? UNDER THE LAMPLIGHT-

There is no shortage of Elon Musk controversies, but perhaps the most prominent one is his acquisition of Twitter, now X. Ben Mezrich’s Breaking Twitter takes readers on a deep dive on what the author calls the most controversial corporate takeover in history, centering Musk’s “break stuff and see what happens” persona.

The battle between Musk and the company that once represented shared global conversation is darkly comedic, and Merzich paints it as such, while providing a complete story from all angles. His retelling is based on dozens of interviews and thousands of pages of documents.

Mezrich asks a new question: Did Musk break Twitter or did Twitter break Musk? The mercurial b’naire was forced to see the buyout through for the price of USD 44 bn in commitment to a pot joke. Before the purchase, Musk was named Person of the Year by Time Magazine, which called him a man-god. A book written and published by renowned biographer Walter Isaacson after Musk’s acquisition calls him a man-child.

Breaking Twitter is a wild and compelling read, much like Musk himself, but it may not be rooted in reality, also like Musk. The author admitted to injecting elements of satire to dramatize events, and even based certain details on his own speculation.

One thing is for sure… what was once a rockstar-boy-genius who took credit for Tesla and SpaceX quickly disintegrated to a mercurial 52-year-old internet troll plagued with chronically juvenile humor. What makes a better story than an Icarian drama?

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