Goodbye, X

 I left 'X' (the former Twitter) today.  Deactivated my account permanently.  I'd been on the site since... 2009?  Something like that.

Goodbye

Mainly, I was following the Marie Kondo question- "Does this bring joy?"- and more and more, the answer was a resounding 'no'.  The original concept of Twitter- a place where anyone could post a short message- was great.  People could put up short messages, break news, come up with witty quips.  I followed a lot of people on the site; not only friends, but whoever was in a field that interested me; poker players, professional wrestlers, chefs (I picked up a ton of recipes).  

Was there politics?  Absolutely- I followed several people, not only people who I agreed with (Jonah Goldberg, Megan McArdle), but people I disagreed with (Matthew Yglesias) to see their opinion.  

But over time, the site got more and more toxic.  And yes, part of the blame belongs to Elon Musk- a man who has some brains and a ton of resources and seems to be using them to be a player in a culture war.  But he just greased the skids- this has been coming for a long time.

Social media- Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, etc- has been a powerful tool.  It's given everyone access to a megaphone that can be heard across the planet.  But it's a tool that we've abused, and one that I don't think we are ready to handle properly.  The rise of social media has been accompanied by a rise of depression, and we as a species are far more toxic to each other than we were 30 years ago.  

I would have guessed a tool that would let us see the insights of everyone on the planet would help us understand each other.  On this, I've been proven wrong so far.

Much like the Supercomputer in Wargames, I've realized that social media is a strange game, and the only winning move is not to play.  So I've withdrawn from the world's megaphone.  I don't expect to ever be back.

Going Infinite: Thoughts about SBF, Crypto, and the Cult of Personality

 I have finished Going Infinite, Michael Lewis' book about Sam Bankman-Fried and the Rise and Fall of FTX.  A few thoughts:

Would you give this man 15 billion dollars?

1)  Bankman-Fried has been found guilty of seven counts of fraud, and I firmly believe the evidence is correct and that he is guilty.  What I don't know is if his intention was to actually steal the money or he was just so criminally reckless with the money that it's missing or taken by other people.  The book is full of stories about how little he paid attention to any sort of guardrails to protect the financial interests of either himself or the people around him.

2)  Lewis is a great writer. (he did a better job explaining the 2008 financial crisis to me than anyone else in his book The Big Short).  He also finds Bankman-Fried a fascinating character, and paints him in a better light than most people expect.  Lewis doesn't hide the facts, but when his opinion comes out, it is more favorable on Bankman-Fried than you would expect.

3)  Bankman-Fried comes across (in my own opinion) as an idiot savant.  He's brilliant, especially at lateral thinking.  But he's also incapable of empathy, and not only believes he is smart, but that there is no point listening to other people.  At one point in the book, when he talks about how outsiders want him to bring in a CFO (Chief Financial Officer), his quote from the book:

"There's a functional religion around the CFO," said Sam.  "I'll ask them, 'Why do I need one?'  Some people cannot articulate a single thing the CFO is supposed to do.  They'll say 'keep track of the money' or 'make projections.'  I'm like, What the fuck do you think I do all day?  You think I don't know how much money we have?"

I think we see how that turned out.

4)  Here's my big question:  Why the hell did so many people give this guy so much money?  He had investors giving him 15 billion dollars.  That's $15,000,000,000.00  

I get that he's smart.  Big deal- I know lots of smart people.  I wouldn't give them my life savings.  

This isn't a Theranos situation, where the company outright lied about what they were capable of doing.  I can understand investors falling for that.  But even after reading the book, I don't understand either what his business model was supposed to be, nor why would people trust that this reckless sociopath would be the place to invest.

I admit that I'm biased- I've gone from being a skeptic of Cryptocurrency to now believing it is a complete scam.  So when a company based around Cryptocurrency is found out to be guilty of fraud, it just reinforces my beliefs.  But obviously a lot of people trusted his company- and specifically, trusted him.  Investors have decided to investor in the founder, even though they've been burned so many times before.  You'd think that people who were responsible for other people's money would expect more safeguards than invest because they think the founder is the next Steve Jobs.

Sam Bankman-Fried is an odd character; I enjoyed the book Michael Lewis wrote about him.  But I'm glad I never invested a dime in him- and I don't understand why others did.