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The polling is embarrassing, really. Asking your own fans whether you should do something they want you to do, like a king who needs his courtiers’ permission before every little ruling. Bring him back, do not, let that authority rest with you. Also, who asked him to resign, if not either someone very senior in the White House (in which case Musk would be dimwitted to overrule them) or someone in Musk’s own employ at DOGE? Neither reflects well on him.
About as "embarrasing" as the emperor getting the temperature of the colosseum before he gives his thumbs up or down.
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The poll is to show influential people what the masses really think about it. Musk rehiring him is more defensible when a million people think he should be rehired. When an investor or politician presses him he can say that he asked the people, even if it’s not actually a fair sample size.
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Is it just 'his own fans' now on twitter? I'm really asking, I'm still under the impression that none of the spinoffs took off enough to really change that 'everyone' was still on twitter.
Also, Musk is not the King, Trump is. Musk might be the sovereign of his own domain, but in the White House he is himself a courtier. One doesn't have to descend into Kremlinology to see that Elon was probably getting data to cover his ass. Or he might have just been genuinely curious, he does seem to do polls a lot for this kind of thing.
To your last question does anyone know how many employees DOGE actually has now? The memes took off so fast that this image of half a dozen guys reporting directly to Elon is already seared in my mind. Like my instinct is to say Elon personally let this guy go and the decision to hire him back is also his
In my experience on X, Musk's polls tend to overwhelmingly support Musk's side of any given issue. I don't think that Musk is faking the polls, it's just a combination of a certain degree of leftist exodus from X combined with the general tendency that online polls have to skew unrepresentatively heavily one way or another because of a combination of brigading and the natural emotional tendency of one side to get really excited to vote while the other side stamps its feet in disgust and refuses to participate. Since these polls have almost no real-world consequence, there is little emotional incentive for people who dislike Musk to participate in them, whereas people who agree with Musk want to show their support. Certainly the 80/20 figure means little when it comes to gauging the average American's thoughts on the issue.
I understand the dynamic you're describing and it all rings true except for I'm not convinced Elon's preferred outcome was having the poll come out in favor of the fella. Short of not hiring him in the first place, I think he would've preferred it just went away. But there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth about how we were regressing to the days of freely handing the enemy scalps and I think Elon maybe put the poll up as a result of the umbrage.
Although that's sort of just a little idle Kremlinology, sorry. Thanks for your thoughts, interested to see how it plays out
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The poll could be rigged. He owns the website.
The worst it could get it 50/50, do you really want to make a bet that most Americans want to get him fired given the result of the election?
Actually, would you want him fired?
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