.

Whatsoever, but you can just use Rumble to post on, do whatever you want.

Yeah, yeah.

But lots of dudes are using Rumble advertising on Rumble right now. It's going really well.

Really?

Yeah.

Rumble is really growing.

Wow.

Okay.

Yeah, we're seeing, like, a mad diversification. Have you seen, like, Facebook's, like, advertising revenue numbers have taken a massive dive?

Yeah.

Because it's just. They're making it. And for some reason, they just released another update. Making even harder. The email specifically said, like, the email from Facebook, from Meta said, we have made the advertising less accurate, less effective, and more expensive.

Why?

Those are the three they had checked boxes. Less accurate, less effective, more expensive.

For real.

I was like, that doesn't make any sense.

Thanks, guys. I was like, okay, so like, YouTube is, I think if you looked at you. Because YouTube was burning cash for a long time, like, five years ago, YouTube never made a dine of profit. I dare say they would be now. Because now, like, the advertising on YouTube is extremely effective.

Yeah.

Although why everyone doesn't just pay the five bucks a month for no ads is beyond me. You can't go back beyond me. I'm shocked when I see an ad because I'm not signed into my account.

Yeah.

I haven't seen an ad on YouTube.

I. You know, my rip has. He watches these drawing. There's like, these drawing tutorial things that he watches, and I don't want those coming up in my feed and wrecking my history and all that and, like, confusing the algorithm. So he's not logged into my account.

Yeah.

And ads come up, right?

Yeah.

Like, you poor sucker.

You can get a YouTube kids account, I think.

Can you?

Yeah, I might have to look into that.

There's an app. All YouTube Kids app.

Yeah, yeah.

It's all verified content, only made for kids. And.

Yeah.

Algorithms.

You know, he's not on there that much. He watches this one drawing channel that teaches you how to draw.

Summer watches terrible content. Summer watches like this person who takes like Barbie dolls.

Yeah. Yeah.

Loves it.

Yeah.

Hundreds of millions of views.

Hundreds of millions.

Hundreds of millions. CPA.

No revenue.

Yeah.

CPM.

Like 001.

Yeah.

As kids ain't got no money.

Yeah.

They can't click your ads.

It's.

They click on. But they're buying anything.

Exactly.

Okay, so this Ballin motherfucker walks into Twitter carrying a kitchen sink.

Yeah.

And then proceeds to fire 75%. No. So this is the thing. So he fired the CEO and the CFO straight away and two other people who seem to be mostly nameless in the media.

And there's.

There's all these reports that he's going to fire 75% of the staff, but he. He denies that. And there's nowhere has that. Like when they say they're claiming that he's going to fire 75% of staff. Pretty sure that's just like what will scare and intimidate people. Let's say that Elon is going to fire 75% of staff because there's no evidence he may still. Yeah, exactly. Probably should. But there's no evidence of that and he denies it. I think what's interesting about Elon, sort of, you know, not that I know the guy. If you're watching Daddy Elon, this is the one podcast.

He listens.

Yeah. You listen to it in the car. Those guys. Those coffee is for closest guys. They're the funniest.

Two cool guys talking.

Talking about things they barely know.

Yeah.

So he has been sort of quoted before, like, as he's a universal basic income guy. He supports that. But I think it's because he knows.

I think he said he supports that when it. There will be a time and when it's necessary.

Yeah. Because I think he knows he is going to get half. More than half the world fired.

Right.

Like, because, you know, Tesla's got a truck.

Yeah. Right.

Once it's totally automation, that's the end of all driving roles.

Really. Yeah.

It'll be a great biz op, though. So there'll be syndicated buying of trucks. That's how it will work. That's already a business. So you can buy a big rig for 50 grand. They're shockingly cheap.

Right.

50 grand will buy you a big.

Rig in the U.S. really?

Not a brand newie, but like 2018, 2019, you can buy a big rig.

Okay.

I was in an Uber when I was in the States in the. I was a big rig driver. He was telling me about it and I was like, I don't know how much they cost, how much? I was just asking him questions about 50 grand. I'll buy you a decent one.

Because I know in Australia looking like quarter million dollars.

Yeah, but I mean, Australia, the pricing of anything is ridiculous.

Yeah.

So. But even that pretty cheap. I mean, fuck, my car costs a quarter of a million dollars. You can't do anything with it. You know what I mean? Your brother's cars are a little bit more than that. You can't make a business out of it. So in the States you can syndicate by the truck. So you own 20% of the truck, you have 20% of the maintenance, and then you, you have 20% of the revenue. You know, So I think what will happen is those trucks will obviously be a lot more expensive, but they will not have a lot of the costs associated with which is the fuel and the time. You'll be able to be far more efficient in how you run them because, like there's no driver.

Yeah.

So it'll be a legit business. And then people will start being coaches and how to do that.

And the rotor or you'll be selling that.

I've already. We're in talks with a trucking automation guy at the moment.

Really? Yeah. There you go.

The world, the world's a strange place.

They like to take the money out of the trucker's hands and put it into the sales guy's hands.

Hey, whatever, Lucky.

You're listening to the sales guy podcast.

Yeah.

Not the truck guy podcast.

Those poor guys.

Okay.

So he walks in carrying a kitchen sink. What a prop. And he does it real mad, awkwardly, just him by himself.

Right.

Like it.

It's almost like it didn't make any sense.

My favorite part is he then doesn't know what to do with it. So he walks in, he's carrying it, and then he can see like things heavy. Where do I put it? And it's got no, it's a sink.

Right.

So there's no base for him to put it down. So he's like, ah. And then they cut the camera where he obviously was like, get One of these people in, why am I holding this?

Yeah, let that sink in.

Yeah.

So he walks in, fires a CEO, CFO, there's talk of 75 of staff. He then tweets the bird is freed.

Yeah.

In response to that comes now let me make sure I'm getting this dude's position right. I didn't even bother with his name. But he's the EU commission of the internal market. Whatever the job.

Yeah. So the, the EU has very, very strict terms on what you can and can't say on social media platforms.

So he replies immediately to the bird is free. And he says in Europe the bird will fly by our rules. And he's referring to the requirement of tech companies to take down hate speech, abuse and incitement.

I would just remove the platform from those.

Well, this is what's interesting.

That's what I would do as, as him, I would go, okay, I'll take the hit for a little while. Because he has probably has a huge cash Runway. I'm assuming he over borrowed by a fair few billion, you know, at least 10. I would say that he'd have as a cash Runway. And then from there I would, I would remove from the market and then.

From Europe, you reckon?

I would, I would, in the short term I would remove from Europe or. But I would stay in the non EU countries.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Right. So I would surround. I would do the op. I would do the Putin strategy. I would surround it and. But I wouldn't allow it in those countries. And I would make the people demand.

Yeah.

That the government make the changes required to let Twitter back in.

Yeah. Well, so the commentary around it when in Europe, they're now saying that, you know, we, you'll, you'll. The social media will look the way we want it to look.

Yeah.

You know, authoritarian regimes like that quite a bit as well.

Yeah.

Like dictators also very much like to control the way that social media and what people are allowed to say on it. So I think that. Exactly as you point out there, I think that that will come to a head at some point.

Yeah.

If you remove the platform. People, people who use Twitter love it, they rely on it. You know, I don't use it. They give two shits about it. We'll probably get back on it now.

Well, this is the thing.

Interesting.

So what happens now? Right, like what happens on Twitter now, like from a business standpoint, that's what we're here talking about.

Right.

Sales, marketing, that kind of shit. Do do like you've never advertised on Twitter we set up an account for you and that was as far as it went. We did the same for me. Like when, when, when he announced it, I was like, oh, well, I never used Twitter and daddy Elon says I have to get it, so off I go to get it. But jokes aside, I assumed when he said he was buying it and didn't know any of this detail, like I just woke up to the morning one day and it's Elon Musk buying title buying.

The thing is like, if you get rid of the infrastructure, it's. It's already a negatively revenue producing entity. So get rid of all the infrastructure. Fire everyone that has anything to do with Europe.

Okay.

Get rid of all the offices, leases, sell it off. Just like fire. Sell everything. Europe, fire hundreds of thousands of people and say, your government made me do it. That's what I do. Like that seems like the most logical step.

Right?

Because it's not like he has a giant profit center in Europe. He doesn't have a profit center anywhere. So the best place to build a tech companies in the US So why not just rebuild it in the US and the supporting states like Australia, I don't think would have those laws on the books when it comes to hate speech on Twitter and stuff like that.

Well, I'm not sure about that. But we do have, we, we certainly don't have freedom of speech. Well, that's the thing.

It's not codified in the Constitution.

So that's what's interesting. And I think depending on where our listeners are, I know there's a lot of people in the States that are listeners. Is a lot of people don't realize where people, A lot of people outside.

The U.S. the U.S. is the only place that happens.

Yeah.

A lot of people don't recognize the fact that, you know, freedom of speech. And everybody carries on about freedom of speech. Like you are probably. Oh, there's a couple of like Eastern Bl. Who like resisted all the way.

Right. Yeah.

But in the US you're pretty much the only large country that has freedom of speech. We don't have that.

Everyone here thinks we have it though. You speak to people and I go, no, we don't have it. And they go, no, we do. And I go, you want to make a bed?

Yeah.

There was a, there was a comedian that got jailed for 18 months for making a joke about Islam. That happened like two years ago.

Yeah. And I think like what it is, is in Australia is I can't remember.

The exact section 18.

I think, yeah, maybe that's Canada. It's there. But anyway, it's, it's that you're not allowed to be an. So you can still say what you want, but you can't say it in order to upset someone. That's the, that's the delineation.

Subjective.

Well, that's the issue. Right. And if you recall, it was Andrew Bolt that really made that a high profile case. It was an article that he wrote that revolved around indigenous woman's heritage and that got him in a lot of. And he was found guilty.

It.

It like they, it held up.

Right.

So we do not have freedom of speech. You can't just say whatever you want. But online like you can just say things into the ether because here it's like you can't say it to upset a person at anybody.

You're fine.

Probably.

I don't know. Right. I don't know.

But anyway, so in the States there's, there's no like what happens currently and there's a lot of people pushing to change. This is. The tech platforms are not responsible for what is said on them. That is the, that is the case.

Currently.

You, you are responsible for what's said and they've done a good job of kind of passing the buck on that in that like if you're an admin of a group you can be responsible for posts in the group.

Right.

But the company itself, they're not. They're not at all.

Yeah.

Which I think is like.

Seems fair.

Yeah.

To me seems like that's a pretty good compromise.

Yeah.

But there's push for that to come in in the state. So it'd be interesting to see if that like now that could be advanced as a panic response to this. What do you reckon?

I can't see it happening in the U.S. i think people like there's a reason why it's the second amendment.

Right.

I'm sorry? The first amendment.

Right.

It's the most important thing. Second thing being guns being the second amendment being the second most important thing. That's why it's written in that order.

Yeah, yeah.

So like having grown up in the states, it's a very. It's sort of like sort of small social things that you don't really notice until you leave, you know. But that, that freedom of speech I think is an important component of and, and Twitter is. They're supposed to be soapboxes.

Right.

They're supposed to be the town square of where you can just go and say whatever you want and people are free to disagree with you. That's where the soapbox come from.

Yeah.

People come in, they grab a box, right. Soapbox, and they stand on there and they say what they want, they say what they feel in the town square. And then people can call them a idiot, throw rotten tomatoes at them, but they have an opportunity to, to say it.

Yeah.

And that's like sort of the only place that's. That's held that up.

Yeah.

Which, which is why the greatest innovations. Greatest innovations will happen through conflict.

Yeah.

And so like, for me, I think the best way, like if someone has a really shitty idea.

Yeah.

The best way is to just ask them questions about it.

Yeah.

Whereas like in a non freedom of speech environment, then you end up with all these echo chambers of people having shitty ideas but being really siloed. And then like they don't get asked questions about it. Which means like they don't. People don't have an opportunity to see how stupid some of those views are.

So I totally agree, but let me play devil's advocate is that in the past you had to stand on your soapbox and you had access to the 10 people who were there.

Yeah. Right.

So the, the critique of that, not applying that template, not applying to social media, is that now the reach of those people is, you know, unlimited. And their ability to radicalize and reach, you know, marginalized people, fringe groups, that kind of stuff is massively increased.

So I would say. Do you know the Federalist Papers are.

No.

So the Federalist Papers are. Is what Andrew was. Alexander Hamilton wrote in order to get the Constitution of the United States written.

Okay, Right.

So this is like pre Constitution. The Federalist Papers was a series of 50. I could be wrong. I'm sure the comments will let me know, but I think it's 51 essays.

Okay.

It was supposed to be three men and then Alexander Hamilton ended up writing almost all of them. He wrote 35 of the 51, I believe.

Right.

And they're just papers which were disseminated throughout New York and then they got further and further and further, but they just physically wrote them down.

Okay, Right.

That Federalist Paper, they became so profound that that became. They became the basis of the US Constitution.

Okay.

And that is during a time where there was no Twitter, there was no nothing. So that, that spread to the entire country of which then Hamilton was. Then he like he got the Treasury. Okay. So. And it was all because of that.

Yeah.

So he was sort of fighting against it. He managed to get that through because of those essays.

Okay.

So now listen, Alexander Hamilton's Obviously a very smart once in a, you know, probably multi generational type human being until.

Elon Musk came along.

Yeah. But I think, like, it goes to show that with the correct application.

Yeah.

Of intelligence, intent and something that's well written or an argument that is worthwhile. I. I don't think you need, like, to have Twitter to make it go the distance. You know, it's like when people say, oh, they weren't counting on people having guns like they have now in the Second Amendments. Like, well, have you read the Second Amendment? Yeah, they were like, there are specific sightings of people, like, asking, okay, yeah, but I have six cannons at my house. They go, fucking oath, you can have cannons, brother.

Fire them up.

They go. Fire them away. And they're like. Because they even had Gatling guns by then, they had to say they had machine guns back then. And people don't really realize what the intent of that was. It's like, no, the intent of that amendment is to stop the government for being able to take you down. So it's like anything we have sort of you can have, you know, but. So I think, like the. I think. I think, you know, a good message will go a long way even if you don't have a huge platform.

Yeah.

Okay. Excellent rebuttal, sir. I have nothing to come back from, mostly because I was only doing it to play devil's advocate. I agree with you 100.

But I grew up in the US so. So I do have a different view on a lot of that stuff than most people do, especially in Australia.

Yeah.

Like, my view on guns is different to yours.

Yeah.

Hit us with it. Let's get.

Like, I'm. Let's make sure we get canceled like I'm Second Amendment. Yep. Sweet. Sounds good.

Like, I didn't know that's different to mine.

Well, I've talked to you about it before.

Yeah, I'm pro gun. I mean, whatever. I think that my take on that is that America should keep their guns, but I don't think we should. Like, I. Like, I think because it's just culturally very different. And I think that, like, if we still had guns, we should be allowed to keep them too, but we don't. And so I think that the change is more dangerous than. Than leaving it the way it is.

Yeah, that's fair enough. I thought the. I wasn't here during the buyback, but my uncle was telling me about it, said it was pretty fucking crazy. Yeah, like.

Well, I mean, I was in high school back.

Right.

Like, I was in high School. So I don't. I don't know too much about. I didn't have any guns or anything. But the. The sentiment in Australia that, as I recall, you know, now, of course there'll be people that disagree with this because they felt differently, but overall the sentiment, Australia was like, yeah, right.

But that's kind of the sentiment for anything. Australia is a pretty apathetic.

That's what I mean.

Right.

So that's why. That's why it's an. Okay, we still go to the beach. Yeah, all right.

Fuck.

I probably don't need.

That works in Australia. But I also think that, like, we have, like, it's a very compliant nation. Yeah, to a fault, I think.

Totally.

I think, yeah. Like, government could be like, hey, everyone, jump off that cliff and be like, all right. There'd be a good chunk of people, they'd be like, mate, just jump off the cliff. All right.

Yeah.

Well, it'd be interesting to see how that goes again in the future because I think now that, like, a lot of the, you know, say the vaccination stuff, right? Because most. Most people say. I was one of them. I was just like, oh, I'm gonna get it anyway. In fact, I jumped the queue. I pulled the disabled veteran and was like, I'm getting it early. All you. You can die covered. And now, now that it's come out, that there was actually no reason for everyone to get it, like, you get it for yourself, but you're not going to stop transmission and you're not going to make it less likely to kill grandma if she got it. If she got her vaccine.

Right.

I think now that people are starting to find that out, that they're starting to be like, hey, my buddy got fired, like, because he. Because he didn't do it. Like, this is unfair.

Well, I had, like, family members on social media go, if you're not going to get the vaccine, you can unfriend me now. I was like, interesting. It's a bold choice, Cotton. Let's see how it works out for him.

Yeah.

But, yeah, I think, like, we had a very, like, we're a very interesting country because we're so small. So I see, like, a lot of people. This is getting a bit off top, but I see a lot of people. There's no time, like, like, oh, like, why don't. Why doesn't America just use the same system we do? Because we. They have double the people in LA.

Yeah.

There's 52 million people in California.

Yeah.

Like, if we had 52 million people in this country it wouldn't work. Yeah, it would collapse like a dying star. I think it's only like only 40% of people in Australia pay any effective tax.

Really? Yeah. Wowza.

Yeah, 40%. So 60% of people pay zero effective tax because the net, the network, they still pay tax.

It cost more than that.

It costs more to the government than what they bring in.

Yeah.

So like there's a, this very small percentage of people in Australia that are actually paying all of the bill and like that's fine for now but you know, you, you keep extrapolating that out and we get more and more and more people and especially if like, you know, currently what's happening is like the divide between rich and poor is getting bigger. The middle class is growing too though, so like overall everyone's doing better.

You know what I mean?

Like the rich are doing better, the poor are doing better than what the poor were 10 years ago. The middle class is getting bigger, but the rich are getting much richer.

Yeah.

Like, and so like, but if that, that keeps going and that 40% don't pay tax turns into like, you know, so that 60% turns into 80% of people that don't pay any tax, it's going to be a hefty burden for those top income earners to.

Yeah, absolutely.

And it's like, well then I'll just, you know, do like what the Prime Minister of the, of UK's Mrs. Is doing and she's a non tax resident UK billionaire.

Yeah.

Snap a day.

Oh no, I live here. Yeah, yeah, I live here. I just don't pay tax here.

Oh, I'm not paying any tax.

No, not here.

If you have a problem with that, talk to my husband.

I pay tax on the other man.

He'S the Prime Minister, so off.

Yeah, that's an interesting one too. Yeah, that's interesting one to see like how, how bad someone can be at their job because that chick, she made two decisions.

Well, it's funny because it does speak to what you mentioned a few episodes ago and we're talking about the CEO of Telstra, right. Where he's like, I actually don't do a lot but the things I do are super important. So I spend a lot of time thinking about them.

Yeah.

And I think that's evident when you see like, oh, anyone could be the Prime Minister. Nope.

Well, like when I interviewed Tony Abbott.

Yeah.

You know the amount of 4D chess and I think like implications. Yeah, yeah, we'll link that up here somewhere.

Yeah.

When I interviewed the ex Prime Minister of Australia. But like the amount of 4D chess that you have in to play all the time and sort of implications of every conversation and decision.

Yeah.

Would be so stressful. I mean, have a look at like, oh, Biden. Like, when he came in, he looked like he was doing all right. I just saw a video of me shuffling along like an old man doesn't know what's going on.

Yeah.

Well, I had an argument with a guy on Facebook. Not an argument, but sort of a.

Conversation place to have an argument.

Yeah.

But it was years ago. He was complaining about Tony Abbott, and it was a decision he made about submarines and like, out of government. He was. He had one opinion on submarines and in government he had another. And this guy was carrying on about it. And I was like, hey, did it occur to you that when he wasn't the prime minister, he didn't have as much information as he has now as the Prime Minister? And. And like, I'm no, Like, I don't. I don't like any politician, to be totally frank. So I'm not defending anyone or any side. I'm an anarchist. I think that we should throw the table up at every man for himself.

It benefit me and you.

I feel like I'm like, I will be fine so long as I don't go down the first 10 minutes. Like, as long as I get. I'm totally fine. So, like, I'm on no sides. I don't have a political affiliation.

Right.

But what I will say is like, having, you know, you as well, like having worked in government and especially being in the army and being behind closed doors in some of those conversations as the, like, the gun in the room for those conversations is. People don't know, like, what the. Is actually going on until they're in the job. And they're like, okay, now you get the clearance.

Right.

And now you get to find out what the. Is actually happening.

I spoke to Tony about all this because he's my. The ex Prime Minister of Australia, Tony Abbott. For those of you who don't know, let's. Prime minister, like the president. Right. Same thing. My wife, her godfather is Tony.

Yeah.

So when he was prime minister, I had Christmas at Parliament House, which is the White House equivalent.

Right? Yeah.

So I had Christmas.

Caribbean House.

Yeah. Sorry. Kill Billy House. I remember I literally spoke to him because I've known Tony for a very long time. I had spoke to him a couple years after he stopped being pm. I was like, hey, man, why did you say one thing and do another? I was like, no judgment. I'm sure you had a reason, but tell me. And he said, like, we were presented a set of books when he was leader of the opposition, and those were not the real books. Yeah, they were cooked. Then when he got in, he was like, oh, no.

Yeah.

But he can't say that to the people because then it will induce a fucking panic.

Yeah.

People. If people realize, like, oh, it's all. This is a house of cards. That's all being propped up.

Yeah.

And so he went like. He. Actually, this is. This is why I respect him so much, because he said, I made the decision to be the bad guy in public so I could do what I thought was necessary for the country. And I was like, man, like, that's. That's a difficult thing to do because he got hammered, Right. And like, he did.

This is in contrast to Kevin Rudd, Right? Yeah, Kevin Rudd. And again, I don't have a political affiliation. I don't give a left or right, whatever. But he did the opposite. He was like, guys, I'm the good guy. And meanwhile, was just shanking everyone and everything up and complaining that it was cold in a helicopter.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. But speaking of politicians. Oh, D. Trump's back on. Back on Twitter.

Okay. So, no, he's not. So. Well, we don't know. So this is what's happening with Twitter. We're back on track.

We're.

Excellent segue, sir. So he had said. Elon has said that he will reinstate Trump, right. On Twitter. He will reinstate him. He said that many months ago, but he has not yet.

Right.

And he said that before any huge changes. So he. He sent out an email, and we wouldn't have got the email here because we haven't advertised on Twitter, on Twitt Twitter, but he sent out an email and he said that Twitter will not become a free for all Hellscape.

Right.

Because he now has to figure out how the. To make money out of Twitter. Right. And I'm sure that he's got some plan for it, but I'll bet a big chunk of that money is advertising revenue, which accounts for. I wrote this down as well. Yeah. So presently, I think it's 87 or something like that. Of Twitter's revenue comes 75. No, no, no, I've lost it. But it's like more than 80% of their money comes from advertisers with their shitty ads in the feed.

Right.

And so he sends out this email. It says it, Twitter will not become a free for all Hellscape. Don't worry, like, don't pull your advertising. And that's what a lot of the media were focusing on. Like, I just watched every report that's come out of it. And that's what they all want to talk about is how Twitter's about to become a free for all because the naughty people are going to be allowed to say what they want to say. Now, what did happen was there was a 500% increase in racial slurs day one, like yesterday.

Right?

500% increase in racial slurs straight away. So that's when Elon's like, won't become the free for all.

Hell, I don't wonder what sides are coming from now. Well, that seems like an intentional.

Maybe those bots are busy.

Yeah, yeah. Right.

So he has not reinstated Trump because there's going to be no changes to actual policy. And what happens until he set up a content moderation council? Now, no one knows who's going to be on that and what that's going to be.

I remember him talking about it, and he said, each side will be equally disappointed.

There you go.

Which is like, probably the. The best line to go down. I think that Elon will probably figure it out.

I like that using my term now.

Yeah, I think, I think he'll figure it out, like, if anyone can, because he has access to the greatest minds, you know. And. And I think when you're looking at it as a problem of. I think, I think Twitter and like Project Veritas has confirmed this. You record Project Veritas? Project Veritas. They're a. They. They're an independent journalism organization that absolutely do. Like, they're the only true journalists left.

Okay. Right.

They infiltrated Twitter to see what was going on. And they're not left or right leaning. They destroy both sides.

Right.

And man, Twitter is clearly 100% intentionally silencing anything that isn't a left invoice.

Okay.

No doubt about it.

Okay. Right.

Project Veritas, like, they had all the undercover stuff going, like, with, like, people, and they were in meetings and it was like, how do we stop these Republicans from doing xyz? And like, they completely. It's been proven. Right. So I think, like, if you're coming at the content moderation from how do we stop a particular side? Then you've automatically it.

Yeah.

Which is why Twitter has just been a very unpleasant place for a lot of people. Like, the fact that the Ayatollah K has an account and that Jordan Peterson has been banned is crazy. Ayatollahini has been spouting. Out for years on Twitter about killing all Jews.

Yeah, yeah.

Like it's madness.

Yeah.

And then they ban Jordan Peterson.

Yeah.

It makes no sense whatsoever. ISIS has an account. The Taliban has an account.

Well, Taliban's a legitimate political party again.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so like they have accounts, but then, and, and like Al Sharpton has an account. I mean, fuck the amount of crazy shit that Al Sharpton is. He, I don't even know that Al Sharpton's like that. He was a reverend, but he said.

Oh, the.

Yeah.

I mean the shit he said about white people, about Jews, about, you know, anyone that's not him in particular is, is horrendous.

Yeah.

And the fact that he has an account is, you know, and other people don't like, listen, they can both. They can all have one. I don't give a shit. Doesn't.

Yeah.

Almost impossible to offend me personally.

Yeah.

But the fact that it's so heavily skewed one sided like, you know, like it makes no sense when you actually have a look at it. So if you come together and go, all right, cool. These are the restrictions and it starts at a center point and then works its way out.

Yeah.

You go, okay, cool. And as a private company, I have absolutely no problem him doing whatever he wants.

Yeah.

When it's a publicly traded company, it's a little bit different. But as a private institution you can just go like that and like if you want to work in the rules, you can work in the rules.

Yeah. So you, you would imagine though, like if there's no lean to it, an algorithm would be probably pretty easy to train. If you say, hey, these are the bad words and the bad context that we, we sort of.

Yeah.

Well, meaning people, regardless of their political affiliation, agree like wholeheartedly.

Yeah.

Being, you know, racial slurs and like threats of violence, all that kind of shit that's off the table. No matter what's. Whether you, no matter who you're pointing those slurs at racially or no matter who you're pointing that violence at, you're not allowed to do that.

Yeah.

That's probably a pretty easy thing to moderate.

Doxing would be easy.

Yeah.

If you don't say, but they're allowed to do it and they're not.

Yeah. See that, that would be really tricky because I've seen like people have like mimicked posts.

Yeah.

And one gets shut down account band and one of. One gets put on the trending.

Well, do you remember years ago when we're in that business group the cult. The business cult.

Yeah.

And they made me the sergeant at arms. Remember that?

Right.

And I, first day, sent out, like all these warning letters to people. So the way it worked, it was like you get two warning letters and then you can be kicked out of the group.

Right?

And so they. I was the person that had to send out the warning letters.

Yeah.

And so I immediately sent all. Almost everyone. I was like, here you go.

Right?

Because, like, these are the rules. And like, for all the different things being, like all these stupid cult things that they used to do.

Yeah, yeah.

So I sent out these warning letters and I wrote in the thing. I was like, hey, it's not personal. It may as well be automated.

Right.

In fact, I don't know why this isn't automated. Everything else in this stupid thing's automated. We've got an app. I don't know why, like, if you broke the rules, it's obvious because it's like non attendance, right? So they keep a roll is the warning letter for it. And everyone was cool with it because it was like, I said to him, it's not personal. This is the rules. They've asked me to be the person that sends the email. I'm happy to send the email. But then I was like, at the end of the thing one day, I'm like, okay, these are the people that didn't show up, and these are the guys that are getting the warning letters. They're like, oh, don't send one to him. And I was like, excuse me, what? They're like, no, he don't. Don't send one to him. I was like, no, no, he gets one.

Yeah.

Because otherwise everyone else should be pissed off.

And now so do you.

Yeah, yeah. They're like, no, no, but we don't need to. And I was like, no, we need to. That's the point, right? Is like, no wonder no one wants this job. That I was like, yeah, I'll take the job, whatever, right? I was like, no wonder no one else wants it because you get the target put on your back. Because you're doing it to some people and not you're enforcing the rules on some people and not others. I was like, no wonder people are fucking angry about this. So where everyone's getting the letter, they're like, oh, God. And I was like, and you'll fucking get one too.

Like, yeah, I'll give myself one.

And then I got drunk and me and the regional director had it out on Facebook. Do you remember that? And people were texting me, please stop I was like, every. Every time you told me to stop, I'm going harder.

Yeah, I remember that.

Yeah.

Well, that guy, I would love. We should try and get him on the podcast. That would be interesting, right?

Yeah.

Because, like, I'm curious how he got to a position of leadership with no discernible leadership skills.

You should send him an email saying, hey, could you come on the podcast? Because we'd love to see how you got into position leadership with no discernible.

No discernible skills. And I had it. I still got the emails back and forth with him when he was telling me that, like, I was disrespectful and whatever. And I was like, mate, the thing is, like, I literally, you know, in.

What realm do would you command respect?

Well, I was like, you know, I think it was six months earlier was the sniper platoon sergeant. So, like, if we're going to talk business and all of that, if we're going to talk about accounting or whatever. You guys, everybody in this group knows more than me. Literally every single person. I don't know anything about. About any of that. This is like, I was technically still in the army at that point, right?

Yeah. Yeah.

And I was like, but if we're going to talk about managing people and leadership of people, none of you have a clue, because you're all small business owners. You employ two or three people at a maximum. I run a sniper platoon. All right, so, like, if you want to talk about difficult people to manage, very difficult.

Exhibit a bunch.

First of all, you get a bunch of special forces dudes and then make. Specifically select them for their ability to work alone.

Yeah, I never thought of it that way.

Right.

And now put them all together and make them work as a team.

Right.

Oh, man.

Good luck.

We should have a whole thing on the dynamics of sniper platoon because it is a show.

Totally.

It is the most toxic place I've ever worked.

Yeah, well, I. I feel like I did a good job as a Bravo, because I knew that's the case.

I wasn't in your team.

Mooney was my echo.

Yeah.

Anyway, you were long gone by then.

You.

You were out, like, for a long time. Anyway, back to Twitter. Donald has not been brought back, but he potentially will because they're going to create this content moderation council, and then that is going to decide where things go from there.

What did he do that? He did that one.

It was the Capitol Hill. Right. So that's what. That's what they use. So they. It's incitement is what they got him For. So they said that he incited that. I mean, which he did. Like he did. But they have no right, they have no obligation to kick him off for that. So he's, that's the thing. Right. So in, in Europe, potentially they could, like, they're required to do something about that. Not necessarily kick him off, but, you know, take down the tweet, whatever.

Yeah.

But in the US there, there's, there's no requirement. So Trump said on his own platform. Yeah. Truth social or something like that.

Yeah.

He's happy that Twitter is now in safe hands, but he hasn't indicated whether he would even come back.

Yeah, yeah.

I think he said previously he doesn't need to.

Yeah, yeah.

It's super interesting what he's. I think them taking him off Twitter was a mistake.

Oh, huge.

If they, they could just shadow banned him, they could have just moderated his content.

But now, but even so, like, if you are not for Trump, whatever. I don't give a shit if people are for or against him. You, you sort of want him to be able to say the most crazy that possible because like, the more he did that, the more negative train came towards him. 100. So I think like they've done him a massive service by kicking him off because, like now the only things you see of him are good.

Yep, yep, that's it.

He controls what you say, he controls what you see.

Yeah.

And yeah, I think in like that video he put out a while ago. Yeah, that was a fucking masterclass.

Yeah.

That video. I don't care what political aisle you sit on, you watch that video, you go, that guy's going to win the presidency.

Yeah, yeah.

Like, yeah, so pretty interesting.

Well, so I think that this sort of begs a question that in 2016, social media was blooming but had not blossomed. And I think that people perhaps didn't realize the effect or certainly in the US people didn't necessarily realize the effect that using Twitter and other platforms could sway the election. And people who knew how to do that did that.

Yeah. Right.

So he, he ran a smart campaign.

Yeah.

Whereas I don't think Hillary ran a smart campaign.

No.

She didn't go to all the states and you know, she just didn't run a campaign.

Yep.

That she should have in order to win.

So by 2020, the powers that be knew how to like manipulate via social media and control what's seen. And have we discussed that the social media is mostly like most of those tech are quite left leaning. I think the big fear now is that if Twitter doesn't have a political affiliation or even if like if must is right leaning. If he is a Republican.

Right.

But if he truly decides that no, this is just a free for all and, and the truth will be told here and lies will be told here and anyone can say anything.

So I think it's the way to go.

If everyone's on an equal footing. I think that's the biggest concern like for. Not the biggest concern for the general public, but for the media who are very much trying to portray this as a very bad thing. The vibe that I got as I just spent a whole bunch of time consuming all of it is that first of all they want to talk about what an idiot Elon is for overpaying.

And it's crazy when people say he's a moron.

It's.

I saw some people go on like a fucking like a sophomoric, over exaggerated, intelligent in like, like intellect. And I was like, mate, the guy's the fucking head engineer at SpaceX. Like he's a legit rocket scientist.

Yeah.

He's also the most successful entrepreneur ever.

Yeah.

Like he's. We are shaved apes compared to that human being.

Yeah.

Now does that mean he makes all the right decisions? No, it's clearly his decision making around women is not fantastic.

He's a breeder, that's for sure.

Yeah. 34 fucking kids now or some shit. But yeah, like so. But I mean, you know, in terms of his decision, his problem solving capabilities, I think he's, you know, probably top few on the planet.

Yeah, it's, it's super interesting to me to see a bunch of like, not even journalists, I won't say like commentators. They're people who just there, it's their opinion, it's their job to give their opinion. And fair enough, that's, that's, you know, they're getting, they're getting paid to just talk into microphones.

Here we are.

But claiming that he's an idiot and he doesn't know what he's doing and kind of mocking him through it. I think he's very funny, but it shows me, it tells me that. I think there's a level of panic and concern around it.

Right.

Like, like I think that it shows that sort of the pendulum is starting to swing back to an extent and there's a lot of concern about that in the zeitgeist. That's the feeling I got from it.

I think like if you got in the political. I think people underestimate the importance of having two distinct ways of Thinking like you have a fiscally conservative that is ultimately less interested in the well being of an individual, but the right of that individual to do whatever they want, which is a right leaning and then a left leaning, which is compassionate, less conservative, the rights of the individual and more concerned with the outcomes as a whole.

Right.

That's left leaning. And there's an extreme importance of both sides.

Yeah, totally.

Like you have to have the swings and the pendulums of both. You don't want the right to always be in control because you'll have an extraordinarily well managed country that is very fiscally responsible and a lot of people that are really hurting.

Yeah. Right.

But they just got to pull themselves up by the bootstraps.

Right.

And then if you only have left leaning.

Yeah.

You'll have an extraordinarily poorly managed government that spends out of control.

Yeah.

And alienates all the intelligent people to leaving.

Yeah.

Which is what's happened in a lot of other countries across the world. Like that's the outcome of that.

Yeah.

So you either alienate the highest achievers and they leave or you alienate the lowest achievers, but you can't do either because you end up with enormous social problems either way and they collapse eventually. So you have to have a big swing like that. The problem is it starts out like this and it goes doom, doom do. And then hopefully it goes back in like this. Right.

Yeah.

It's almost like each president in the US is the counterpart and the other side of the pendulum. So like Iraq, I mean, barely left.

Yeah.

Like he was really, he really was like his, the strategy he employed in the military and some of his social policy was very, very left leaning. But he was phenomenal at talking about it. So he was able to kind of do that. And then you had old Trumpy out come over here and then you've got, you know, Biden's a little bit in, so hopefully the next cat's a little bit in and then go in. You know what I mean? So, you know, we'll figure it out.

I'll hit you with a crazy theory which maybe is the wrong platform for it, but I will anyway.

Right.

There's a. There's pretty strong evidence that political affiliation is genetic. All right. So like how you feel left or right leaning is genetic. And they have that in a couple of different ways. Most notably twin studies. Right. So that's where they sort of get that. But there's pretty strong evidence for it. I think for the most part it's agreed upon.

Right.

Anything that is genetic hardwired like that has a function. The anything that you do, like nature doesn't make accidents like that.

Right.

Or nature only makes accidents, but they either get selected for or not.

Yeah.

And so the fact that however many billions years have led to us being these kind of humans means that it works and the society has to work.

Right.

So left and right leaning people have to coexist together. There's a function for it. And it's probably not political in my opinion. In my opinion, yeah. It'll be, it goes back to more tribal sort of living.

Yeah.

And it is more of a hunting style and technique. So everybody that I know that is quite right leaning. So like I use myself as an example. I think that I am genetically fairly right leaning. But through experience I am, I feel very drawn to left leaning policies. Like I'm very more into social. Like I, I believe that we shouldn't just leave people by the wayside.

Right.

So I feel that way through learned experience. But every now and again I'm like, oh, that just. We do have to make those other decisions that.

Right.

Like we do have to make the hard decision sometimes, but I don't want to all the time. So from my observations, a lot of right leaning people are very direct.

Right.

In their actions. They're always direct in their actions. They're like up the guts, lots of smoke, like go straight at it. Right. That's how they operate and that's how they would hunt. And I believe that a lot of left leaning people are more like, what's the right word? Subversive in their action. They like will go the long way and they'll do things slower and they'll do things like a little bit more sneaky and in a hunting fashion they'll do that as well. But when you're up the guts, lots of smoke, direct in your action, what you achieved is very like accountable. We can see you caught the pig, you did that.

Right.

So you get to eat it. But if I put in the, if I put in the cordon and I didn't directly catch the pig, but my contribution to that was also important. You wouldn't have caught the pig without me putting in the cordon.

Yeah.

I have to now also feel that we should share the pig because you caught it, but my actions helped you catch it. So that's why I have to have that policy of like, you know, we should share stuff. Because I didn't catch it. You caught it. Yeah, but you wouldn't have without me. And that has served Us when we were little tribes of people for sure.

Right.

But now as we get to this bigger, like it's the direct contribution and the not so direct contribution. They're at such scale that in politics it just falls apart. And so like, I think that you're dead right. And that's just my sort of weird way of explaining that there is like the pendulum swings, but it's because they. Both sides are meant to be in action at the same time and all forms of government are a little bit wrong because you get too much of one and then it has to swing back.

Where.

Wouldn't it be nice if we could just keep it, keep that pendulum swinging nice and tight.

Right.

Which I think to an extent we do in Australia. And I think that's why our system is not too bad in the current setup that we have. Because the difference between political parties here is like pretty minimal. Yeah. I mean they like, it's. People get upset and like, oh my God, the labor of the liberals. But like in reality, very little difference. Your noticeable difference day to day is pretty small, depending on which party's in.

Yeah. Right.

And that's because we have a parliamentary system where you have to go up all the ranks.

Yes.

So we can't have a. There can't be a left field, a random left field person where the they come from.

Yeah.

It doesn't happen.

Yeah.

Like we couldn't have a Macron, we couldn't have a Trump. It would never happen. It's physically impossible.

No.

Like because you have to go through all of your local, state, federal, then be elected internally.

Yeah.

So it's, it's a very different process. Totally got pros and cons.

Yeah.

But anyway, a long way from the topic.

Yeah.

But Twitter, it's. Are we advertising on it now? What's going on?

Like created a plan for it.

How do you think it will change your use of Twitter?

Because I don't use it. I'll probably start using it.

Yeah.

You think?

I think I'd start using it. Just for the pure intrigue of what's. Like, what's. What's going to happen.

Yeah.

I think that I. I think that from a. I think it's a very difficult business use case to get Elon to make it because so much is video consumption and so on.

On the platform, you mean?

No, like so much of social consumption these days is video and short like Tick tock is completely. It was, it was the Twitter of video.

Yeah.

You know, so. And they've, they've changed the game so much so I don't really know how they're going to compete because the way in which Twitter is used is not conducive to advertising. So I, I don't know how they fix that.

Yeah.

So you think there'll be a total revamp of the platform and the way that it works?

Maybe. Yeah, it's gonna, I mean, like, I, I don't know. I mean, listen, if anyone can figure it out, it's probably him because he is like the greatest user. Like Tesla has a zero dollar marketing budget because Elon has a Twitter.

Yeah.

You know, so it's like, do they figure out how to rev share? So you know, like, do they have some sort of model where it's like we can show a correlative or causation effect on the increase of your revenue due to your adaptation of Twitter and we want a percentage in that, you know, and it's like in order to do that you get preferential treatment. If you sign up to that, then it's like you get preferential treatment. This is how you do it. And we get a rev share in the upside or something like that. We get, we get 0.5% upside.

Yeah.

You know, when you start adapting Twitter and we'll make sure that your shit gets out there more.

That's interesting.

Like how like, because that, like, I mean that's for. All the announcements for Twitter for Tesla are like they had literally a zero that they have a CMO who's paid a shitload of money, who has a zero dollar marketing budget.

Right.

So how do they do it?

Well, it's just like he just posts. Obviously Tesla has their own Twitter as well.

No. Oh.

But they don't have like a rev share thing through, through promotion of Tesla or anything. That's. They don't have anything in place like that.

They don't have a paid, they don't have a paid advertising budget.

Yeah, yeah.

So they don't, they don't do any paid ads on any platform.

Okay.

They obviously have like brand and they do branding so they'll have like, you know, they have billboards and shit like that.

Yeah.

They have all their stuff in the email. Obviously the marketing department costs money to run.

Yeah.

But like they don't do paid ads, they don't do television, they don't do online. You've never seen a Tesla ad.

They're everywhere. Yeah.

You know, and I want one so bad.

Can't buy one.

That's. I think that's part of it too.

Yeah.

And the interesting thing Is like. But most of it has just come from Elon's Twitter.

Yeah. Okay.

Where you were releasing a new Tesla. Perfect. Click here to buy. Oh, look, it's sold out.

Do you reckon it could even be worth his while to make sure that he maintains that funnel? Like, if they.

Oh, yeah. That was part of the reason as well, why I think it was essential that he not get kicked off.

Yeah. Okay.

Like, so it's like, hey, like, Tesla, I think, is the second most valuable company on the planet.

Okay.

I think.

What, like after Apple?

After Apple, yeah. And they have an enormous revenue. Enormous. Like, it's huge. I think it's top five in the world. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure it is. So buying Twitter for 44 billion. Yeah, it kind of makes sense.

So it could even just be he just bought an advertising department.

Well, if you think about it, if he owns it as a private company, he could just make it like his Win Zuckerberg post. Everyone sees it, right.

It comes up in everyone's face.

Everyone's following my not.

Yeah, yeah.

Imagine.

Yeah, yeah.

Tesla and Elon Musk. Every single tweet they put out is seen by literally every user.

Every morning, we all have to get up. Salute.

You couldn't buy that for less than $44 billion. I mean, like, Jesus Christ. If. If they gave me that for seven days, I could retire.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, like, you could sell a $97 product, like, legit.

Good.

You can have it. You could have a $47 ebook if everybody saw it.

Yeah.

Fuck, man.

Guys, I got this online course. You're not gonna believe it.

Andrew Tate style colors your fucking Bugatti.

I don't have one. Oh, dear.

All right, that's. That's. That's probably why I did it then. Just to maintain his, like, advertising his funnel.

Yeah.

For Tesla to keep that. And, like, SpaceX is going to make money at some point.

Yeah.

The boring company.

Yeah.

You know, all the other stuff he probably has planned to do.

Yeah, yeah.

But to wrap up, my favorite part on all of this has been watching the media panic about it and. And the implication, the inference that he's an idiot and doesn't know what he's talking about.

It's crazy. The media hates any new media, though. They hate, like, they hate anyone who's doing their own thing and they have to discredit them. And, like, sometimes they're just not. Sometimes they're credible, like Project Veritas. I've seen them discredited, so it's like, no, dude. Those dudes are like. It's very hard to discredit a hidden video camera footage of a meeting where people are saying in context the things that they're being accused of.

Yeah.

Like, I've watched some of those documentaries. Just look it up, man. They're fucking terrifying. They did one on cnn and they did one on Fox News as well. They did one on Twitter. And like all the big tech companies, they have hidden. They get. People get jobs.

Yeah.

Hidden camera. The whole box and dice. Like the whole. Because they get protected under whistleblower laws and like that. Right. So very interesting.

Yeah. Right. Yeah, I'll check it out.

But it's like all that stuff gets suppressed and you only see it if you go looking for it.

Yeah, yeah. Well, not anymore.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

That, I think, is the fear, right? That that's like the loss of control of the narrative.

Yeah.

You reckon Jesus sound like Andrew Tate.

I think. I think it's a valid point, though, because, like, those guys have had it a particular way. Like when Walter Cronkite used to come on. People listened to Walter Cronkite.

Yeah.

And he was a reliable, neutral source of news information that gave you the facts as they came in and you could decide.

Yeah.

And then that got molded into a bunch of really opinionated people giving really op eds.

Yeah.

Like they were giving op EDS with a veneer of real news. And it's like, if you're offering your opinion, I don't think you should be on there. Like, just tell me what's happening and I can sort it out myself. You know, some issues are more right. Some issues, I'm more left. Some I'm smack dab in the middle.

Yeah.

Like, it's all fine. I can do it. But if you're. If you're going to be feeding me a particular narrative, then. And you guys, it is news, not. Most people just kind of take that as gospel. Like, if all you watched was Fox, it's like, okay, you're probably gonna be one way. If all you watched is cnn, you're gonna be one way. So it's like. It's very difficult to discern what the real information is because you can read the same story and you can get so many viewpoints. Like, I saw a great thing the other day, this is probably about a year ago, actually, and it was a photo and it was like zoomed in. It was like a black guy doing something. And then there was one narrative on that photo with a headline and article. Then it was another One with the same photo, but zoomed out a little bit more.

Right.

We had more context. It was a totally different narrative, totally different headline. Then there was what actually was going on. It was completely innocuous.

Yeah.

And the left had gone crazy about it being some racial violation of some person who was being persecuted. Then the right had taken it with bit more context and said, no, it's actually the opposite. The opposite. And then what was really happening was nothing.

Yeah. Yeah.

You know, and it was like, oh, well, there is no news story there. But hey, you got to get views.

That's the issue. I mean, that's the issue in all of it is a clickbait of titles. You got to keep people on platforms. You got to give them a reason to be there. In a lot of the commentary I was watching this morning about it, the. The Economist that they were asking about, it was like, people. Yeah, the people saying, oh, Twitter's gonna divulge into a cesspool of. Of nonsense. And the Economist guys, like, they're counting on that. Like, first of all, it already is. And second, like, that's what people like. So, like Avatar.

You ever watch Real Housewives of Beverly Hills?

Yeah.

The idea that advertising going to pull the pin on that is like, some might, but they'll quickly be replaced. That they're not going to create that vacuum, is going to pull in new content because there's plenty of people that. If you don't want to advertise there, that's fine. But you can advertise where there's no eyeballs or you can advertise where there's.

When you go on the YouTube advertiser, you just pay for the amount of views you want.

Yeah.

You don't go, but make sure they're Republican. You know what I mean? Like, you make sure they're good people. You just go, give me this many eyeballs. And they go, okay, yeah, got it.

Yeah.

Anyway, sales, you've heard that kind of stuff.

Well, it's interesting content. I think that it. For sales and marketing and everything that this podcast is about, it is going to be big news and. And speculating on why is what two guys do on a podcast. Yep, that's it. Goodbye.

Bye. Put that coffee down.

It.