Worst CEO Interview Ever!? Cringe City, Shaan Reacts Linda Yaccarino Interview

All right. I'm scrolling on Twitter and I just keep seeing this. The most uncomfortable live interview I've ever watched. The cringiest interview, the worst CEO interview I've ever seen. And you know what I got to do? You know what we got to do when it's Cringe City? Because I'm the mayor of Cringe City. We got to watch this interview that everybody is talking about. It's the new CEO of Twitter. So Elon hired this woman, Linda Yaccarino. She gave an interview and I'm excited because, A, I love CEO cringe. I love CEO cringe. Some guys like toes. Some people like furries. Some people like the Japanese anime shit. They're into that. Everybody's got a thing. This is my thing. CEO cringe. I can't get enough. Let's jump in.

Oh, where am I going? I think this way.

Yeah. For our microphones.

Yeah. Maybe go to the empty chair.

Um, Linda, thank you for being here. I wanna make sure to get, to give you an opportunity to respond to Yoel Roth and his comments about an hour ago.

Okay. So what happened was at this conference, the Code Conference, and they've always had a bunch of CEOs come to this, like Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Travis Kalanick from Uber. They've had, they always have these headliners. And this year the headliner was gonna be Linda Yakirino. So what I guess what happened is before she, this is, she's the headliner before she went on. This guy Yoel Roth, who used to work at Twitter, was a surprise guest. So that's why this is a little bit controversial. He was a surprise guest. Somebody, the CEO of GM, dropped out. They were like, oh, we have a last-minute replacement. This guy Yoel, he comes on and he basically— he used to be the head of trust and safety at Twitter when Elon first bought it. He was like, go follow Yoel. That's the place to get up-to-date info on trust and safety. He's the man. And then in 5 weeks, he got fired, you know, quit, got fired, whatever. And him and Elon got in a big spat about it. So they were not on good terms. So I guess this guy Yoel came on right before this. And the context is he was obviously sharing his negativity about Twitter. So she kind of like got like blindsided, I guess, before this. So that's the context.

Oh, chuckles.

I'd be happy to respond. I think I've been given about 45 minutes, but I do want to address, um, Yoel and I don't know each other. He doesn't know me. I don't know him.

Why is she using like an ASMR voice? It's like CEO ASMR. She's like, it's like bedtime story. So she's like, And Hansel and Gretel went all the way through the forest. Is this a funeral? Why is she coming out with this energy? I've never seen her talk before. So this is, this is not what I imagined the CEO of Twitter or X or whatever to sound like. Okay. More ASMR.

I work at X. He worked at Twitter. X is a new company building a foundation based on free expression and freedom of speech. Twitter at the time—

ironic, by the way, she's like really upset that he just came on this. He went on stage at this conference and like spoke his mind while being like, X is the free speech platform. Shouldn't she just be fine with him speaking his mind? No.

Time was operating on different sets of rules, as said by himself, different philosophies and ideologies that were creeping down the road of censorship. It's a new day at X, and I'll leave it at that.

Who else is inspired by that? It's a new day at X and it is what it is. Like she's trying to say something optimistic, but the way she's saying it, is this how she always talks? The way she's saying it is so downtrodden. I don't understand. If you go on stage, everything is wonderful. We're going amazing. Nobody believes you. So that's a very strange—

Seriously, the team at Twitter is fantastic.

Oh, oh, right after giving the big speech that he worked at Twitter, I work at X, comes back and says the team at Twitter is doing fantastic. She's just like all of us. We call it Facebook, not Meta. We call it Twitter, not X. You can't make fetch a thing.

If you're talking about my own personal well-being and safety. I feel great. I'm well protected. What I— he made a comment about the FT interview, I guess, as he was preparing to come on the stage, that the public scrutiny weighs heavy on me, my kids, my family, my parents. I think that's just a human emotion when you get thrust into such a public spotlight, uh, in conjunction with the nature of the platform itself.

Is she trying to hit a word count? This is me in 9th grade, just double-spaced, trying to hit the word count to get this in. I mean, that's just human nature in conjunction, therefore, such as— she sounds like the girl from the the Miss USA pageant. Okay. People out there in our nation don't have maps, and I believe that our education, like such as in South Africa and Iraq, everywhere like such as, and—

self when you're automatically a recognizable public feature, public person 24/7 globally and, and with the ability for or the inability for anyone to control other humans' actions, comments. Recognizable. And I'm an identical twin.

Recognizable? Actions, comments, recognizable. What is she talking about?

Think how she feels.

All right. Solid jokes.

That made the security team a dollar bet because I only ever bet a dollar, by the way. Because the reason I only bet a dollar—

let me finish that for you. Because I'm already rich. The reason I only bet a dollar is because I'm already super rich, and it would make absolutely no difference to me if I won or didn't win. You know, give it— give me the Jeff Bezos laugh. It's because I'm super rich.

Ever is because it's really only about winning. But I want to, uh, it's very hard for me to refute or sift through the combination of opinions of Yoel's experience and the positioned as fact, uh, that were presented.

She has made two mistakes so far. First, ASMR funeral voice telling the Hanselgrätta bedtime story. Very strange choice, right? You come out and people feel, you're making people feel a certain way because the way it looks like you feel. And so her entire energy was, was wrong. She did not come correct. Somebody who is confident, somebody who is optimistic about what's going on, somebody who's excited to be here, um, they will— they would have a totally different energy. So that was the first mistake she made, was she let this guy's previous talk throw her completely off her game and come out with this very strange energy. Second thing, we're now 6 minutes and 30 seconds into this this interview, she still addressed all the points that he made. Nobody would have even paid attention to that guy's talk. She's 6 and a half minutes in and is still playing defense. If you're explaining, you're losing, right? It's as simple as that. Like, number one PR rule: if you're explaining, you're losing. And she is explaining.

But, but Linda, because I, I want to shift gears from Yoel's interview to a conversation about the business.

Nice, doing her a solid, being like, hey, maybe stop Stop talking about Yoel and start talking about your business.

Yoel had 25 minutes to talk about it.

You have a lot longer.

Yoel got the blue one and I want the blue one, but he has the blue one, but then if I get the blue one, then I'm gonna have it.

If you want, you have all the time that you have for us. I wanna talk to you about the business and the issues of engagement, because I see a lot of data as a reporter at CNBC, And Aptopia, which tracks app usage, says the actual time spent on Twitter did get a post-Elon bump after the acquisition, but has tracked down all year since then. A new report out from Aptopia just this month says app downloads have sunk to new lows. It's in 96th place. And when it comes to usage, X is now 25th in active users behind Telegram and even Samsung Clock. So how can we reconcile what Musk has said about engagement the numbers you just cited with all of these different data points here?

Well, you know, with over 540 million global users, the— I'd love to sift through, you know, the data points that you picked out.

And they're really just tracks of app downloads and engagement.

Yeah.

But when you look at the length of time spent—

You know, it doesn't— yeah, but I don't wanna talk about that. So yeah, but let's look at something else.

The engagement on X right now, the key metrics are trending very, very positively. So if we wanna talk about all the initiatives that have been put in place, like was covered in the previous interview about all the, uh, brand safety and content moderation tools. That exist now within my first 100 days at the company that didn't exist for the 8 years prior, formerly known as Twitter, I think those are the type of things we could be— we should be focusing on in terms of progress that has been made. Because in the just short 100 days-ish that I've been at the company, What had to happen was, was for me to, you know, kind of get in, look under the hood.

Why is she acting like a raccoon? Get in there, sift through the trash. I've seen that. I've seen that in my backyard before. That is a raccoon going through trash.

And when I realized, and I looked at— because it's still a lot of learning—

what did you realize, Linda? What did you realize? Say it. Just say a simple sentence.

I mean, come on, it's, it's 100 days. There's a lot of learning that's still going to go on.

What are the learnings? Tell me what—

the velocity of change—

no, we're not talking about velocity—

scope of the ambition—

scope is a mouthwash—

at X really does not exist.

When you raccooned through the data, what did you find, Linda?

Anywhere else, forget the other platforms, at any other company, likely on Earth. There is no analog for the book that is being written right now.

Book? What are you talking about? Also, ultra dismissive hand motion. Shut your mouth hand motion. Nice.

Advertiser products that did not exist that are now wrapped up in brand safety, third-party verification. The company that was described about an hour ago no longer exists. And I would argue pretty aggressively, no matter if you want to— I, I don't know the, the stat. Did you say Telegram?

Yeah, 5 minutes ago when I asked you why you're ranking below Telegram and downloads, and then you started talking about scope and velocity. I did say Telegram.

Does anyone say Telegram?

No, you're behind Telegram.

No, no, I know. I, I, I have to I have to scrub your numbers.

Does anyone even talk about Telegram anymore? Yeah, no, I'm saying you guys were behind them, less downloads than them. You're worse than the people you're making fun of. Yeah, I gotta scrub your numbers. Okay, let's scrub it up. Dub App Store charts, free, free apps. Let's go. Where are you at? Telegram. Telegram, number 22. X. X, number 63. We scrubbed the numbers, Linda. You're behind Southwest Air. You're behind Peacock and Impulse Brain Training. Oh, greatest app of all time here, right? Coming in at number 68. Let's go. We scrubbed the numbers. We scrubbed them. They're good. They're clean.

But that being said, that when you put in context what has happened in the last 10 months, and specifically the last 12 weeks of listening to our employees, listening—

Listening to your employees? You fired all your employees. You fired 80% of your employees. What are you talking about? You can't hear them? They're walking away with their box from their desk. What are you gonna hear?

The great news is another fact that was inaccurate. In June, actually, I did an interview with one of your colleagues at CNBC, Sarah Izen.

Specific time?

I think in August. Was that August?

It was 100 days.

Oh, oh yeah, it started in June. It's all a blur because, again, the pace of innovation is unlike anything.

Oh, what a gem of an excuse. The next time I'm late— oh, I'm late to pick up my daughter from school, it's the pace of innovation, that's why I'm late—

you could ever imagine. Uh, think about it, it's exhilarating to the point of intoxicating.

That's why she's got bars though, I'll give her that. She's like Mike Tyson. There's no one that can match me. My style is impetuous, my defense is impregnable, and I'm I'm just ferocious. I want your heart. I want to eat his children. Praise be to Allah.

And you get inspired and pushed by Elon Musk to do the things that you would never normally think were possible. You land on a day like today, you show up, you tell them the mountain high of accomplishments that were made in just 12 weeks.

She's going Michelle Obama. When they go low, we go high.

And you don't look back and compare yourself to a legacy company that doesn't exist.

All you're doing is comparing yourself. What are you talking about?

So Linda, I want to get some of these stats. So you mentioned you're—

I, I— it's been a day, so I brought my—

you're welcome to—

I have— I was supposed to put—

was that blank just now? Hold on, we've got to go back.

Linda, I want to get some of these stats. So you mentioned you're—

I, I— it's been a day, so I think I'll have time for sure. I was supposed to—

I think that might be a blank sheet of paper—

put an X on it, but I was watching the interview and I didn't have time.

Okay, so one question I have is, what are the daily active users? Simple question, because that is the metric.

How many was using before Elon Musk came over?

And you mentioned the Sarah Izen interview. What are your daily active users? And then also, you told Sarah you were nearing profitability.

How close are you? Yeah, well, that's so exciting. I'll get, I'll get back to your first question, but what's so—

Bet she doesn't. Bet she does not get back to that first question. Hey, I'll bet you a dollar, Linda. You only bet a dollar? I bet you a dollar you don't answer the daily active users question, but let's see.

Exciting is that, um, from an operating cash flow perspective, we are just about break even. So the, um, uh, I kind of emotion that was painted in the previous talk.

Still representing—

I feel pretty good about where we are. And when I did the other talk that you said was in August, it was too soon. I think it was about 5 or 6 weeks in. I couldn't have eyes on even the rest of third quarter, let alone fourth quarter. So now that I have immersed myself in the business and we have a good set of eyes on what is predictable and what's coming is that it looks like in early '24 we'll be turning a profit. So that's exciting. So, so 90% of the top 100 advertisers have returned to the platform in the last 12 weeks alone. About 1,500 have returned. So whether it is small business or big brands, right? Like AT&T, Visa, Nissan, all returning. Why are they returning? They are returning because of the power and significance of the platform, the place that X has in this world.

So do you have a stat on daily active users?

Yeah, I'm going to.

I love the interviewer's smile. They're like, ah. You've been bullshitting for 5 minutes now. Do you, were you gonna tell me the number or no? Oh, now she picked up her phone. What happened to her blank sheet of paper? Okay.

It, it, it 200, 250, something like that.

So the stat when 200 or 250 million daily active users, that's less than when Elon bought it. I'm pretty sure.

Does Yoel leave his facts?

No, this was when Musk took over, there were 237 million monetizable daily active.

Yeah. So, so listen to this. One of the reasons that I'm in the chair I'm in today and in the chair I am at X.

And I do not like green eggs and ham. I do not like them, Sam. I am so condescending, by the way. This whole like, one of the reasons I'm in this chair and you're down there, like, that's basically the vibe, the energy that she gives off. Um, she asked you a simple question. How many daily active users you got? Don't give us this speech about why I'm in the chair I'm in is cuz I'm so great. That's not an answer to how many daily active users you have.

Leading the company is because I knew for the last decade, and you knew this, part of my old remit was to oversee not only the advertising revenue for the company, but to look after all of our enterprise relationships. Our, I still say our. All of the NBCU enterprise relationships, and Twitter was one of them. I specifically used the name Twitter, by the way, purposefully. And that's when, for 10 years, and how I fell in love with the platform. Because I knew, first of all, we should talk about— Well, you're talking about trajectory. Of where broadcast cable television and usage and consumption was growing.

She's like, yeah, the previous company I was at was going down, down, down, down, down. And so now I'm just— the reason I'm in the chair is because I oversee this. What is she talking about?

But this—

oh, hang on. She doesn't have X installed on the home screen of her phone. I see Facebook. I see Instagram. I do not see X. It's a black icon. Where is it? I don't see it. Wow. And also, what kind of psychopath— looks like she has the settings wheel on her dock. What kind of psychopath does that? To show your phone, talk about how great X is, and then not have the app installed. This is why, ah, this is why, this is why I do what I do. This is why I do what I do. Aggressive clap. This is why I do what I do. This is why as the mayor of Cringe City, we live for this moment where she thinks she's mic dropping. She thinks she's saying this really impressive, important thing and She's just embarrassing herself.

That's news. When you— when I used to sit in my office and watch you on television, it was the only—

what? Do some work. Why were you at the office watching television?

Well, I'd love to. I'll give you— I'll give you almost like a more personal, specific, uh, number which demonstrates All right.

Another dollar bet. I'm up $1. Is this going to be personal or specific? I bet it's neither.

Illustrates part of the growth at X. If you take our communities, 50,000 curating—

Wait, why are we talking about 50,000 communities? I thought it's going to be personal and specific, Linda.

Environments and conversations of communities on X. Okay. The—

The pause to just absolutely make up whatever that— wherever the hell she's going, just be like, okay, so I said 50,000 communities. What the hell could I say next?

Numbers and time spent is up dramatically just since June. Okay, right.

So where was the personal and specific Example, Linda.

So hold on, I want to—

Linda, we're running short on time, so I got to get— we have so much to cover here.

So, okay, where do you, where do you want to go?

Okay, I want to talk about your role running the company. And Elon Musk just announced a new monthly fee for users.

Yep.

And my question for you is, do you want to start charging all users of X, as he said? And how many users do you think you will lose as a result?

Can you repeat? Can you repeat? Can you repeat?

This reporter just broke news to the CEO. I'm pretty sure that, that could you repeat was a what the hell are you talking about? But let me buy some time.

Elon Musk announced you're moving to an entirely subscription-based service. Yeah. Nothing free on about using X. Do you—

did he say we were moving to it specifically or is thinking about it?

He said that's the plan. Yeah. So did he—

yeah, news to me.

Consult you before he announced that?

We talk about everything.

Okay, defensive. So defensive. Gotta go back. Hold on.

Did he say we were moving to it specifically, or is thinking about it?

Oh, the sit back like she just served her, like this is, uh, whatever, stomp the yard, and she just Her.

And then he said, that's the plan.

Yeah.

So did he consult? Did he ask about this?

Because you're the CEO, right?

We talk about everything.

No eye contact. Look to the crowd. We talk about everything. Do you guys hear that? Everything is okay. I'm in charge here. Okay.

You don't cover product, right? All of the product teams.

Right.

Report to Elon Musk. And as a result of that, there's been a lot of—

anyone in this room—

can I finish?

Let me finish, please. Let me finish.

As a result of the fact that the product team does not report to you, the product team at Meta reports to Mark Zuckerberg. Because the product team does not report to you, there has been speculation that you are in more of a COO role or a CBOO role, a CEO in name only.

You know what's funny is that We talk about that a lot at X.

As you do, everybody asks you, are you really the CEO? You guys talk about that a lot?

No, it's a very flat organization and the teams are very empowered to perform at their highest levels. And who's kidding who? I don't care what the structure is at Meta, but who wouldn't want Elon Musk sitting by their side running product?

I see a show of hands.

There may be a few show of hands to get the cute chuckles you're getting.

Honestly, that's a good point. Elon is a very, very, very accomplished engineer and person capable of building things. So I think it's totally right. You would rather have him running a product engineering organization, not Definitely not this lady. Definitely not the ASMR CEO. I mean, can you imagine her trying to talk to an engineer? Like, this lady's asking for a number and of like, hey, how many users do we have? And she's talking in circles about velocity of change and innovation and blah, blah, blah. And saying, I'm gonna, I'll come back to that. Like engineers don't like that shit. You know, you can't just talk circles around people who actually build things. You, you have to directly answer their questions or directly give clear, concise statements. This lady is—

I mean, the BS detector is like, I mean, if, if, if the, uh, car industry wasn't questioned, would we have the electronic car industry?

I mean, uh, pretty sure she just said electronic cars industry. Is that what you think Tesla does? It makes Small electronic cars instead of electric cars.

You'll be hearing some of those announcements in the next week or two. But thank you so much, everyone. I got to go. I really appreciate it.

Andy Iagrino, thank you for making the time for us.

Okay, let's see how they exit this. Oh, the snub. No handshake, no hug.

During some of those—

No, I got to go.

I really appreciate it.

Andy Iagrino, thank you for making the time for us.

Thank you. Stands up.

Thank you.

And walks by, pretends like you don't exist. Nice. Power move. Okay. Yeah, I grade this an F. That is an F. Defensive, insecure, says nothing of substance. This is crazy to me that this is the CEO of Twitter, as it will be called. Not inspiring. I don't understand why somebody would— like, this is like, I I think when people think about corporate America or bureaucratic companies, like this to me is the nightmare. Somebody like this rises in the ranks and becomes CEO of one of the best tech company, you know, one of the best technology products in the world, uh, that's used by, you know, whatever, hundreds of millions of people. Doesn't know the first thing about technology or product or speaking straight English. Um, he's just a hand wavy type of person. That's really crazy to me. I gotta see more. Okay, this is— what is this? I Googled her name and this was the first picture that came up. You know, maybe don't pose— maybe don't pose like Jesus on the cross for your, uh, for your front page photo. Maybe don't wear all red and dress like— and pose like Jesus on the cross. Does she always talk like this? I want to see some of her old interviews. Okay, let's see. What is this?

Stephanie Rule, I accept your COVID-19 challenge. I'm still stuck mostly at home and I'm doing—

Okay, she lost her mind in that video. Um, why is she accepting the COVID-19 challenge? Dancing and washing your hands. Nothing more performative than people uploading videos of themselves taking COVID precautions with no rhythm. This is how we should end the video. I just want this uninterrupted for 25 seconds. Producer, 25 seconds uninterrupted of this dance. End the video. Wow, unbelievable. Unbelievable. Okay. Yeah, I grade, I grade that interview an F. Just comes across like a total bullshitter. Doesn't answer any questions directly. Super defensive. Weird ASMR voice. And by the way, her background, it's not like, okay, when Zuck does weird interviews and it's like, oh, he looks like a robot. This guy's terrible. Okay. Genius kid programmer turns out to not be so media savvy. This lady's a media exec. She's 60 years old, spent her whole career, 40 years working in the television industry. How is she so poor at doing interviews or media? That was— that's supposed to be what you're good at. If this is how you're like— is this what you're good at? Because you're terrible. Um, all right, well, that is the end of Sean Reacts Cringe City. Hope you like this video. If you like these, I'll do more of them. There's plenty of cringe out there. There's cringe everywhere, to be honest with you. If you like these and you want me to do more, leave a comment on YouTube saying Cringe City.

Our software is the worst. Have you heard of HubSpot? See, most CRMs are a cobbled-together mess, but HubSpot is easy to adopt and actually looks gorgeous. I think I love our new CRM. Our software is the best.

HubSpot. Grow better.