Elon Musk prepares to walk away from the smoking crater that was Twitter

In a fantastic appearance on Wednesday afternoon, Elon Musk told advertisers who had left his X (formerly Twitter) social media site, “Go fuck yourself.” It was not the only F-bomb Musk dropped in a heated rant that included blaming advertisers for the failure of what once was Twitter and accusing them of trying to “blackmail” him by refusing to advertise.

According to the BBC, advertising made up 90% of Twitter’s revenue before Musk took over. Immediately following his purchase of the company, Twitter was flooded with an explosion of racism. Within three months, ad revenue dropped by 50%. In his speech, which was given before attendees at The New York Times' DealBook Summit and who sometimes seemed shocked into silence, Musk both admitted that the departure of advertisers would kill the company, and vowed that he would not bail it out with his own money.

It’s been only 13 months since Musk spent $44 billion on Twitter. At the end of October, the employee equity plan set the company’s value at $19 billion. That was before Musk endorsed an antisemitic post based on the “great replacement” conspiracy theory and sent the remaining advertisers fleeing in droves.

If the company should fail in the coming weeks, it will be one of the largest, most astounding, and most self-inflicted business failures in history.