I’m sure you heard. Elon’s buying Twitter.

You can find plenty of opinions about what it means and predictions about what he might do, but right now I care more about why. Why is he paying a 38% premium for a business that smart people struggle to monetize?

The public square is the most consequential apparatus in a modern society because it influences what people buy, how they vote, and what they’ll swarm the Capitol or self-immolate on the steps of the Supreme Court for.

Even the most oppressive and well-armed regimes meet their end when ideas spread and catalyze revolutions.

Our modern public square both starts and ends online, inside platforms deliberately designed to encourage unhealthy and dangerous discourse. Yes, it’s done intentionally. Why? Because it’s better for the bottom line.

Twitter is among the most influential of these platforms because it’s the primary channel for two powerful cohorts: journalists and politicians. They often hoist their sails into the prevailing winds of trending topics and everything else gets pulled into their wake.

So it goes…Twitter plants seeds among the more traditional gatekeepers who in turn feed social media with discourse that is now perceived as more legitimized. That’s then passed between platforms and continues to take on new shapes, which in turn feeds back to traditional media. The wheel keeps turning, propelling us down a road of abject absurdity and toward whatever calamitous inevitability awaits.

I’m sure Elon wants to harness this influence because Elon intuitively understands the power of ideas and more importantly how they move through people in the 21st century.

Where you think his private ownership takes Twitter depends on what you think of him and a little on how cynical the last decade has made you. I’ll reserve my own opinions here.

I just want to remind you not to, yet again, underestimate this power. The same way you did in 2016 and 2020 and 2021 and…

The wheel keeps turning.