What is happening to Elon Musk?

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO seems to have finally met his match with Twitter, a company he recently took over, and now seems ready to run into the ground.

You may have heard about the ongoing chaos over at Twitter. Elon Musk bought the social media platform a few weeks ago, and it’s been non-stop drama ever since.

First, Musk fired half the staff. (Then begged some of them to come back, after realizing he had fired the very people he needed to keep the company running.)

Then, Musk got rid of Twitter’s verification system, by which “known” subscribers — who proved their identity with an ID, and could show notoriety in their field — would receive a blue checkmark on their profile. While certainly a mark of prestige, the blue check was most useful for giving a patina of credibility to the account, helping Twitter users know that there was at least a chance that the information this person was sharing was valid.

That’s now gone.

Immediately after taking over the company, Musk announced that anyone forking over $8/month would also get a checkmark — no ID needed — making it no longer a credible indicator of identity. As was predicted by many online, and even Musk’s own staff who warned him in an internal memo, people had a field day with the new buy-a-check, creating scores of fake “blue check” profiles for celebrities and companies from LeBron James to Eli Lilly.

Funny? Sure. But that Eli Lilly tweet appears to have caused the stock to plunge, potentially costing investors billions. And Eli Lilly, that tried unsuccessfully for six hours to get Twitter to pull the fake account, was none too pleased. (Musk fired most of Twitter’s communications department, just as he did Tesla’s. Musk doesn’t think he needs a comms department. Eli Lilly begs to differ.)

Even before the blue check fiasco, major brands fled Twitter after Musk’s acquisition, pulling their advertising in the face of the new CEO’s increasingly erratic behavior. (An example: After Nancy Pelosi’s 82 y.o. husband, Paul, was brutally attacked with a hammer, sending him to the ICU, Musk shared a homophobic conspiracy theory blaming Mr. Pelosi for the attack.) The loss of advertising is no small matter, as Twitter, which is hemorrhaging cash, makes made over 90% of their income from advertising.

Fast forward to Wednesday of this week. Musk sends an all-staff email announcing that he only wants “extremely hardcore” employees to remain at Twitter, which he defines as those willing to work extremely long hours in a clearly-toxic environment. Musk then adds a check mark at the bottom of the email, for employees to commit to being “extremely hardcore.” The email concludes that if you don’t click, you’ll be fired by the next day (Thursday) at 5pm, and will get three-months severance.

Be careful what you wish for, Elon. Reports are that as many as 75% of the remaining staff refused to click, and are now presumably gone, meaning 88% of the company has left since Musk took over. Musk reportedly freaked out and locked down the offices, turning off all employee badges, lest some of the newly-fired masses “sabotage” Twitter on the way out. But with Musk, that’s never the end of the story. An email went out this morning, demanding that anyone who can prove they have the coding chops should show up at his office on the 10th floor today at 2pm. Which is gonna be tough, since all of their badges have been turned off.

Okay, what’s going on? It’s possible that Elon Musk is just an awful businessman, but then again, there’s SpaceX and Tesla, which both seem to be pretty impressive companies. (Though, some argue that Musk bought Tesla, so it wasn’t his doing, and at SpaceX, he actually lets the experts run the company.) It’s also possible we’re witnessing Kanye 2.0 — a man having a very public mental health crisis.

But there’s also a third option: That this was Musk’s plan all along. I have a hard time with this one, as why would Musk spend $44bn on a company that he secretly wanted to destroy? Unless the strategy wasn’t to destroy Twitter, but to destroy its current users, and rebuild from the ashes. (Do phoenix’s tweet?) Musk, the theory goes, set off a neutron bomb to get rid of most of Twitter’s staff, and its current power users (who come from various classes that Musk abhors — non-MAGA media, non-MAGA politicos, non-MAGA activists, and non-MAGA academics), in the hopes of rebuilding a profitable company based on income from far-right Trumpists. But is that really a recipe for making money, scaring off your already-loyal user based in the hopes of a possible maybe?

Musk also has to worry about the reputational risk of not just ruining Twitter, and being seen as a lousy businessman, but also of throwing his hat in with MAGA. To many Americans, Musk was that quirky guy who made cool cars, and even cooler rockets. Now, Musk is facing a consumer backlash from not just advertisers who think he’s too flaky to risk their brand on, but also customers who don’t want to associate themselves with a guy who increasingly feels like Donald Trump. And that disassociation risks going beyond Twitter, and coloring everything Musk touches, including Tesla. Owning a Tesla used to be cool. Now, it’s like driving a MAGA hat. And finally, there’s Musk’s government contracts. Yes, SpaceX has a monopoly on space travel. But that’s the problem. Does the US space program really want to be beholden to someone this mercurial?

And he did all this in only two weeks.