When you ignore that it's horrible that things like this can even happen, Elon Musk is honestly a fascinating and funny case study. Here's a man who has built his entire reputation on:
Supposedly being highly intelligent
Never making mistakes due to point 1
If something goes wrong, it's not his fault due to point 2
He's coasted along on this reputation because capitalism has created an endless supply of doofuses who think anyone who has money probably did something to deserve it (he just inherited it) so all he has to do is throw money at projects that seem smart and futury and as long as they make a minor profit or produce something cool, his reputation is reinforced.
It's not truly reinforced, obviously, because anyone with reasonable critical thinking skills can see that he's not actually a scientist, he's at best an investor who got lucky a couple times, and regularly takes the credit for stuff his employees make, but he's got enough of the aforementioned doofuses that he's gotten by so far.
He could've honestly kept out of the spotlight and just made infinite money if he wasn't also an egomaniac who needs constant approval and attention. But then, for clout, he made a statement that he was going to buy Twitter. And Twitter held him to his word. And due to point 2, he can't walk that back, because he never makes mistakes.
So now he's lost 44 billion dollars because he couldn't watch his mouth and cared too much about his reputation to just pay the 1 billion dollar fine to go back on his offer. So, due to point 1, he has to make it look as if he totally was going to really buy Twitter all along, and he totally has real plans for it. But Twitter is losing money, hard. So he starts looking for ways to make his money back. And somehow lands on... monetizing the system which verifies user identities.....?
No, totally a good idea, see point 2. Implementing it right away. People are misusing the new system? Not his fault, see point 3. But Twitter is largely funded by advertising, and advertisers can see what's going on. So they start pulling out, which means Twitter just loses MORE money. Musk just dug himself a deeper hole. And now he's just panicking while trying to convince everyone he's got it under control. Digging deeper and deeper.
He's fucked. He's just totally fucked himself. And he's taking the planet's biggest social media platform down with him. All because he can never admit making a mistake. Fucking hilarious. A cautionary tale of magnificent proportions. Tens of thousands of lives are going to be affected by this, as the platform they use to spread their work goes up in flames, and it's horrible, but as we are suspended in the ennui, we can at least watch this moron blow up into fireworks. Amazing.
