{"id":29573,"date":"2023-11-02T12:32:09","date_gmt":"2023-11-02T19:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=29573"},"modified":"2023-11-02T12:32:10","modified_gmt":"2023-11-02T19:32:10","slug":"elon-musk-says-he-bought-twitter-to-save-the-world-from-san-franciscos-mind-virus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2023\/11\/02\/elon-musk-says-he-bought-twitter-to-save-the-world-from-san-franciscos-mind-virus\/","title":{"rendered":"Elon Musk says he bought Twitter to save the world from San Francisco’s ‘mind virus’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By\u00a0Alex Shultz<\/a> Nov 1, 2023 (SFGate.com)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

FILE:\u00a0Elon Musk speaks with members of the media during day one of the AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park on November 01, 2023 in Bletchley, England.\u00a0Leon Neal\/Getty Images<\/em><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In July 2022, Elon Musk<\/a> tried to renege on purchasing Twitter for $44 billion.<\/a> Anxious to finalize a deal with Musk at a price point that was generally considered an enormous overpay, Twitter sued Musk. On Oct. 28, 2022, the day before the trial was supposed to start, Musk and Twitter came to terms<\/a> on the original $44 billion asking price.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A year later, Musk is now claiming that he was actually compelled to buy Twitter \u2014 now X \u2014 out of an overriding sense of civic duty, because he needed to save civilization itself from a potentially overwhelming “mind virus” propagated by the company’s San Francisco headquarters.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Musk delivered his remarks on the Oct. 31 episode of the “Joe Rogan Experience,” during which Rogan and Musk dressed in <\/a>convoluted Halloween costumes<\/a> and smoked cigars. At one point<\/a> during the nearly three-hour podcast, Rogan asked Musk, “What was it ultimately that led you to make the decision to do it?” As in, buy Twitter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was no mention of last year’s impending legal battle. Instead, he said, “This is going to sound somewhat melodramatic, but I was worried that [Twitter] was having a corrosive effect on civilization. That it was just having a bad impact. Part of it is where it’s located, which is downtown San Francisco. While I think San Francisco is a beautiful city \u2014 and we should really fight hard to kind of right the ship of San Francisco \u2014 if you walk around downtown San Francisco right near the X fka Twitter headquarters, it’s a zombie apocalypse.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Musk paused to ask Rogan if he’d been to San Francisco lately, to which Rogan said “not lately” but that he’d heard “it’s crazy” and that “you really can’t believe it until you actually go there.” Musk concurred, then carried on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“What philosophy led to that outcome? That philosophy was being piped to Earth,” Musk said. “A philosophy that would ordinarily be quite niche and geographically constrained, so the fallout area would be limited, was effectively given an information technology weapon to propagate what is essentially a mind virus to the rest of Earth. The outcome of that mind virus is very clear if you walk around the streets of downtown San Francisco. It is the end of civilization.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Musk, the world’s wealthiest person, <\/a> may have been willing to spend $44 billion to save humanity from San Francisco, but he never followed up on giving the $100,000 he pledged to a political action committee intended to defeat Supervisor Dean Preston<\/a>, a Democratic Socialist whom Musk has called to be imprisoned<\/a> for reasons unknown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

GrowSF, the tech-backed group<\/a> behind the “Dump Dean” political action committee and other efforts to unseat left-leaning politicians, has since attempted to distance itself from Musk; one of GrowSF’s founders<\/a> now says he would not accept Musk’s hypothetical donation, which he doesn’t anticipate Musk would ever try to contribute, anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BEST OF SFGATE<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Travel <\/strong>| This middle-of-nowhere Calif. diner was James Dean’s last stop<\/a>
Food <\/strong>| ‘Corporate greed’ nearly killed San Francisco icon Swensen’s<\/a>
Local<\/strong> | What happened to the haunted house on Fisherman’s Wharf?<\/a>
History <\/strong>| The unbelievable true story of a body found in a Calif. funhouse<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nov 1, 2023<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By\u00a0Alex Shultz<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alex Shultz is the politics editor for SFGATE. You can reach him at alex.shultz@sfgate.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Alex Shultz Nov 1, 2023 (SFGate.com) FILE:\u00a0Elon Musk speaks with members of the media during day one of the AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park on November 01, 2023 in Bletchley, England.\u00a0Leon Neal\/Getty Images In July 2022, Elon Musk tried to renege on purchasing Twitter for $44 billion. Anxious to finalize a deal with… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[890],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29573"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29573"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29573\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29576,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29573\/revisions\/29576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}