Contrary to popular belief, Twitter can sometimes be a very warm place — scorching, even.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk received the traditional Twitter welcome of being seriously burned when he reached an agreement Monday to buy the social media platform for roughly $44 billion.
It’s not totally clear what Musk, a South African-born billionaire with a penchant for rockets, Burning Man and truly weird baby names, plans to do with the platform. But one thing he’s been emphatic about is that he believes in free speech.
Considering that Musk frequently uses Twitter to make bad jokes and complain about “wokeness,” many of his critics are concerned that his promise to preserve the First Amendment will lead to the further spread of misinformation, propaganda and hate speech in the name of profitability. (Not that anyone would accuse the head of Tesla, a company that’s faced multiple discrimination lawsuits, of not always having people’s best interests at heart.)
Some Democratic lawmakers are worried that under Musk, Twitter would reinstate the account of former President Donald Trump, who was suspended after his supporters’ deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
In fact, these concerns are just scratching the surface of what the richest man in the world is capable of doing with a platform that’s repeatedly demonstrated its power to cause social chaos. But before Musk turns the whole thing into a subscription-based service where users have to pay in cryptocurrency, NFTs or James Bond memorabilia, here are a few jokes about Musk acquiring Twitter. Read them before they get mysteriously deleted.