The only thing that forced Musk to buy Twitter was his own bloody-mindedness. The agreement he signed was to protect the value of Twitter as negotiations for its sale proceeded. Musk could have paid a $1B penalty and backed out, but he treated the agreement as a joke and got nailed. Musk is not the victim here.
Ask HN: Why was Elon Musk forced to buy Twitter?
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Re: Ask HN: Why was Elon Musk forced to buy Twitter?
#12The only thing that forced Musk to buy Twitter was his own bloody-mindedness. The agreement he signed was to protect the value of Twitter as negotiations for its sale proceeded. Musk could have paid a $1B penalty and backed out, but he treated the agreement as a joke and got nailed. Musk is not the victim here.
> Musk could have paid a $1B penalty and backed out
That's not correct: the penalty was only for failure to complete the transaction, Elon still had to go through with it.
Elon tried to create cause to stop the transaction (the weird bot fixation) and eat the penalty but that didn't get to discovery.
Re: Ask HN: Why was Elon Musk forced to buy Twitter?
#13Sure. He was completely minding his own business when suddenly, out of nowhere, a judge forced him to buy Twitter for no reason. Poor guy. Musk is an attention seeking narcissist. He is absolutely determined to turn himself into a clown show. He is succeeding. No one has done this to him. He did it to himself.
Sure. He was completely minding his own business when suddenly, out of nowhere, a judge forced him to buy Twitter for no reason. Poor guy.
I hate it when that happens. That's how I got stuck owning MySpace.
Re: Ask HN: Why was Elon Musk forced to buy Twitter?
#14We're all trying to find the guy who did this.
Re: Ask HN: Why was Elon Musk forced to buy Twitter?
#15He bought it in order to rage quit the litigation to enforce his previous contractual commitment to buy Twitter. Nobody forced Elon to do anything. It was an incredibly unwise and impulsive move.
Re: Ask HN: Why was Elon Musk forced to buy Twitter?
#16The only thing that forced Musk to buy Twitter was his own bloody-mindedness. The agreement he signed was to protect the value of Twitter as negotiations for its sale proceeded. Musk could have paid a $1B penalty and backed out, but he treated the agreement as a joke and got nailed. Musk is not the victim here.
> Musk could have paid a $1B penalty and backed out That's not correct: the penalty was only for failure to complete the transaction, Elon still had to go through with it. Elon tried to create cause to stop the transaction (the weird bot fixation) and eat the penalty but that didn't get to discovery.
That's correct. If it had been only a billion, he would have cut a check for that and been done with the whole thing. He somehow convinced himself he could flip Twitter for a profit, or at least for a smaller loss than a settlement would have cost. You have to have some kind of ego to think that way.
Re: Ask HN: Why was Elon Musk forced to buy Twitter?
#17Sure. He was completely minding his own business when suddenly, out of nowhere, a judge forced him to buy Twitter for no reason. Poor guy. Musk is an attention seeking narcissist. He is absolutely determined to turn himself into a clown show. He is succeeding. No one has done this to him. He did it to himself.
I agree with your conclusion, but it's a natural question. Twitter management and users were not in favor of him owning the place, so why not let him back out? I think the driving answer was money. He paid way more than the company was worth, and there's no way the investors would accept the board turning down the offer.
> Twitter management were not in favor of him owning the place
Management and users aren't relevant, the shareholders and the board make the decision, and they don't care what happens to the company after they've sold it because they've already got their payday.
Re: Ask HN: Why was Elon Musk forced to buy Twitter?
#18“Ask HN: Why can cats fly?”
I mean, you’re starting from a false premise; Naughty Old Mr Car was not forced to buy Twitter.
Who is ‘they’ supposed to be here?
Re: Ask HN: Why was Elon Musk forced to buy Twitter?
#19He bought it in order to rage quit the litigation to enforce his previous contractual commitment to buy Twitter. Nobody forced Elon to do anything. It was an incredibly unwise and impulsive move.
And all would be fine, if the impulsive behavior stopped there and then.
Alas.
Re: Ask HN: Why was Elon Musk forced to buy Twitter?
#20We're all trying to find the guy who did this.
I'm starting to narrow down the list of people who might be posting on @elonmusk's account too.
We gon' nail this son of a gun.