It of course goes without saying that Twitter CEO Elon Musk is not your conventional buttoned-up chief executive as he loves to stir things up every chance he gets in order to get people talking – and thinking.
His penchant for triggering his critics including woke celebrities, politicos and their allies press, for example, is second only to former President Donald Trump’s. Musk, like many including Trump, seems to understand that the mainstream media as it exists today is – generally speaking – agenda-driven, not towards finding out the actual facts on any given topic but instead towards shaping a pre-conceived political narrative that involves only seeking out sources who will “confirm” your supposedly blockbuster story is “true.”
A classic example of Musk setting the media’s hair on fire happened not long after his takeover became official, when he went into a Twitter Spaces Chat that was filled with angry journalists upset at some press suspensions on the popular social media platform and told them that they were “not special” when it came to following Twitter’s rules on things like posting someone’s personal information without their consent and would be treated like every other Twitter user:
BREAKING: @ElonMusk just hopped on Spaces with a group of journalists and informed them the same doxxing rules apply to them and they arenโt special pic.twitter.com/SaYFWxZVpJ
โ Jack Posobiec ๐บ๐ธ (@JackPosobiec) December 16, 2022
Most recently, Musk proceeded to fauxfend members of the media yet again by declaring that he had set Twitter’s press email account to auto-respond to their inquiries by use of the poop emoji:
[email protected] now auto responds with ๐ฉ
โ Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 19, 2023
Random Twitter users tested it by sending an email, and confirmed it was true:
confirmed ๐ pic.twitter.com/LSgD14fc0F
โ Ouriel @ZenGo (@OurielOhayon) March 19, 2023
Use of the poop emoji has become a thing for Musk, so much so that at one point he was threatened with legal consequences over it:
Musk has previously come under fire for utilizing the emoji, notably in a 2022 lawsuit wherein Twitter cited a number of Musk’s posts โ including one where he tweeted out the emoji โ as proof that he had “violated his obligations” under the merger deal he signed when taking over the company.
Musk tweeted out the single emoji in May 2022, making headlines worldwide as the tweet was seen as a condemnation of CEO Parag Agrawal’s earlier statements about addressing bots on the platform.
Though there was general outrage from the usual corners after Musk made the announcement about the emoji, CBS News did have a little bit of fun with the news of Musk setting the automatic reply to a poop emoji with the following headline:
Twitter’s press email is automatically “pooping” on the media
They also reported that “the change comes after Twitter’s former email for journalists with questions about the company had gone dormant for months.”
Well, at least journalists are getting a “response” from Musk now, although no doubt it’s certainly not the one any of them envisioned. ๐
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