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hi everyone this is Pivot from New York Magazine and the VOX media podcast Network I'm Cara swisser and tell me
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you're abusing ketamine without telling me you're abusing ketamine Cara I am only bereft that Jonathan had to be
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there to witness that Jonathan Ross sorin uh did you see that part our friend our Canadian he called our
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Canadian friend Jonathan his and Andrew is like I'm Andrew oh my God I could see
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that he said you're my good friend Jonathan and I was thinking why did he think Jonathan H the only sort of Jewish
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sounding name he could think of I I don't even know what he was doing there well if this if that whole um dialogue
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cemented or proved anything it is that in fact Andrew Ros sorin is Canadian one he was on stage the entire time
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unarmed we can talk about it more in a minute but go ahead he was on stage the entire time both unarmed and had health
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insurance Canadian yeah and you know how you get a Canadian to apologize how you
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step on his foot and that has some relevance here yeah yeah which we'll get to Andrew felt bad
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it was like a the way Andrew felt I don't know if he felt bad for the audience he didn't know what to say
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we're going to go right to our first story as we were talking about Elon Musk gave quite a performance at the New York
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Times dealbook Summit on Wednesday which was chalk full of really good interviews
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in a lengthy conversation with Jonathan Ross sorin also known as Andrew Elon addressed numerous topics uh ranging
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from from his anti-semitic comments to his grudge against Biden and waited on open AI aliens monkeys and more and
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something about Earth I don't quite understand what that was about and when they apologized for that anti-semitic
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tweet it was a comment directed at X's advertisers that caused the most chaos let's listen you don't want them to
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advertise no what do you mean if somebody's going to try to Blackmail me with advertising blackmail
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with money go [ __ ] yourself but go [ __ ] yourself is that clear I hope it is hey Bob impressed on
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what it would mean for his company this is what he said tell it to Earth uh you know you have to watch this in a whole
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because it's the entire thing is bizarre not just this um his diet tribe against
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uh not being invited to a Biden comab um everything was so strange tell it to Earth what did you think as you watch
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this uh the shout out to was to Bob Iger by the way who earlier who was in the audience who earlier in the day asked
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about when asked about Elon and advertising on next said that the association was not necessarily A
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positive one let me have some other highlights if we want to call them that elon's issues with Biden go back to
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Tesla getting excluded from this White House Event on electric vehicles he shortly after Biden took office he said
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it wasn't fair um he's he's obviously hurting from it um he said I have done more for the environment than any other
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person on earth when talking about electric vehicles sales Nikki Haley uh was dismissed as Pro censorship
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candidate more on her later open AI should be renamed super closed source for maximum profit AI haha Scott please
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go ahead I was on a plane watching it uh last night I came home from Miami and I
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found it difficult to watch um you know I think the most generous thing you could say is it was
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an intense uh bout of jet lag but there's something going on here and I of course went to chat GPT and I typed
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in what are the symptoms of a narcissist having a breakdown and it came back with
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intense rage and anger blame shifting emotional disregulation paranoia depression and
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anxiety manipulative behaviors isolation self-destructive behaviors increased sensitivity to criticism and breakdown
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of relationships I mean his statements were so ridiculous Cara do you realize that 497 of the Fortune 500 uh companies
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in the United States are clearly blackmailing us because they refuse to advertise on our platform I know and
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then to to go after Disney and it's like it just the whole thing was just and to
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be that to be that profane and that aggressive and then to somehow threaten advertisers that the world will hold you
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accountable if Twitter goes down and then talking about I thought the most disturbing part is someone who raises
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boys I'm talking about as a 13-year-old just the incredible hardship and dysfunction he faced his answer or his
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response to this incredible abuse being the son of a model and a emerald Miner was the decision that to save Humanity
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by making us an interplanetary species I mean he's literally he's just like kind
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of [ __ ] lost his [ __ ] you know again his stands literally were like this was
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great he did told it like it was this is and then let me just say uh Linda yaker
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well it's it's it's really sad it's sad it's sad I don't feel sorry for him but it's sad to watch um he thinks he's
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great his clothes were strange like he was a he was dressed as a fighter pilot from World War II I guess yeah I did
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notice that I don't really know um which is fine he can wear whatever he wants but it just the whole the whole visual
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was weird he looked exhausted he looked unshaven um you know I thought Lindy yino did the worst job of any CEO in
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recent memory but he has managed to top it he bested her um two things Lind Linda Yer was in the audience she then I
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thought she must have been horrified but instead she put up a lengthy post on X afterwards I'm not going to read it in
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full because it was such it was so full of nonsense um and and enabling when it comes to advertising X's standing at a
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unique and amazing intersection of free speech and Main Street block that [ __ ] metaphor but okay I think she
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just got run over by by you know a truck essentially driven by Elon Musk um one was how do you think she's feeling today
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at that intersection um she is she is really a piece of work I got to say because she's not she seems nuts but she
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is obviously something else my understanding of Linda is that she was outstanding at her job she was a
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fantastic head of sales well I'll get to that and so you put someone as a head of
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sales for a traditional company with a lot of products a lot of outstanding ass sets
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to sell and then you show up and you're you're fighting a fire with a squirt gun
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and then you find out that the person who you're fighting the Fighting For Keeps putting gasoline in your squirt
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gun she doesn't have to go this far she can leave she cannot put out quotes like
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this this was shocking to me you gota I I can't decide whether she's she's part of the problem I there's been very few
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people who have who have gone from zero to Global awareness and then in in almost as fast a a time a period have
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absolutely destroyed the reputation now you could argue in this day and age it's
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just all about awareness and I think she'll be able to get another job but it just she just looks she looks totally
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flaccid in the face of a owner who doesn't respect anything about her role of CEO she's not she's not a CEO and all
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is again the analogy is she's the the circus clown following this elephant around scooping up his [ __ ] all the time
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yeah yeah it's you know she was also the subject of a not very flattering profile
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in The Hollywood Reporter by Kim Masters Wednesday where the writer Kim Masters spoke with unnamed former NBC colleagues
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the article quotes someone who said Linda let her ego get the best of her she thought she could control them it
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was a level of ego and huous uh you rely see um I thought it was a pretty Fair article others thought it was you know
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it was all unnamed sources but it was accurate it was I know her that's she was tough she's a tough and somewhat of
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a chaotic manager not that I care lots of bad people don't manage as well but she definitely is way in way over her
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skis but then continues to double down that that's the tragedy here is this sort of like fullscale embracing of this
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lunatic Behavior by Elon um why would any Advertiser stay with X at this point what you know he's done this before
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remember when he first got to the company he he insulted advertisers of that ad first advertising meeting don't
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advertise with us then he just hates anyone in control of his Destiny I guess or something the answer is no big
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advertisers going to um or no or no advertisers that wor is worried about their reputation I mean I I found his
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comments everyone wants to peer try and peer into his heart to really understand
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if he's an anti-semite and my view is if you say and do anti-semitic things and boom you're an
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anti-semite and so big companies that are correctly more sensitive to this sort of scrutiny and criticism as they
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should be are going to stay away from this thing because here's the thing there are about a billion other options
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to spend your money in term there's no shortage there are fewer ad dollars than there are platforms to spend those
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dollars on and Twitter is not particularly effective as many people are pointing out like why why take the
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risk it's never been known as as being a great product in terms of Roi the people
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or the the firms that will continue to advertise well because the outflow of advertising will be so
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dramatic logically speaking the ROI on the ad dollars that would remain should go up because there'll be fewer of them
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so if you're trying to sell an ear cleaning product I wouldn't be surprised and I hate to say this I wouldn't be
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surprised if the ROI on your ad dollars on Twitter that are going to be competing with much fewer dollars for
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eyeballs will actually go up so they'll probably see a bit of a bump uh the smaller advertisers in terms
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of Roi because it'll just be so few dollars chasing what is still a fairly large audience the ads have gotten
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really scary they've gotten really weird ear cleaning product is one of them that
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and that weird glue now you haven't been on it but there's a weird hand glue I don't really know what it is um uh you
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know what's H how is this going to end how is Earth what is Earth going to do because they you know from a business
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point of view X was last week the New York Times reported that X was in danger of losing $75 million earlier this week
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in advertising before the interview what you're in a room with marketers right now who are still on the platform what
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is being said here's my b to narcissism I've worked with 27 of the 100 CMOS of the Fortune 100 globally none of them
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would have anything to do with this platform right now none of them it's all let me get this the product's not that
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great you might be accused of enabling an anti-semite oh and if you decide to stop
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advertising he's going to say you're blackmailing them and and start threatening revenge against you I mean
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okay what is the upside here let's look at the upside versus the down there there are a few things that CMO can be
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fired for kind of UN harmoniously if you were to go on Twitter and spend some money and then it were to blow up in
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your face say your Pepsi your you know Diet Pepsi ad ends up next to a swastika and then a really decent question would
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be like you saw this [ __ ] happening and you made the conscious decision to put
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us at risk like this so no nobody you or me know knows is going to be advertising
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on this platform yeah it's a real it is a traffic accident speaking of f you know F the corner of free speech in
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Maine um I don't know this is just it was so bizarre I was in New York I didn't go you used to be
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friends with him do you know anyone that knows him I wasn't friends he was so he
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was so funny he was referring to Andrew as a friend Jonathan as a friend Jonathan's not his friend either um he
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thinks anyone who's nice to him as his friend it's really sad actually um Andrew and I are just reporters uh I
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liked him I certainly thought he was interesting um no I don't everyone just shakes their head everyone just shakes
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their head but I I do think on a on a meta level I do think the world is having a healthy immune response to Elon
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Musk yeah the audience certainly did you could hear it they were like but we don't have a president of
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the world we don't have one company that controls the world we have several that
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are Marching towards that but generally speaking over time the ecosystem doesn't
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like an invasive species and it starts to fight back against it yeah and when one person Aggregates this much power I
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think the world does have a healthy Earth it's called yeah it does have healthy immune gag reflex and I feel
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like we're starting to really choke on this guy