During a live interview on Wednesday, Elon Musk responded to a question about advertisers leaving “X” (formerly Twitter) because of an anti-Semitic post he’d supported, saying “If someone is going to blackmail me with advertising or money go f**k yourself. Go. F**k. Yourself,” he said. “Is that clear?”
Yes, that’s clear. It’s also disrespectful, short-sighted, and ignorant.
It’s also clear that, based on this and many other off-the-cuff pronouncements he’s made over the years, that Elon has a fundamental lack of understanding of how what he says significantly influences people’s perceptions of him, and more importantly, the work of his companies.
Without question, some of Musk’s companies – I’m thinking Tesla and SpaceX – are so-called game changers in their respective industries. And that’s all well and good.
But Musk has many other companies and projects (like The Boring Company and Neuralink) that will rely on the good will of their investors, federal, city and state governments, and consumers in order to grow and thrive. He needs all of them to trust and respect him, to believe that he knows what he’s doing and that he’s making wise business decisions.
Now, one could reasonably argue that the direction he’s taking “X” after buying it is not particularly wise and that yesterday’s outburst at his recalcitrant advertisers is really just him projecting his own frustrations with the failing social media platform onto them. And while it may feel good in the moment to say this live in front of a large streaming audience, Musk needs to know that he’s just making it that much more difficult to pull “X” out of its downward spiral. He’s giving his advertisers a wide-open opportunity to say, “Elon, go f**k yourself?”
Smart and respectful business leaders know that no matter how angry and upset they may be, even if they have justifiable reasons to be furious, publicly telling people to go fornicate themselves is only going to make things worse.
By the way, Musk said these things after apologizing for his anti-Semitic “X” post, calling it one of the “dumbest” posts he’s ever made.
Imagine the positive response he would have received if, instead of cursing advertisers out, he’d followed up by saying, “To those “X” advertisers who are pulling away, I want to say, ‘I get it.’ I apologize, it was hurtful. I won’t be doing that again AND I’m asking the new CEO of “X” to take a harder look at how we monitor hate language on the platform.” It may have been just talk, but I guarantee the media would have been saying good things about him and it would have given advertisers cover when justifying their investments into “X”.
So, Mr. Musk, I’m going to turn around your little phrase and put it back at you… “Mr. Musk, think before you shoot your mouth off. You’ll save yourself a world of hurt and people might actually respect you for it!”
